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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Royalists are royalists

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 29, 2023

So are radical evangelicals

MSNBC ran the recording of “Why is this happening?” featuring Rachel Maddow over Thanksgiving weekend. Maddow spoke earlier in the month with host Chris Hayes about her new book, “Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism.” The rise of fascism in the U.S. now echoes the Depression-era movement by Americans who saw fascism as an attractive alternative to democracy.

During the discussion Hayes referenced the views of presidents Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt who felt there were elites destined to rule over others. In that sense they were not small-D democrats. He references debates at the time about what democracy is and whether it is good. Or whether rule by some group or some person is preferable. Our sense of consensus was perhaps an illusion, and disagreement was always there.

Hayes referencing FDR got me to look again at FDR’s speech decrying economic royalists.

“In 1776 we sought freedom from the tyranny of a political autocracy—from the 18th century royalists who held special privileges from the crown,” FDR said. He decried economic royalists who “carved new dynasties” to perpetuate their hegemony. But both FDR and Hayes view the struggle from within the confines of American history.

Royalists are royalists. The yearning to be led and the faith of others that they are destined to rule everyone else goes much deeper and is much older than the American Revolution. As old as feudalism. Perhaps DNA-level, metaphorically at least.

Having arrived in the South when a Baptist church on every streetcorner was (again metaphorically) still the norm, it was not hard to notice that conservative Christians especially are raised from a young age to yearn for the Savior’s return. “This, this is Christ, the King,” congregations will sing again this Christmas season in memory of his arrival. More radical congregations drink deep the eschatology of Revelations and look for signs of the Second Coming. The Bible promises His Church will co-rule the Earth with their King. But after two millennia, and especially as they see their cultural dominance slipping and a multicultural America rising, they’ve grown tired of waiting. They want to rule now.

This is the impulse behind the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) that we’ve discussed plenty. A friend pointed yesterday to an upcoming book on the subject, “American Evangelicals for Trump Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and the End Times.” The book examines “the three main ideas inspiring NCP leaders who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020—Dominion, Spiritual Warfare, and Eschatology (the End Times)—the book examines how these ideas have sustained the evangelicals close to U.S. political power in the Trump era.”

When you hear faith talk from Speaker Mike Johnson, this is where he’s coming from. The less religious on the right who have abandoned any pretense of democracy are secular royalists. They simply dream of a more feudal America in which they rule over you. Jesus-schmesus.

Denialists gonna deny

Published by Tom Sullivan on November 29, 2023

Hindsight won’t save them

The post above by Dave Weigel just resurfaced on Blue Sky. It reminds us how much in denial senior Republican officials were not simply about Donald Trump’s malevolence immediately after he lost the 2020 election, but before he won the nomination of his party in 2016. Party leaders thought by humoring this misanthropic sociopath Republicans might get what they wanted from him. In four years, they’d learned nothing.

“We don’t need someone who can think. We need someone with enough digits to hold a pen,” Grover Norquist told CPAC in 2012. Trump may have been a buffoon, but he could hold a sharpie. He delivered wish list item #1, a massive tax cut. It may cost them not only their party but their country. A growing list of them could lose their freedom along the way if he’s reelected.

Trump may be an idiot, a coward and a narcissist, but he has a feral instinct for survival they underestimated. Grossly.

Jared’s Latino “Outreach”

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

AKA: Jared’s flagrant pay-for-play to Univision

This shady new compact between Univision and Trump was orchestrated by Jared Kushner. Judd Legum reminds us of Jared’s strategy:

In 2021, Univision merged with Televisa, a Mexican media company. Televisa is known for its friendly coverage of Mexican political leaders, who have rewarded the company with favorable regulatory treatment and other benefits. The co-CEO of TelevisaUnivisio Mexico is Bernardo Gómez, a close associate of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. In 2019, Kushner met with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador at Gómez’s house. 

The Washington Post reported that Kushner “helped arrange the interview and was also in the room” during the interview at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Gómez was also present during the interview, along with two other TelevisaUnivisio executives, TelevisaUnivision CEO Wade Davis, and TelevisaUnivision co-CEO Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega. 

Trump praised the new owners during the Univision interview. “Look at the owners of Univision,” Trump said. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me.”

The Kushner media playbook

Kushner has a history of trading access to Trump for promises of favorable treatment. After the 2016 election, Kushner reportedly told a group of business executives that he “struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage.” Sinclair is the owner of many local affiliates in swing states. The agreement “gave [Sinclair] more access to Trump and the campaign” in exchange for a commitment that Sinclair would “broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary.”

Kushner boasted that Sinclair affiliates had a larger audience than CNN in states like Ohio. According to a Trump spokesperson, “the deal included the interviews running across every affiliate.” Sinclair did not deny that it had struck a deal with the Trump campaign but claimed it offered a similar arrangement with Hillary Clinton. There were no Clinton interviews aired on Sinclair stations during the campaign, however.

The Clinton campaign might not have been enthusiastic about granting special access to Sinclair because Sinclair is a conservative media company. An academic study found that “stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market.”

It seems these Univision wingnuts are happy to downplay Trumps draconian 2024 immigration policies and they’re worse than ever. If Latinos don’t know about it will they inadvertently support it? It’s too depressing to think about.

Yes, The Media Is The Problem

Published by digby on November 28, 2023

Kevin Drum is right:

Arin Dube thinks he knows the answer to an ongoing issue:

In other words, the answer is yes to both questions. People are concerned about their actual conditions and social media is making it worse.

But that’s wrong! The answer is no to both questions. The evidence is overwhelming that actual conditions are pretty good and that, generally speaking, people know it.

But— they are being overwhelmed by reports telling them how bad things are. And while it’s fashionable to blame everything like this on social media these days, Facebook isn’t at fault here. Fox News is, along with the rest of the conservative noise machine. You can’t get through a day of Fox News without hearing at least a dozen times that Joe Biden has wrecked the economy and produced ruinous inflation.

Why does it take so long to hammer this into people’s heads? We know people aren’t very upset about their personal situations because we’ve asked them. And we know that Fox News and the rest of the gang are infinitely more influential than Twitter or TikTok, especially among anyone over the age of 20. Come on, folks.

I know plenty of Democrats who are also bellyaching about the economy constantly even as they plan expensive vacations, buy new cars and shop like crazy. They also admit that they are doing great but are convinced that everyone else is in dire straits.

They aren’t getting this from Fox. They’re getting it from the other mainstream news sources like the networks, the newspapers and CNN/MSNBC. I watch them all the time and they relentlessly project doom and gloom in a circular feedback loop that tells them people are complaining about the economy so they must be unhappy so it’s important not to contradict something they don’t feel. But they “feel” this because of what the media is telling them.

It’s true that Fox presents the case in apocalyptic terms that you wouldn’t think any sane person would buy but we know that people who tune in to right wing media will believe anything. But the MSM isn’t all that much better. And it’s infected a whole lot of liberals and progressives too.

By the way:

It’s cheaper than it was under Trump.

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: