As Tom pointed out this morning, it worked like a charm down in Alabama yesterday just as it’s been working ever since Rove v Wade was overturned.
I hope they see just what a huge winning issue this is for them and ride it all the way to November.
A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that Democrats are more likely to report feeling “fearful” or “angry” about the prospects of another Trump term than Republicans are about the idea of Biden remaining in the White House.
The emotional reaction Trump inspires may work in his favor too, though, since the poll also found that Republicans are more excited about the prospect of a Trump win than Democrats are about a Biden victory.
Seven in 10 Democrats say the words “angry” or “fearful” would describe their emotions “extremely well” or “very well” upon a Trump victory. A smaller majority of Republicans – 56% – say the same about a Biden triumph. About 6 in 10 Democrats cite both emotions when contemplating a Trump victory. Again, that exceeds the roughly 4 out of 10 Republicans who said they would feel both angry and scared about Biden prevailing.
The findings are notable in an unusual campaign pitting an incumbent president against his predecessor, with both men facing doubters within their own parties and among independents. Consolidating support from Republicans who backed Nikki Haley in the GOP primary could be a challenge for Trump. Biden faces disenchanted progressives to his left and concerns over whether his age, 81, is a liability in the job.
I understand progressives being disenchanted about Gaza but other than that I don’t think they have much to gripe about. And we’ve certainly learned that there’s no taboo against ageism…
Still, I’ll take fear and anger over apathy any day. At least most Democrats are starting to wake up to the fact that Orange Julius Caesar isn’t going anywhere and they’d better vote against him:
Excitement about the two candidates will be an important factor in a race where turnout from each side’s base will be key. But dislike can motivate voters as much as enthusiasm.
“If there was a third-party candidate who had a chance in hell I would vote for them,” said Austin Healey, a 26-year-old Democrat. Healey, who describes himself as “very liberal,” said his mixed reviews of Biden take a back seat to his concerns that Trump’s comeback bid “looks like a clear ploy for trying to abolish democracy.”
Though he is “not excited about it,” Healey said, that means a vote for Biden.
Derrick Johnson, a Michigan voter who identifies as a liberal independent, offered plenty of critiques against Biden, as well. But the 46-year-old caregiver and food service worker made his bottom line clear: “Donald Trump is a madman. I’m afraid he’ll have us in World War III. My message is anybody but Trump.”
Democrats’ intense feelings about Trump account for the overall differences in how Americans view the two rivals. Altogether, about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say “fearful” would describe their emotions “extremely” or “very” well if Trump is elected again, while roughly 3 in 10 would fear a second Biden term. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults said they would be angered by Trump winning in November while 28% said the same about Biden.
54% of Republicans are “excited” about Trump’s return while only 40% of Democrats feel the same way. I would guess “relief” is the better way to describe it.
Whatever motivates the anti-Trump coalition to vote is fine. They just have to do it.
Both the president and vice president campaigned in Raleigh, North Carolina on Tuesday (CNN):
The Raleigh stop marked a rare joint appearance on the road by the president and vice president, highlighting the emphasis the duo will place on health care as they prepare to face off against former President Donald Trump. It came the same day the Supreme Court heard arguments on access to the abortion medication mifepristone, teeing up a summer decision that could have major implications for abortion rights.
Biden’s advisers believed Tuesday’s visit would provide a stark contrast between the Democratic ticket’s vision for health care and reproductive rights and proposals put forth by Republicans. It’s taking place on the heels of a campaign push slamming Trump for threatening to repeal the Affordable Care Act if he’s elected to a second term.
“Donald Trump and MAGA friends are nothing if not persistent. They’ve tried to repeal it 50 times, not a joke. Fifty times they’ve tried to repeal it. We stopped them every time now,” Biden said to the crowd at Chavis Community Center in Raleigh, North Carolina. “Kamala and I have come back to North Carolina to celebrate the ACA and to remind all of us, we can’t take anything for granted.”
NYT:
Speaking to a crowd of more than 200 Democratic leaders and supporters in the gymnasium of a community center near downtown Raleigh, the president and vice president attacked Republicans for seeking to repeal or limit parts of the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Harris called them “extremists,” who are “trying to take away medical care in our country or make it more expensive.”
[…]
After reading a laundry list of ways Americans could lose health care coverage if the Affordable Care Act were repealed or restricted, Mr. Biden vowed to protect access to abortion, which has animated national politics since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. If he and Ms. Harris are re-elected in November, Mr. Biden said, they would restore its protections as “the law of the land.”
While the brief mention of abortion signaled that it would be one of his health care priorities for a second term, he did not offer details on how he planned to deliver on his pledge to protect abortion rights.
Really? Well, he didn’t promise it in two weeks for four years, did he?
The stop in North Carolina underscores the state’s growing significance to Democrats, as they work to defeat Mr. Trump in November. Mr. Biden lost the state by less than two points in 2020 — the same year that he carried Georgia, a state he visited earlier this month, by fewer than 12,000 votes.
We’ve seen that emphasis on the ground here for over six weeks. CNN notes at the end of the following report that the Trump campaign has no advance staff on the ground yet in North Carolina.
That’s because Trump is too busy trying to stay both out of bankruptcy and jail. When he’s not hawking Bibles to easy marks.
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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.
Good does not always triumph. Bad guys don’t always get their comeuppance. Despite all the stories we’ve heard since childhood. Ask a conservative. The world is not fair. Ask Donald Trump. Nobody knows more about unfairness than he does.
Our bias toward expecting justice to be done, eventually, and the arc of the moral universe bending toward it, eventually, makes it hard for us to conceive that the former president may exit this life without receiving what he justly deserves. He might. Or his comeuppance might arrive outside the criminal justice system.
Simon Rosenberg urges his Hopium readers to do more and worry less: “Donate to and join the Biden-Harris campaign” and “Make an early investment in North Carolina.” Biden has gained ground on Trump in six new polls.
But the only polls that really count are the ones open on Election Day. Those continue to deliver for Democrats, as they did last night in the Huntsville, Alabama area by 25 points:
Democrat Marilyn Lands on Tuesday decisively won an Alabama state House seat in a long-held Republican district, notching a special-election victory after centering her campaign on promoting access to abortion and in vitro fertilization.
Lands’s win was the latest in a string of Democratic victories around reproductive rights after abortion rights advocates experienced a huge blow nearly two years ago. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — which had established a constitutional right to abortion—in 2022, Democrats have found success in battleground elections and ballot referendums by focusing heavily on protecting abortion rights and running against GOP opposition to them.
The universe may not be fair, but comeuppance is in the air … even in Alabama.
Now to the insurrectionist-in-chief. The pressures of fighting in four courts to stay out of prison and to keep his family business from imploding while campaiging for president have the already unstable Trump showing signs of losing it. He goes to trial in Manhattan on the hush money case on his least-favorite day of the year, April 15.
Trump has turned to selling Bibles to pay his bills and shore up his evangelical base. Naturally, The Daily Show mocked the hell out of him. Ron Filipkowski posted a mashup of “Two Corinthians” Trump clearly bullshitting his way through questions about scripture. Which is your favorite, New Testament or Old Testament? “Probably … equal,” Trump replies, staling for time. “I think it’s just an incredible … the whole Bible.”
There was a time when Southerners celebrated cautionary tales about trusting traveling Bible salesmen portraying themselves as “Manly.” But those are not the good old days America’s fascist-leaning, Christian-nationalist movement yearns for.
Still, we see more signs that the scales are falling from MAGA eyes, perhaps in enough numbers to send Trump’s container ship crashing into a bridge pier: “Hillary was right.”
Trump’s “truths” are becoming even more disjointed, something an aggressive, gloves-off Biden campaign is quick to pound away at. Biden-Harris is not letting up on working the eye.
Don’t expect the universe suddenly to turn fair, but with any luck there could be a slow meltdown in progress. Maybe Comeuppance will arrive early this year.
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Rudy Giuliani is trapped in a living “nightmare,” and the former New York City Mayor can’t believe it’s real, he was overheard telling pals at Donald Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago last week.
Source exclusively tell Page Six that Giuliani was spotted at the Palm Beach club as he’s facing bankruptcy stemming from a spate of debts.
An attendee told us they heard the former Trump attorney saying he’s in a “nightmare world,” and “he wakes up everyday and can’t believe it’s real.”
The onetime pol was hit with a whopping $148 million claim after being found guilty by a Georgia court of falsely accusing two poll workers of committing voter in Fulton County during the 2020 election.
Feds are also reportedly targeting Giuliani’s own $3.5 million Florida condominium, as Giuliani contends he lacks the finances to settle his debts.
Giuliani was at Mar-a-Lago attending an event in support of Arizona Republican congressional hopeful Abe Hamadeh, we hear.
[…]
Giuliani has told supporters recently in a frantically worded message via his Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund: “Friend, There’s no other way to say this… You may truly be my only hope. The Biden Regime is sending a top ally of President Trump to PRISON!”
The appeal added that, “The Deep State is hellbent on indicting, arresting, bankrupting, and imprisoning President Trump and his top allies for daring to challenge the corrupt forces that have hijacked our once Free Republic. And as the lawyer who successfully defended President Trump from impeachment, I am at the top of their list.”
Giuliani is still attending fundraisers for other people? He’s still speaking to Trump despite the fact that Trump supposedly owes him millions? Huh.
I’m not sure what he’s doing but if he thinks Trump is going to lift a finger to help him, he’s crazy. I suppose he may hope that Trump wins in November and somehow that saves him but it’s hard to see how they finesse his large civil fine. Maybe he figures some incredibly rich sugar daddy will rescue him?
He probably just plans to ride it out until he passes into the Mar-a-Lago Beach Club in the sky. It might just work.
Following up on a previous post, here’s Jamelle Bouie on Trump’s impunity”
At no point during his long career as a celebrity real estate mogul and businessman has Trump faced any meaningful consequences for his fraudulent, even criminal, behavior. He has operated, for decades, with a shield of impunity crafted from his shamelessness, his celebrity and his craven willingness to intimidate critics with litigation or even just the threat of litigation.
What is striking is the extent to which this shield of impunity has only been strengthened by the political and legal institutions of the United States. First and foremost among these is the Republican Party, which has never wasted a chance to thrust itself between Trump and the consequences of his actions. When it was the “Access Hollywood” tape, Republicans were there for Trump. They were there for Trump when it was his callous reaction to the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville. They were there for him when he was impeached for trying to coerce the government of Ukraine into supporting his political prospects, and they were there for him when he was impeached for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The much-vaunted guardrails of the Constitution have not done much to stop Trump, either. As I’ve discussed many times, we have the antiquated rules of the Constitution to thank for his elevation to the White House. And those same rules facilitated his effort to deny the will of the voters and retain his grasp on power.
The law has not been much better.
If you helped Trump try to overturn the results of the previous election, up to and including the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, then there’s a good chance you’ve had to face your day in court. One of Trump’s lawyers, Rudy Giuliani, was ordered to pay nearly $150 million in damages relating to efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election in Georgia, while another Trump lawyer, Sidney Powell, pleaded guilty to six misdemeanor charges relating to the effort to manufacture evidence of voter fraud in the same state. And this is to say nothing of the hundreds of rioters who have been charged and sentenced in federal criminal court.
So far, however, Trump has gotten away scot free. Yes, he has been indicted in federal cases related to Jan. 6 and his handling of classified documents. But the Supreme Court has in effect delayed his trial until the fall as it considers the absurd (but no less serious) question of absolute presidential immunity for criminal conduct in office. The judge in the documents case, Aileen Cannon, can’t claim to be tackling a serious constitutional issue. She seems, instead, to be looking for any avenue that allows her to dismiss the charges against the former president, who nominated her to the federal bench in 2020.
[…]
Over the weekend, the Republican pollster Frank Luntz issued a warning to Letitia James that seizing Trump’s properties would put him back in office. “If the New York attorney general starts to take his homes away, starts to seize his assets, it’s all going to be on camera,” he said on CNN. “Pundits are going to sit there and scream about this, ‘This man cannot be elected.’ You’re going to create the greatest victimhood of 2024, and you’re going to elect Donald Trump.”
This is exactly backward. It is the refusal to enforce the rules — enforce the law — against Trump that has put him in a position to win the White House a second time. It is the impunity, as much as if not more than the cultivated sense of victimhood, that anchors his political appeal.
Yes, indeed. Trump has never had to pay a price for any of his corrupt misdeeds and I don’t have a lot of optimism that he will despite attempting a coup, inciting an insurrection, stealing classified secrets and presiding over the most flagrantly corrupt administration in US history. And in the end, he may end up keeping all his money as well…
It’s the shamelessness that makes this possible and we need to figure out how to deal with that. To the extent that we had a social contract it has completely imploded.
He’s actually selling Bibles.
Did someone say Christian nationalism?
Update:
Amanda Marcotte on the whiner-in-chief:
As anyone who listens to him can attest, Donald Trump may be the most self-pitying person on planet Earth. Pretty much all the man does is whine and cry about how he’s the victim of an imaginary “witch hunt.” In reality, his list of transgressions is staggering. If he were any other person, he would have been sentenced to prison many times over with no real hope of release: Sexual assault. Decades of fraud. Attempted extortation of a foreign leader. Stealing classified documents. Flagrant acceptance of what very much looks like bribes. Attempting to overthrow democracy. Inciting a violent riot that got people killed. I’m sure readers can list a dozen more, but let’s get to the point: It’s absolutely bananas that Trump isn’t in prison yet.
On Monday, right before Trump finally got the tiniest taste of the justice he deserves for committing decades of criminal fraud in New York, he got bailed out by the state’s appeals court.
The concept of “privilege” is treated with great skepticism in conservative circles, and regarded by MAGA types like a made-up hoax. But no one alive proves the truth of the concept more than Donald Trump. He’s proudly ignorant. The only talent he bothered to learn is cheating the system so that you “win” without ever having to be good at stuff. The only real skill he’s developed in his 77 years is utter shamelessness, and frankly, it seems that might be more of a genetic defect than anything he’s worked at. The man can’t even bother to get good at golf, a sport he does seem to like, because he prefers to lie about it instead.
And yet, simply because he was born a white guy with inherited wealth, the world conspires to endlessly provide Trump with all the breaks. Not only is this spoiled brat shielded from the consequences of his actions, but his privilege continues to catapult him into a world of luxury and flattery, even as all he does is leave a trail of ruin in his wake.
The latest “are you kidding me” example: On Monday, right before Trump finally got the tiniest taste of the justice he deserves for committing decades of criminal fraud in New York, he got bailed out by the state’s appeals court. The judgment against Trump was nearly half a billion, due to a court case that demonstrated he wouldn’t have two nickels to rub together but for his lifetime of fraud. In order to appeal the case, Trump had to first put up the full amount as a bond, which is standard. So Trump went on Truth Social to petulantly claim he had $500 million in cash (even though his legal filings said otherwise). Then in a stunningly undeserved act of mercy, the appeals court reduced the amount of his bond to $175 million and gave Trump 10 more days to find a benefactor to pay it for him.
Once again, Trump gets bailed out by people he would happily feed to a pack of ravenous wolves for a penny. The unfairness of it is staggering. He’s not repentant. On the contrary, Trump famously spent the entire trial throwing childish tantrums in court, outraged at the very idea that he should be treated like ordinary people, who tend to face punishment when caught committing crimes. He was already let off easy for that, as well. Most people who make scenes and unsubtly threaten court staff would find themselves cooling off in jail for contempt, but the judge backed off in the face of the force field of rich white boy protection that has surrounded Trump his whole life.
Read the rest. It’s infuriating.
He’s a very, very lucky guy but he did lose the 2020 election and he have to ensure that he loses the 2024 election as well. Whether he’s ever held accountable beyond that gets more unlikely every day.
[C]onservatives should gratefully celebrate the greatest pro-family win
in a generation: overturning Roe v. Wade, a decision that for five decades made a
mockery of our Constitution and facilitated the deaths of tens of millions of unborn
children. But the Dobbs decision is just the beginning. Conservatives in the states
and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should
push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America. In
particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the
most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying
existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with
statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion. Conservatives should ardently
pursue these pro-life and pro-family policies while recognizing the many women
who find themselves in immensely difficult and often tragic situations and the heroism of every choice to become a mother. Alternative options to abortion, especially
adoption, should receive federal and state support.
In summary, the next President has a moral responsibility to lead the nation in
restoring a culture of life in America again.
In addition, the next conservative Administration should rescind President
Biden’s 2022 Gender Policy and refocus it on Women, Children, and Families
and revise the agency’s regulation on “Integrating Gender Equality and Female
Empowerment in USAID’s Program Cycle.”10 It should remove all references, examples, definitions, photos, and language on USAID websites, in agency publications
and policies, and in all agency contracts and grants that include the following
terms: “gender,” “gender equality,” “gender equity,” “gender diverse individuals,” “gender aware,” “gender sensitive,” etc. It should also remove references to
“abortion,” “reproductive health,” and “sexual and reproductive rights” and controversial sexual education materials
Respect for Life and Conscience. The CDC should eliminate programs and
projects that do not respect human life and conscience rights and that undermine
family formation. It should ensure that it is not promoting abortion as health care.
It should fund studies into the risks and complications of abortion and ensure that
it corrects and does not promote misinformation regarding the comparative health
and psychological benefits of childbirth versus the health and psychological risks
of intentionally taking a human life through abortion.
The CDC oversaw and funded the development and testing of the COVID-19
vaccines with aborted fetal cell lines, insensitive to the consciences of tens of
thousands to hundreds of thousands of people who objected to taking a vaccine with such a link to abortion. As evidenced by litigation across the country,
it is likely that thousands were fired unjustly because of the exercise of their
consciences or faith on this question, which could have been avoided with a
modicum of concern for this issue from CDC. There is never any justification for
ending a child’s life as part of research, and the research benefits from splicing or
growing aborted fetal cells and aborted baby body parts can easily be provided
by alternative sources. All such research should be prohibited as a matter of
law and policy.
CDC should update its public messaging about the unsurpassed effectiveness of
modern fertility awareness–based methods (FABMs) of family planning and stop
publishing communications that conflate such methods with the long-eclipsed
“rhythm” or “calendar” methods. CDC should fund studies exploring the evidence-based methods used in cutting-edge fertility awareness.
Data Collection. The CDC’s abortion surveillance and maternity mortality
reporting systems are woefully inadequate. CDC abortion data are reported by
states on a voluntary basis, and California, Maryland, and New Hampshire do not
submit abortion data at all. Accurate and reliable statistical data about abortion,
abortion survivors, and abortion-related maternal deaths are essential to timely,
reliable public health and policy analysis.
Because liberal states have now become sanctuaries for abortion tourism, HHS
should use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every
state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what
gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and
by what method. It should also ensure that statistics are separated by category:
spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child
(such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion. In addition, CDC should
require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every
instance of children being born alive after an abortion. Moreover, abortion should
be clearly defined as only those procedures that intentionally end an unborn child’s
life. Miscarriage management or standard ectopic pregnancy treatments should
never be conflated with abortion.
Comparisons between live births and abortion should be tracked across various demographic indicators to assess whether certain populations are targeted by
abortion providers and whether better prenatal physical, mental, and social care
improves infant outcomes
Those are just some random references. The document is obsessed with it.