Skip to content

Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Winning The Meme War

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Rachel Bitecover, who always has sharp insights on what the electorate is thinking and how to move them had this today in her newsletter:

Throughout 2024 I plan on highlighting core grassroots organizations working on the frontlines of the Democratic Party’s messaging revolution.

Now, maybe you think the word “revolution” is too strong, but trust me, moving a party away from approaching voters with wonky policy appeals and achievements to focusing on making sure regular Americans know what the modern GOP has planned for them is no small reform. It requires a revolution of thought based on the cold, hard, realities of the American electorate i lay out in the book.

In my forthcoming book Hit Em’ Where it Hurts: How to Save Democracy By beating Republicans at their Own Game I highlight the other massive problem that hampers Democrats in terms of message distribution.

You can have the greatest messaging in the world but it doesn’t do shit if no one sees it and folks, as I keep using google trend data to show how little Americans care about news and politics, no one sees it.

This is the fundamental flaw behind the White House’s efforts to lift Bidenomics: paid ads, speeches, and social content will never replace the ability of the right wing echo chamber to propel things, even false things like Joe Biden has dementia, to top-of-mind awareness which is what Democrats would have to accomplish to make voters responsive to Biden’s record.

Yes, message distribution is a tough nut to crack because it requires money, lots and lots of it. Which is why I want to talk to you today about something I call digital direct mail, but what you likely call memes and gifs.

Direct mail is a staple expenditure for competitive campaigns and often voters in swing contests receive plenty of it even if you never do.

In the book I highlight how much better Republicans tend to do with direct mail because they understand the target, the average voter, knows next to nothing about civics, cares even less, and will give the same direct mail your team agonized over for hours about 3 seconds of a glance before it is tossed directly into the recycling bin.

Republicans understand voters and have constructed their direct mail to deliver the main message in just that one glance using very little copy.

A rigorous direct mail campaign, one that targets voters with the multiple contacts research says voters need to actually show up and vote, easily runs l into the tens of thousands. It is expensive to produce and then distribution direct mail through the USPS.

But when you strip down direct mail to its purpose, delivering a message, it is easy to see that the internet creates a massive message distribution advantage if campaigns choose to see it as such.

That is why I’m delighted to introduce you to the Freedom Writer’s Collaborative and one of their dedicated grassroots volunteers, marketing strategist Yvonne Brandon. Yvonne joins me to talk about the ready-to-use messaging toolkits created with the also awesome folks at DemCastUSA where the meme that leads of this post was pulled from.

I hope you will consider using these toolkits, and even more importantly, getting your friends, family, and followers to do the same.

Whether your network is 15 people, or 150, everyone is an influencer. FWC makes it easy.

Pass it on.

Sarcasm For Dummies

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Trump’s cognitive decline is obvious if you watch him in action.

You be the judge:

How about this? Is he lying or did he forget?

Those are just a few of the examples DeSantis’ war room posted on twitter. He’s always rambled at his rallies, we know that. But there’s something different.

I wrote about this for Salon a while back. Trump’s father had Alzheimers and he’s terrified that he’s going to get it too. I think his dad was about the same age as Trump when he started showing signs.

Biden has always rambled but because he looks old (maybe he should start wearing make-up like Trump does…) it’s being portrayed as a sign of cognitive decline. In truth he’s still sharp — and Trump isn’t.

This Economy Sure Sucks

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

JV Last flagged that in his newsletter today. He notes:

I do not know what a car wash manager does, though I’m sure it is a big job. And yes, $125k doesn’t get you what it used to. But also, this seems pretty good? An indicator that salaries are moving in this tight labor market?

Also, the average price of Thanksgiving dinner was down 4.5 percent this year.

And then there are the skeletons.

Did you see any giant, 12-foot-tall skeletons on people’s lawns before Halloween? I’ll answer for you: Yes, you did. They were everywhere. Rich towns, poor towns; trailers and mansions. The skeleton is called “Skelly” and it’s a creation of Home Depot and it became an absolute craze.

These skeletons cost $299.

Not to belabor the obvious, but if you are spending $299 on a plastic skeleton for your yard then you do not actually believe that we are in the midst of an economic calamity. Regardless of what you say on a survey.

He goes to great length to assure readers that he’s not saying that everyone is doing well but instead that most people are doing well. He writes, “people are saying that the economy is bad, yet they are acting like the economy is good” which I agree with.

And he points to a piece by Economist Claudia Sahm on this bizarre dichotomy in which she wrote:

The majority of Americans are better off financially now than they were before the pandemic. Full stop. Not every American, but the majority. That’s true across demographic and income groups. It’s in the aggregate and individual-level data:

-Millions more good jobs.
-Bigger paychecks, even after inflation.
-Consumer spending back on strong pre-Covid trend.
-Historic increases in wealth, including at the bottom.
-Lowest debt burdens on record.

It’s become a controversial view, and frankly, if you had asked me in April 2020—when unemployment hit almost 15%—that three and half years later, we would be in a better place than February 2020, I would have said no. But much has happened since then, and information that we now have from a wide range of families suggests that most got ahead; among them, some who had been falling behind for decades.

You should read the whole thing.

I’ll be honest. This is driving me nuts. I know that when you go to the store some things are more expensive than they used to be. Your grocery bill is higher. Clothes aren’t as cheap as they used to be But I guess that being an old person this just doesn’t strike me as all that surprising. It’s been happening my whole life. There was a time in my life when movie tickets were $3.00. I remember getting a Big Mac super value meal for about $2.50. Gas was a bout $1.30 a gallon. My first apartment was $125.00 a month.

Yes, I’ve been around a while. And, granted, I didn’t make much money in those days when I was young so it wasn’t like I was rolling in dough. And I know that inflation takes a real bite out of people who are on fixed incomes, like older people on social security. It’s not all rosy and great for everyone.

But honestly, I don’t think any of this is really about the economy. It’s just that it’s become a mantra that symbolizes the discontent with everything else whether you are upset with “woke” drag queen story hours or right wing militias or Donald Trump or COVID or just the general sense that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. There are legitimate reasons for people to be unhappy. But they are blaming their unhappiness on the economy and I don’t think that’s really the reason. It’s frustrating to try to deal with that.

Here They Go Again

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Remember this?

Did you notice how they all wailed like wounded banshees that he was a liar when he suggested that they wanted to go after Social Security and medicare?

Yeah…

They will never stop trying to cut the programs. Never. It is in their DNA. Now Trump will say something like, “were not going to cut it we’re going to make a great program! Everyone will have more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives, buhleeve me.” But they’ll cut it. That’s their Holy Grail.

And note heroes Romney and Manchin are pushing it, reminding us that the old school Republicans and centrist Democrats weren’t worth a damn either.

Remarkably unremarkable advice

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 28, 2023

Take a deep breath, center, and focus

George Takei shares what politics has taught him in 86 years:

A Democrat was in the White House when my family was sent to the internment camps in 1941. It was an egregious violation of our human and civil rights.

It would have been understandable if people like me said they’d never vote for a Democrat again, given what had been done to us.

But being a liberal, being a progressive, means being able to look past my own grievances and concerns and think of the greater good. It means working from within the Democratic party to make it better, even when it has betrayed its values.

I went on to campaign for Adlai Stevenson when I became an adult. I marched for civil rights and had the honor of meeting Dr. Martin Luther King. I fought for redress for my community and have spent my life ensuring that America understood that we could not betray our Constitution in such a way ever again.

Bill Clinton broke my heart when he signed DOMA into law. It was a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community. And I knew that we still had much work to do. But I voted for him again in 1996 despite my misgivings, because the alternative was far worse. And my obligation as a citizen was to help choose the best leader for it, not to check out by not voting out of anger or protest.

There is no leader who will make the decision you want her or him to make 100 percent of the time. Your vote is a tool of hope for a better world. Use it wisely, for it is precious. Use it for others, for they are in need of your support, too.

That advice would seem unremarkable if not for the fact that so many with less patience speak with louder voices. How many disagreements have you had with your spouse without moving out and filing for divorce?

Amend the Constitution

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 28, 2023

It’s time again

“Over the next year, the survival of democracy should be the central issue in American politics,” E.J. Dionne wrote yesterday. But there was more there. Beyond the threat posed by Donald Trump (and his public threats) and Trump judges’ rulings undermining voting rights, enshrining a definitive right to vote in the Constitution via amendment is necessary:

“Why do we let the state put barriers in front of people when they exercise their right to vote?” [Rick] Hasen asked in an interview. The director of UCLA’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, Hasen details his proposed amendment and the case for it in a forthcoming book, “A Real Right to Vote.” A carefully framed amendment, he argues, could simultaneously protect voter access and assure election integrity. He’d link automatic voter registration with a nationwide, universal, nondiscriminatory form of voter identification.

Polarization makes amending the Constitution nearly impossible these days, one reason Hasen addresses fears on both the left and the right. But whatever chances Hasen’s amendment has, it calls on Americans to address the most important question facing our democracy: Are we truly committed to being a democracy? We’ll decide that at the ballot box next November, but we’ll have a lot more work to do even if we get the initial answer right.

“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms” appears but once in the U.S. Constitution. Government providing for the “general welfare” appears twice (and is despised on the right). The right of (specific classes of) people to vote is referenced five times. Guess which one attracts the most attention and lobbying money? But the right of every citizen 21 and older to vote is not definitively spelled out.

The blurb for Hasen’s upcoming book says:

Throughout history, too many Americans have been disenfranchised or faced needless barriers to voting. Part of the blame falls on the Constitution, which does not contain an affirmative right to vote. The Supreme Court has made matters worse by failing to protect voting rights and limiting Congress’s ability to do so. The time has come for voters to take action and push for an amendment to the Constitution that would guarantee this right for all.

Drawing on troubling stories of state attempts to disenfranchise military voters, women, African Americans, students, former felons, Native Americans, and others, Richard Hasen argues that American democracy can and should do better in assuring that all eligible voters can cast a meaningful vote that will be fairly counted. He shows how a constitutional right to vote can deescalate voting wars between political parties that lead to endless rounds of litigation and undermine voter confidence in elections, and can safeguard democracy against dangerous attempts at election subversion like the one we witnessed in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election.

The path to a constitutional amendment is undoubtedly hard, especially in these polarized times. A Real Right to Vote explains what’s in it for conservatives who have resisted voting reform and reveals how the pursuit of an amendment can yield tangible dividends for democracy long before ratification.

It was over 70 years between Seneca Falls and ratification of Amendment XIX. Let’s not let that happen with securing voting rights for all citizens.

FairVote.org argues:

Enshrining an explicit right to vote in the Constitution would guarantee the voting rights of every citizen of voting age, ensure that every vote is counted correctly, and defend against attempts to effectively disenfranchise eligible voters. It would empower Congress to enact minimum electoral standards to guarantee a higher degree of legitimacy, inclusivity, and consistency across the nation, and give our courts the authority to keep politicians in check when they try to game the vote for partisan reasons.

https://www.threads.net/@maddowshow/post/C0LE-WmMO8o ; https://www.ajc.com/politics/several-republican-officials-vote-against-certifying-georgia-elections/XRALMPAOZFHABLVH7756GILWD4/

We know by their words and deeds that the GOP no longer believes in democracy, notwithstanding governing decisions decided by voting appears throughout the Constitution. Let them say so for the public record. Draft Hasen’s amendment and let them vote it down again and again, first in the Congress and then in the states. Until democracy wins.

Here’s one draft:

America’s Shooting Gallery

Published by digby on November 27, 2023

Three Palestinian college students were shot in Vermont this weekend by a long white man. They don’t know yet whether this shooting was a hate crime although it sure looks like a reasonable suspicion. There was no other apparent motivation.

From what we’re gathering, the shooter was a self-described libertarian with some possibly radical views but there isn’t any evidence yet of a particular interest in the crisis in Israel. His mother says he is religious and reads the Bible but he isn’t a far right evangelical as far as we know. At this point his motives are a mystery since he hasn’t said anything to the authorities.

The kids’ families are distraught, of course. They thought they were sending their boys to a safer place:

The uncle of a Palestinian college student who was shot on a Vermont street over the weekend said Monday that his nephew left his home in the West Bank to seek safety in the U.S. as he studied.

Now, that uncle says his family feels “betrayed” after Kinnan Abdalhamid was nearly killed as he walked on a street in Burlington, Vermont, with two of his friends on Saturday night.

“Kinnan grew up in the West Bank and we always thought that that could be more of a risk in terms of his safety and sending him here would be, you know, the right decision,” said Radi Tamimi. “We feel somehow betrayed in that decision here and, you know, we’re just trying to come to terms with everything.”

The men were wearing Keffiyeh headdresses and speaking Arabic after leaving an 8-year-old’s birthday party, family said.

Tamimi said he flew to Vermont from California to share his outrage over the ordeal, which had not been labeled a hate crime as of Monday despite pleas from Muslim advocacy groups to label it as such. Vermont Gov. Phil Scott called the attack a “heinous act of violence” in a tweet.

Cops say the suspected shooter, 48-year-old Jason J. Eaton, opened fire at Abdalhamid and his friends with a handgun. Cops said the victims told detectives that Eaton never spoke, but that he fled immediately.

He was arrested Sunday and had his first court appearance Monday, where he pleaded not guilty to a trio of attempted second-degree murder charges and was denied bail.

The victims were identified in an affidavit as Hisham Awartani, a Brown University student who was shot in the spine; Tahseen Aliahmad, a Trinity College student who was shot in the upper chest; and Abdalhamid, a Haverford College student who was shot in the buttocks.

The US is not a safe place. Gun violence can find anyone and those who have controversial views are always a target of someone. These kids didn’t deserve this. It’s a nightmare.

Dispatch From The Fraud Trial

Published by digby on November 27, 2023

Today his lawyers filed a response to the gag order and MSNBC’s Lisa Rubin wrote:

Trump’s team has filed its reply on the stay of the New York gag order. There is no response to, much less mention of, the court system’s documentation of the serious and extensive threats to Judge Engoron and his law clerk. https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=7vzJVI9/QEvXWmks3wQqTA==…

The sole new content concerns Engoron’s rapid rejection of Trump and the other defendants’ motion for a mistrial, despite the attorney general’s position that full briefing and argument would be helpful.

Team Trump’s implication is that the same unacceptable bias that drove Engoron to enter the gag order fueled his outright refusal to hear the mistrial motion.

So it’s another day and another grievance for Trump without even attempting to distance himself from or disclaim responsibility for the threat environment he created and then inflamed. Sound familiar?

It sure does. They aren’t even trying to make serious legal arguments in this case. This is now purely a political exercise.

Jack Smith brought up all these threats in New York in a filing in federal court on Thanksgiving regarding the gag order in DC. Presumably it was to bolster his argument that Trump’s words about people involved in these case can result in threats and intimidation by members of his cult. It included exhibits of hundreds of threatening, antisemitic and abusive texts and phone calls against those NY court personnel, particularly the clerk Trump personally targeted. As you can see by Trump’s thanksgiving post up at the top, he named her again the minute the gag order was stayed.

It will be interesting to see how all of this goes. There are many assurances from the legal beagles that the courts won’t be subject to such sophistry but I’m just going to wait to see how it unfolds. Things are going sideways far too often these days. (Also, I remember Bush v Gore….)

DeSantis’ Personal Quack

Published by digby on November 27, 2023

Dr. Joseph Ladapo is a charlatan and DeSantis doesn’t care

Ladopo unethically campaigning in New Hampshire

Ron DeSantis should be disqualified from ever holding office again on this basis alone:

Professors at the University of Florida had high hopes for Joseph Ladapo. But they quickly lost faith in him.

In 2021, the university was fast-tracking him into a tenured professorship as part of his appointment as Florida’s surgeon general. Ladapo, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pick for the state’s top medical official, dazzled them with his Harvard degree and work as a research professor at New York University and UCLA.

Professors had anticipated Ladapo would bring at least $600,000 in grant funding to his new appointment from his previous job at UCLA. That didn’t happen. They expected he would conduct research on internal medicine, as directed by his job letter. Instead, he edited science research manuscripts, gave a guest lecture for grad students and wrote a memoir about his vaccine skepticism.

Ladapo’s work at UF has generally escaped scrutiny. Yet interviews with more than two dozen current and former faculty members, state lawmakers and former agency heads, as well as reviews of internal university emails and reports, show that staff was worried that Ladapo had bypassed a crucial review process when he was rushed into his coveted tenured position and, moreover, was unsuited for the position.

His dual role at UF shows how DeSantis and state Republicans have used the flagship public university to further their political goals, with uncertain benefits for students and other faculty. The university also hired as its new president former Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse, who joins several former Republican lawmakers in leadership roles in Florida higher education, including former state Sen. Ray Rodrigues, who is chancellor of the university system.

Good old Ben Sasse, the supposed “moderate” Senator who quit and went to Florida where he’s now fully immersed in the corrupt practices of Ron DeSantis’ government.

The Florida Republicans loved Ladopo, even as he evaded all questions. Like most Republicans these days, they no doubt believe “that makes him smart.”

Ladapo’s two confirmations by the state Senate included committee hearings that allowed senators to ask him questions about his performance at both jobs. State Sen. Tina Polsky (D-Boca Raton) said she had asked Ladapo during last year’s confirmation about his performance at UF, and he did not give a clear response despite follow-up attempts.

“You know he never taught a class per se, and it was just his typical word salad answers for everything,” Polsky said. “It’s really frustrating.”

Polsky said in light of the intense criticism and controversy over Ladapo, she was not surprised to hear about his problems at UF.

“It was very par for the course,” Polsky said. “This guy is a charlatan, he’s not looking out for anyone’s health and he’s going to campaign with DeSantis.”

And how about this?

United Faculty of Florida-University of Florida President Meera Sitharam, the union head representing the institution, said she wondered why the science and public health communities have not investigated Ladapo for scientific fraud, amid a report from POLITICO that he personally altered the results of a Covid study at the state Department of Health.

After that April POLITICO report was published, Ladapo tweeted: “Fauci enthusiasts are terrified and will do anything to divert attention from the risks of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines— especially cardiac deaths. Truth will prevail.”

“For some reason the medical and public health communities aren’t outright investigating him … probably because he isn’t operating as a scientist or a faculty member,” Sitharam said in an email. “He is operating in the murky world where public health is held hostage to political fortunes, which is in part because public trust in health related institutions has been deeply eroded.”

Gee, I wonder why trust in public health has been eroded?

He also didn’t bother to raise the money they all thought he was going to bring nor has he shown up to do any teaching or research. Why bother? He’s got Ron and the Republicans on his side. What are they going to do about it? Meanwhile, between his two jobs, Surgeon General and tenured professor, he’s making close to half a mill a year. It’s a very sweet grift.

Another Stark Warning

Published by digby on November 27, 2023

If Trump manages to carry out his plans in a second term, it will be catastrophic

A professor of public policy sounds the alarm about Trump’s 2024 agenda:

I study government bureaucracies. This is not normally a key political issue. Right now, it is, and everyone should be paying attention.

Donald Trump, the former president and current candidate, puts it in apocalyptic terms: “Either the deep state destroys America or we destroy the deep state.” This is not an empty threat. He has a real and plausible plan to utterly transform American government. It will undermine the quality of that government and it will threaten our democracy.

A second Trump administration would be very different from the first. Mr. Trump’s blueprint for amassing power has been developed by a constellation of conservative organizations that surround him, led by the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025. This plan would elevate personal fealty to Mr. Trump as the central value in government employment, processes and institutions.

It has three major parts.

The first is to put Trump loyalists into appointment positions. Mr. Trump believed that “the resistance” to his presidency included his own appointees. Unlike in 2016, he now has a deep bench of loyalists. The Heritage Foundation and dozens of other Trump-aligned organizations are screening candidates to create 20,000 potential MAGA appointees. They will be placed in every agency across government, including the agencies responsible for protecting the environment, regulating workplace safety, collecting taxes, determining immigration policy, maintaining safety net programs, representing American interests overseas and ensuring the impartial rule of law.

These are not conservatives reluctantly serving Mr. Trump out of a sense of patriotic duty, but those enthusiastic about helping a twice-impeached president who tried to overturn the results of an election. An influx of appointees like this would come at a cost to the rest of us. Political science research that examines the effects of politicization on federal agencies shows that political appointees, especially inexperienced ones, are associated with lower performance in government and less responsiveness to the public and to Congress.

The second part of the Trump plan is to terrify career civil servants into submission. To do so, he would reimpose an executive order that he signed but never implemented at the end of his first administration. The Schedule F order would allow him to convert many of these officials into political appointees.

Schedule F would be the most profound change to the civil service system since its creation in 1883. Presidents can currently fill about 4,000 political appointment positions at the federal level. This already makes the United States an outlier among similar democracies, in terms of the degree of politicization of the government. The authors of Schedule F have suggested it would be used to turn another 50,000 officials — with deep experience of how to run every major federal program we rely on — into appointees. Other Republican presidential candidates have also pledged to use Schedule F aggressively. Ron DeSantis, for example, promised that as president he would “start slitting throats on Day 1.”

Schedule F would be a catastrophe for government performance. Merit-based government personnel systems perform better than more politicized bureaucracies. Under the first Trump administration, career officials were more likely to quit when sidelined by political appointees.

Schedule F would also damage democracy. The framers included a requirement, in the Constitution itself, that public officials swear an oath of loyalty to the Constitution, a reminder to public employees that their deepest loyalty is to something greater than whoever occupies the White House or Congress. By using Schedule F to demand personal loyalty, Mr. Trump would make it harder for them to keep that oath.

When he was president, his administration frequently targeted officials for abuse, denial of promotions or investigations for their perceived disloyalty. In a second administration, he would simply fire them. Trump loyalists reportedly have lists ready of civil servants who will be fired because they were not deemed cooperative enough during his first term.

The third part of Mr. Trump’s authoritarian blueprint is to create a legal framework that would allow him to use government resources to protect himself, attack his political enemies and force through his policy goals without congressional approval. Internal government lawyers can block illegal or unconstitutional actions. Reporters for The New York Times have uncovered a plan to place Trump loyalists in those key positions.

This is not about conservatism. Mr. Trump grew disillusioned with conservative Federalist Society lawyers, despite drawing on them to stock his judicial nominations. It is about finding lawyers willing to create a legal rationale for his authoritarian impulses. Examples from Mr. Trump’s time in office include Mark Paoletta, the former general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, who approved Mr. Trump’s illegal withholding of aid to Ukraine. Or Jeffery Clark, who almost became Mr. Trump’s acting attorney general when his superiors refused to advance Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

[…]

Mr. Clark is now under indictment for a “criminal attempt to communicate false statements and writings” to Georgia state officials. But he continues to lay the groundwork for a second Trump term. He has made the case for the president using military forces for domestic law enforcement. He has also written a legal analysis arguing that “the U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” while Mr. Paoletta told The Times, “I believe a president doesn’t need to be so hands-off with the D.O.J.” If government lawyers will not defend norms of Justice Department independence, Mr. Trump will use the department to shield himself from legal accountability and to pursue his enemies.

We sometimes think of democracy as merely the act of voting. But the operation of government is also democracy in action, a measure of how well the social contract between the citizen and the state is being kept. When values like transparency, legality, honesty, due process, fealty to the Constitution and competence are threatened in government offices, so too is our democracy. These democratic values would be eviscerated if Mr. Trump returns to power with an army of loyalists applying novel legal theories and imposing a political code of silence on potential holdouts.

I will just add that Paoletta is a Federalist Society made man. He’s in that picture up top with Leonard Leo, the Godfather. and Clarence Thomas. I don’t think Trump will get any trouble from the Federalist Society .