This is from Axios the font of all beltway CW. It’s about time:
Republicans are hammering “Joe Biden’s America” as a land of rising violent crime, surging immigration and out of control inflation, but there’s just one problem: the numbers are starting to move in the opposite direction.
The big picture: With 2024 around the corner, the U.S. is making measurable progress in the areas where Biden has been most vulnerable to GOP attacks.
Violent crime surged in U.S. cities during the pandemic and ranked as a top concern for voters in the 2022 midterms.
Homicides were down 9% in the first half of this year over the same period last year, according to a study of 37 major cities from the Council on Criminal Justice.
State of play: Violent crime rates are generally down across the board, thought they’re still higher than 2019 levels.
Meanwhile, illegal border crossings dropped to the lowest level in over two years in June, the first full month under Biden’s new, restrictive asylum rule, which makes it much harder to attain asylum.
That policy replaced a pandemic-era policy enabling rapid expulsion of migrants, and was sharply criticized by immigration advocates and some Democrats as something out of former President Trump’s playbook For now, though, it seems to have helped stave off an expected summer spike in migrants crossing the southern border.
What to watch:A pending court ruling may threaten the relative calm at the border. And even with border numbers plummeting, House Republicans have pushed forward with their effort to impeach Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas over the “illegal immigration crisis.”
Arguably the biggest factordriving voter discontent has been inflation, which made consumers feel lousy about the Biden economy, despite otherwise favorable economic and job market conditions.
Consumer sentiment, as measured by a long-running survey conducted by the University of Michigan, is the highest in two years — a jump “largely attributed to the continued slowdown inflation along with stability in labor markets.”
JUST WHEN YOU thought there couldn’t possibly be anymore dog whistles embedded in the Jason Aldean“Try That in a Small Town” saga, an intrepid, sharp-eyed TikTok user has potentially picked out one more.
Amazingly, this incident doesn’t involve the song itself, or even its controversial video — part of which was reportedly filmed outside a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, the site of a 1933 lynching (and features a surprising amount of footage from Canada). Rather, it involves a promotional video shared on TikTok. It’s a largely innocuous lyric video with a newspaper theme, but as TikTok user Danny Collins discovered, there’s an actual old newspaper clipping featured in the video — and it’s tied to a Jim Crow-era story about a writer who was harassed for fighting segregation and white supremacy.
The clipping in question appears around the eight second mark of Aldean’s TikTok. Collins was able to trace it back to an Aug. 30, 1956 article in The Petal Paper, a weekly paper out of Petal, Mississippi (an actual small town, unlike, say, Macon, Georgia, where Aldean grew up). The Petal Paper was run by Percy Dale East, who frequently delivered satirical broadsides against segregation, racism, and white supremacy. (Rolling Stone was able to confirm Collins’ findings.)
The clipping featured in Aldean’s TikTok refers to the most famous incident in The Petal Paper’s history: In March 1956, East published a full-page ad calling out the White Citizens Council, a network of white supremacist groups that had formed a few years prior. The ad (which you can see on the Smithsonian website) featured a caricature of a mule and “promoted” an upcoming “Glorious Citizens Clan” meeting, where attendees were promised the “freedom” to yell racist slurs and “be superior without brain, character, or principle!”
The satirical ad actually went proto-viral, with East republishing it a few times himself and licensing it to papers not just in the U.S., but across the world. There was, of course, a lot of backlash, too — and the Aug. 30, 1956 clipping featured in Aldean’s TikTok finds East responding to some it.
Specifically, East addressed the the allegation that he was serving as “the local mouthpiece” for groups like the NAACP, the Republican Party (this is pre-Southern Strategy realignment), or “other monied interests.” East even offered up a $1,000 reward to anyone who could prove he had any ties to any groups (outside of the Methodist Church, “to which I was at one time a member,” he joked), stating, “I do not represent anything or anyone except myself.”
Below that notice, East printed a letter exchange with a man named Don Gross, who said he worked as a public relations consultant for the NAACP. Gross praised East for running the ad, but dryly noted: “I hope I am not congratulating a dead man. This must have taken courage and I hope you are still with us.”
n response, East offered up a few more details about how the people of Petal had responded to his satirical ad, saying he and his wife received numerous threatening calls filled with racist language. He also said he’d lost over 200 subscriptions and suggested there was “something resembling an organized effort to stop advertising with my paper.” (This part of the clipping is not featured in Aldean’s TikTok.)
A rep for Aldean did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment regarding how the Petal Paper clipping wound up in the country star’s TikTok video.
Aldean hasrejected the interpretation of “Try That in a Small Town” as pro vigilante or “pro-lynching.” Instead, the musician released a statement saying he believes the song “refers the feeling of a community that I had growing up, where we took care of our neighbors, regardless of differences of background or belief.
Dr. Dre on the radio, The Matrix on the big screen, The Sopranos on TV: The year 1999 was wonderful for many reasons, including economic ones.
That year, the median household income rose to a record level, a watermark that held for nearly two decades. (The average American family was poorer when Donald Trump was running for office than when Bill Clinton left office.) Wages were growing across the board—all kinds of workers were getting consistent raises. Productivity growth was strong. Wealth inequality was holding steady and far lower than it is today. The poverty rate hit its lowest point in years.
I could go on and on with the hard statistics: The share of workers with a college degree was climbing. The homeownership rate was booming. The stock market, booming. Consumer confidence was the highest it has ever been. The share of people employed was the highest it has ever been. Investor optimism was the highest it has ever been. The share of Americans saying the country was going in the right direction—also the highest it has ever been.
Things just felt like they were going well and getting better. High-quality televisions were becoming ubiquitous; cellphones beginning to replace pagers. The share of homes with a computer and an internet hookup was exploding, and the web was promising to change everything.
Now: Earwormy TikTok blips on the radio, warmed-over superheroes on the big screen (at least until Barbenheimer), Peak TV drowning us in okay content: 2023 is blah for many reasons. Roughly half the country thinks we’re in a recession or about to be in one. Consumer confidence is down, as is investor sentiment. Inflation is weighing on American families.
But I’m here to tell you that this is the best economy ever. Really. This year’s economy has now outpaced that of 1999, the previous best on record. It is growing more equitably than it has in years. American families are more financially secure and wealthier than they ever have been. Things are going great, I swear.
The labor market is flourishing, and not just for rich folks for once. The unemployment rate is at its lowest level in 60 years—jobs are more plentiful than they have been in a generation. Competition for workers has not only pushed earnings up—median household income is sitting near its brand-new high, one that is $6,000 higher than it was in the late 1990s. It has also pushed earnings up more for the lowest-paid workers than the highest-paid workers. The past three years have erased a quarter of the run-up in wage inequality created in the past four decades. Real wages for the lowest-paid workers are growing faster than they have since the 1960s. The country’s wage structure is getting more equal, not less.
Arindrajit Dube, a labor economist studying this “unexpected” phenomenon, told me that the country’s “job ladder” had broken about 20 years ago: Workers in crappy jobs found themselves stuck in those crappy jobs, unable to move up. “Starting around 2018 or 2019, you start to see the tight labor market bring back some health and dynamism,” he told me. “People are making more changes. The Great Resignation, the Great Reshuffle, whatever you want to call it—it means the market is working better. And it’s allowing people to leave jobs that are really bad.” As a result, workers report feeling more satisfied with their jobs now than at any point since the 1980s, and 4 million more people have full-time jobs (and 1.6 million fewer people have part-time jobs) than before the pandemic.
Improvements in earnings, along with the stimulus payments the government made during the pandemic, have helped lift millions of families out of poverty. The child-poverty rate has fallen from 12.5 percent to just 5.2 percent over the past three years. That’s the lowest level ever recorded. The share of people living in deep poverty and near-poverty has declined, too, and food insecurity is at its lowest-ever rate.
Bigger paychecks are helping middle-class families buy houses and build wealth. The homeownership rate was increasing faster than it ever had, until interest rates spiked a year ago; families in the lower half of the income distribution are more likely to own their homes now than at any point since the real-estate bubble burst in 2006. Most Millennials own property; the generation is starting to catch up with Gen Xers and Boomers in terms of net worth and household formation.
The economy has also delivered extraordinary gains for Black Americans. The jobless rate for Black workers is near a historic low, and the gap between the unemployment rate for white workers and Black workers is the smallest it has ever been. Black workers’ earnings are increasing rapidly too.
Measured in all sorts of more esoteric ways, American families are doing the best they ever have. The delinquency rate on loans is the lowest it has ever been. Real disposable income is the highest it has ever been. The personal-bankruptcy rate is at an all-time low.
So we have to ask: Why aren’t we partying like it’s 1999?
She points out that inflation has freaked people out and they aren’t seeing the lowering prices just yet. And then she points this out which I haven’t thought of before:
Then there is something I like to call the Wrong-Apartment Problem. The country’s big cities have added far too few housing units over the past few decades; now even rural areas have shortages. By one estimate, roughly half of Americans would live somewhere different if supply met demand; New York would be eight times as big as it is now, and San Francisco five times as big. Renters spend a larger share of their income on housing than they did in 1999, and rents have grown by 135 percent, whereas average incomes have grown just 77 percent. The country has an affordability crisis, with health care, child care, and rent eating up huge shares of family budgets.
Yet these statistics still underplay just how bad the situation is. People don’t spend what they can’t afford, and pretty much nobody can afford what they want anymore. Yes, we have more income, more disposable cash, and a better standard of living than at any other point in our history. But millions of us can’t live in the neighborhoods we want. We’re stuck in too-small, too-far-away accommodations, giving up on the dream of having a second bathroom or a third kid. This is why you get all the social-media nostalgia for the economic conditions of the 1950s, when many Americans still lacked indoor plumbing, but at least could live in Brooklyn or Somerville or San Francisco on a reasonable salary. We’re all stuck in the Wrong Apartment.
I think that’s huge. I don’t know how people are managing this problem in these populated areas. It’s very daunting.
She goes on to point out that inequality is still a big problem and I have to say that the profligate spending of the super rich is enough to make anyone feel depressed. These people have way too much money. And needless to say the political situation in this country sucks. That we’re even thinking of putting that orange monster back in the White House is enough to drive you to drink.
But the housing problem for average people is a major problem in the cities and all along the coasts and if it doesn’t right itself I’m not sure what’s going to happen.
A reelected Donald Trump could pull several levers to try and pare back federal policies aimed at speeding the transition to electric vehicles.
Why it matters: EVs are becoming more mainstream, but they’re still a small share of U.S. car sales, and President Joe Biden has been keen to juice deployment.
Catch up fast: Trump, the GOP frontrunner, released a video late last week that, among other things, bashed EV costs. He vowed to reverse what he called a “ridiculous Green New Deal crusade.”
Trump’s seeking auto workers’ votes in competitive states like Michigan, at a time when the United Auto Workers leadership is skittish about EVs.
The big picture: It’s hard to see the votes for outright repealing the Democrats’ climate law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, even if Republicans have both chambers of Congress after 2024.
Yes, but: Trump would hardly be powerless.
Zoom in: His campaign released a list of proposals alongside the video. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but let’s explore some of those and other ways he could alter policy.
Trump’s vowing to kill the EPA’s brewing tailpipe CO2 emissions rules. The agency sees bringing EVs to 67% of U.S. light-duty sales by 2032.
Reversing a completed rule is time-consuming and legally fraught. One wrinkle: if the final rule was still tied up in court when Trump took office, his administration could decline to defend it.
A Trump-led Treasury Department could take a more restrictive view of how many EV models qualify for consumer purchase subsidies up to $7,500.
The climate law tethers tax credits to key battery materials sourced, processed or recycled domestically or from free-trade partners. But Treasury has wiggle room in the interpretation.
The Biden administration has also been crafting mineral-specific trade agreements with some countries that could be altered.
A Trump administration could make it harder to access funding streams and manufacturing incentives in the climate and infrastructure laws.
For instance, the infrastructure law has $7.5 billion for building out EV charging networks, but the money is doled out over multiple years.
State of play: Trump’s policy agenda comes as rapid EV growth in recent years is showing signs of slowing.
EVs were 7.2% of U.S. sales in Q2, down very slightly from Q1, per Cox Automotive.
The bottom line: The move toward EVs is too far along to kill as automakers embracing them commit billions of dollars and expand their lineups. But Trump could alter how fast the tech is adopted.
This is a man who ran for president whining about low flow toilets and complaining that it takes too long to wash the Tres Semme out of his hair in the shower. (He actually just complained about the shower flow but we all know what the problem is don’t we?) He is going to do everything he can to exacerbate climate change because he believes that he’s the worlds greatest environmentalist because he says he wants clean air and water. In fact, he brags that during his term we had the cleanest air and water in the history of the world.
This cannot happen. We re in a state of crisis which this summer’s heat domes are showing in living color. People need to sober up and understand that electing tee-totling moron because we’d liketo have a beer with them or because they are the best insult comics is going to kill life on this planet.
It appears that COVID is not going to be a big issue in the 2024 election and perhaps we should be grateful for that. It was only three years ago that the entire world was in a health crisis the likes of which we hadn’t seen in over a hundred years. In July of 2020 tens of thousands of Americans were dying each day in the first wave of a deadly pandemic and President Donald Trump was all over television alternately telling the people that they could cure themselves with unapproved drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin or telling them that the virus was going away and the economy needed to just open up and carry on as usual. It was a terrifying time and the trauma it caused has been very deep. 1.1 million people have died from COVID in the U.S. so far leaving many more family members and friends dealing with the grief and the loss.
It’s only recently that it has felt like the country is getting back to normal with the economy fully recovering and a sense of freedom in our business and social interactions. But we may have changed permanently in some respects and not necessarily for the better. The conspiracy theories that sprang up during the pandemic about vaccines and masks and a sense of mistrust in public health and science in general are having a pernicious effect on our society in ways that are going to test us in the future especially now that they have become part of the right’s tribal identity.
It’s odd that the main purveyor of vaccine misinformation today isn’t a Republican, it’s the son of one of the most beloved Democrats of the 20th century, Robert F. Kennedy. RFK Jr’s perverse Democratic primary campaign is based almost entirely on the same anti-science, anti-government conspiracy theories that are being pushed by Republicans. Slick operators like Steve Bannon are advocating for Kennedy and he’s been featured all over right wing media for months now. Congressional Republicans even called him before congress to testify that his views have been censored for political reasons. (It was quite the show.) And it’s mostly Republicans who are financing his campaign.
Kennedy is not a serious candidate and basically serves as a performance artist for the entertainment of the right wing which thinks it’s owning the libs by promoting him. But the COVID politics of 2020 just aren’t playing in the GOP primary and it’s highly unlikely to be a big issue in the general election.
Florida Gov. DeSantis’s primary campaign is floundering for many reasons but one of them is his bet that he could successfully attack Donald Trump from the right on his pandemic response. He staked a good bit of his reputation and image on the fact that he supposedly ran the best COVID response of any state by ignoring the Trump administration’s allegedly draconian lockdown policies. The ongoing anger among Republicans over that was going to show him to be more Manly than MAGA but it isn’t working out that way.
Six different Republican operatives, campaign officials, and pollsters described or shared with Rolling Stone internal data and surveys they’d conducted or reviewed last and this year…Across the board in the surveys, Covid-related policy — including vaccines and vaccine mandates — did not rank as an item of high concern for voters. That held true even when voters were specifically given the option of Covid policy when asked about their concerns.
DeSantis’ rise was predicated on his alleged refusal to order lockdowns and his defiance against vaccine mandates. But he’s gone full-blown anti-vaxx since then. As recently as December he requested that the Supreme Court of Florida empanel a grand jury investigation “to investigate crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the Covid-19 vaccine.” That’s right — “crimes and wrongdoing.”
And his campaign has hit Trump hard for the one thing he did right in his COVID response which was to sign off on operation Warp Speed to develop the vaccines as quickly as possible. Ironically, Trump isn’t allowed to take credit for that accomplishment because his followers are anti-vaxx so he’s had to allow DeSantis to attack him for it. The good news for Trump is that nobody cares.
The rest of the country should care, however. Both of these men are world class phonies when it comes to their leadership during the pandemic. They each claim they were heroes for forcing businesses to open up when the truth is they were never really closed down. It’s only in the fevered minds of those intent upon seeing the pandemic as some kind of political act, that any of the mitigation efforts were draconian assaults on our individual freedoms.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber hosted a special recently revisiting Trump’s COVID response based upon his taped interviews with Bob Woodward, who released them with a book called “The Trump Tapes.” Listening to the excerpts of the interviews it became clear once again just how irresponsible and reckless Trump was in his handling of the crisis. It was all about how it was affecting his re-election campaign. In an echo of his refusing to concede the election despite all the legitimate legal election experts telling him that he’d lost, he also ignored all the science and medical experts who informed that COVID was going to kill vast numbers of people unless he mustered a rapid federal response. Trump just refuses to listen to anyone or hear anything he doesn’t want to hear.
Perhaps the most telling moment of the tapes is when Woodward asks him if he considered the crisis his greatest test of leadership and he instantly replied, “no!” He was wrong. It was. And he failed.
Likewise Ron Desantis’ vaunted response was also a miserable failure. The NY Times analyzed the data on his state’s results and they are not good. DeSantis pushed for vaccinations for people 65 and older early on but started going the other way once they were approved for younger people and then instituted a crusade against mandates for health workers and cruise ship employees effectively undermining the accepted public health approach to a pandemic. Florida ended up with many fewer vaccinated people when the big Delta wave hit and the consequences were severe:
Floridians died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than residents of almost any other state during the Delta wave, according to the Times analysis. With less than 7 percent of the nation’s population, Florida accounted for 14 percent of deaths between the start of July and the end of October.
He too was planning for his presidential campaign and wanted to be on the side of the emerging anti-vaxx sentiments on the right, no matter how many people had to die.
Both of these men were serving as executive leaders during a time of great crisis and peril. And they both cravenly and cynically put their political ambitions ahead of their duty to protect American citizens. Whatever promises they make about the future we already know who they are and what they will do as leaders. They failed their test and disqualified themselves for high office ever in the future.
Tim Miller with a word for the pundits who think Tim Scott or Nikki Haley are running in a real primary:
THERE’S ANOTHER WORLD out there—one that’s better than ours. In this world there are two healthy political parties waging vigorous primary campaigns with vibrant debates between factions and these factions have genuine disagreements over what policies will best serve our fellow Americans. I don’t begrudge anyone aspiring to build such a world. I don’t even begrudge those who have chosen to live in a blissful state of disreality and disconnect from politics entirely, rather than face the Super Not Great world we do live in.
But I would expect professional political commentators, and donors shelling out millions in campaign cash, and the political strategists receiving that cash, to live in the real world.
Alas this is not the case. Instead we have a heavily capitalized right-wing ecosystem that exists to prop up an imaginary Republican presidential primary so that the participants can feel better about their party identification. This way they can do business with Republican politicians or chew the fat at the club without feeling icky at having to admit that their Grand Old Party has become something dark.
In this fake primary there are several candidates using creative strategies to figure out how to make it onto a debate stage. Yet should they succeed, they do not plan to use that stage to directly challenge the person beating them by 50 points in the polls. (If he even bothers to show up.) Some people in this fantasy world are even talking about Rick Scott running for president. Yes that Rick Scott! The one with the inverted endo- and exoskeletons.
But most absurdly, the “professionals” who are running these fantasy campaigns are haughtily dismissing Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the few candidates who is participating in the real primary since he has actual support among the MAGA Republicans who will decide the winner.
“Vivek is like the fajitas that go by you at the restaurant,” one advisor on a rival campaign told Semafor. “They make noise, look exciting, and come on the fun plate. But if you order it, it’s too much, too annoying to assemble, and you wish you just ordered tacos.”
Another advisor on a rival campaign noted that Ramaswamy has “barely raised any money outside of what he donated himself,” and predicted the 37-year-old’s campaign “will fizzle out”—adding he’d ultimately see success in the form of “increased book sales and inflows into his investment products.”
First things first: If I were a candidate I would immediately fire anyone who revealed themselves to be too lazy to assemble fajitas. But moreover, this analysis is just totally wrong. And unless these anonymous hacks work for Trump or DeSantis, the fajita man they are dismissing is currently kicking their ass.
Nikki Haley’s Super PAC put this nonsense on the record in a memo to donors saying “Let’s be honest, there’s only four candidates who can win the nomination: Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Tim Scott.”
Are you sure you want us to be honest, Mark Harris, the lead strategist for the Haley PAC? Because I suspect you can’t handle the actual truth. But here goes.
If there really are only four candidates who can win this primary, then Nikki Haley sure as hell isn’t one of them.
THERE ARE TWO REASONS these strategists can pull the wool over donors’ eyes with these phony arguments:
(1) All parties involved in this exchange deeply wish that the fantasy world existed.
(2) They are hermetically sealed off from what is happening in the real primary.
Do you think Mark Harris or the big donors funding Haley have ever been to a Trump rally? Do you think they watch Greg Kelly Reports? Do you think they have any close friends or colleagues who genuinely believe Joe Biden is a fraudulent president? Because I don’t. And those are the people in the real primary.
As I wrote last week in a profile of Candace Owens, in the media outlets consumed by the MAGA voters who will decide the nominee, candidates like Haley are just apparitions. They’re barely even talked about.
The real campaign among actual voters is essentially between Trump and DeSantis, and right now it’s a blowout. Other than that, these voters are most intrigued by two long-shot options—Vivek and RFK Jr. In the real primary the competition is intense. But Scott, Haley, Youngkin, Will Hurd, and the rest aren’t involved.
For example, last week the MAGA web was on fire debating some highly charged fissures in the real primary. First there was a rare cogent point from the frontrunner in a straight-to-camera video in which he mocked DeSantis for changing the pronunciation of his name to “Dee-sanctus” in the middle of the campaign (something we have also noticed).
Then there was the influencer beef where one Trump supporter called former Trump lawyer and now DeSantistan Jenna Ellis a “stupid cow” and a “thundercunt.” There was also a fiery back and forth over Daily Wire host Michael Knowles’s claim that DeSantis surrogates were harming their candidate’s cause by being too mean to poor Mr. Trump. Oh, and there was a debate over the merits of a new national poll that showed Vivek and “Rod” tied for second place. (The DeSantis team convincingly argues the poll was put out by grifters, though that doesn’t really explain another poll showing Vivek closing fast.)
That’s the real primary. Tainted polls, vile accusations, Vivekmentum, and unidirectional Trump/DeSantis slap fights.
The voters who are consuming that information will be the ones who decide if Donald Trump is nominated by this party for a third time. If some unanticipated “event” upsets the apple cart (if, for example, there is an artery-clogging, well-done cheeseburger of destiny between now and Iowa), these voters still won’t turn to the candidate in a half-zip sweater whom Karl Rove is trying to anoint at a confab in Sun Valley.
There are honest, well-intentioned reasons to run for president without expecting to win. Chris Christie seems to be doing it because he wants to kick Trump’s ass and eat Hardee’s and he’s all out of Hardee’s. Good on ’im. In 1996, Steve Forbes wanted to raise the salience of the flat tax—not my cup of tea, but it was a good-faith effort on behalf of an issue. In 1984, Jesse Jackson wanted to show that his “Rainbow Coalition” had a real constituency and he succeeded.
But that’s not what any of the non-Christie pretenders are doing this time. They are trying to convince the world (and themselves) that once GOP voters get serious in a few months things will go back to normal. They’ll keep on pretending that this is a normal party having a normal primary right up until the moment they are forced to get in line behind the most abnormal, abominable major-party nominee in our nation’s history.
Here’s the reality: The only *serious* people involved in this primary are the ones who see their fantasy for what it is.
Nearly every conversation, memo, and piece of analysis that comes from the donor-class fantasy campaign isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. And everyone except the consultants building a new pool house off their McMansion would be better served if the money going to write those memos were instead redirected to food-insecure youth who have been forced to become vegetarians.
And to be really honest, the primary is over. Donald Trump has been the presumptive nominee since January 21, 2021. The rest of it is really nothing more than a death watch.
A Gallup poll relased this month finds shifts in what Americans find “extremely” or “very important” in their lives.
In a headline, “America used to have 2 religions: God and money. Only one of them is recruiting followers, and it’s not Jesus,” Forbes’ Chloe Berger reports:
Decades ago, money was listed as extremely important to 67% of respondents, whereas religion was only slightly less esteemed, at 65%. Now, money has surged in popularity, described as extremely important to 79% of those surveyed. Religion, on the other hand, has lost traction, as only 58% regarded it as a very important part of their lives.
Money increased in value across the board, and was slightly more important for younger generations than baby boomers (increasing by 14% for those aged 18 to 34 and 35 to 54, and only by 10% for those 55 and older).
Despite “In God We Trust” appearing on the coins, it’s buying power, not spiritual power, that average Americans value most these days.
Yet the religion was more part of the hegemony not all that long ago, as in 1972 and even the early 1990s, 90% of adults in the U.S. identified as Christains, a number that’s since dwindled to 64%, per Pew. While dwindling in numbers, some extremely religious individuals have exerted a demonstrable amount of power recently, as Evangelists gain speed and push anti-abortion and anti-trans laws that are not largely reflective of the nation’s beliefs.
John Lennon, 25 in 1966, told interviewer and friend Maureen Cleave, “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right.” A half century later, Gallup seems to confirm Lennon’s prediction.
Lennon followed up by saying, “We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
All of us are in a union. The Union of American Taxpayers. Republicans want to take away our benefits the way entertainment companies want to shortchange the writers, actors and crew who create their products.
Of course, it’s important to remember that they are completely shameless and will have no problem screaming “liar!” at anyone who suggests they agreed not to cut social security and medicare. But it will still be useful to have this to point out to voters.
And, by the way, this fatuous “we’re only cutting it for the young” has never worked in the past and it won’t work in the future. The old people have kids and grand kids to protect and the young aren’t that stupid.
“Everybody in this business is not rich,” said comedian Leslie Jones in an epic Twitter rant about the SAG-AFTRA strike. She was 47 before she made any money in show business. People like her are striking for the 87% of their members who make less than $26,000 per year.
If you comment fuck shit on my post I’m gonna block you no questions ask! I’m tired of insensitive pieces of shit with a fucked up opinion. I don’t want your follow. Respectfully go fuck yourself!! LET THE BLOCKING BEGIN!! I STAND WITH MY @sagaftra PEERS!! pic.twitter.com/rdnYYkMllX
Why are wealthier SAG-AFTRA members like Jones on the picket line? To defend co-workers who have not made it yet. Because they’ve been there. Because they’ve made it doesn’t mean they will leave their fellow members behind. But that’s what Republicans think seniors on Social Security will do to younger workers who have not yet reached retirement age.
It’s the same dynamic. I’m alright, Jack.
I’m All Right, Jack is the title of a 1959 British comedy featuring Ian Carmichael and Peter Sellers. The plot involves a union on strike and management shenanigans. The title comes from an expression Americans like myself first heard in the 1973 Pink Floyd song, “Money.” As Wikipedia tells it:
“I’m alright, Jack” is a British expression used to describe people who act only in their own best interests, even if providing assistance to others would take minimal to no effort on their behalf. It carries a negative connotation, and is rarely used to describe the person saying it.
The phrase is believed to have originated among Royal Navy sailors; when a ladder was slung over the side of a ship, the last sailor to climb on board would say, “I’m alright Jack, pull up the ladder.” The latter half of the phrase, typically used as “pulling up the ladder behind oneself”, has been used to call out unfairness and hypocrisy on the part of those who are seen to have benefitted from opportunities handed out to them, only to deny such opportunities to others.
Don’t be that asshole.
You heard him, folks.#sagaftramembers are right. The studios are WRONG.
Wealthier SAG-AFTRA members refuse to pull up the ladder behind them. Americans on Social Security had best refuse to let the GOP to pull it up and screw over younger Americans. Don’t fall for it. We’re all in this together.
“You’ve been pissing on our heads and calling it trickle down for decades,” comedian Trae Crowder in his rant about the strike. “And y’all better come to the table and make this right, because if you don’t, the next time you check your watch it’s liable to be pitchfork 30. How about that?”
Trump remains broadly unpopular with the public: 63% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of the former president, while 35% view him favorably. A year ago, Trump’s rating stood at 60% unfavorable.
In the new survey, 66% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents have a very or mostly favorable opinion of Trump, while 32% have a very or mostly unfavorable view of him.
Democrats and Democratic leaners continue to express overwhelmingly negative opinions of Trump. About nine-in-ten Democrats (91%) view Trump unfavorably, including 78% who have a very unfavorable view. Just 8% have a favorable impression.
Views of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris
The public’s views of four other political leaders included in the survey, including President Joe Biden, also continue to be more unfavorable than favorable.
Six-in-ten Americans hold a very or mostly unfavorable opinion of Biden, while 39% view him favorably. Biden is viewed slightly more negatively than he was a year ago, when 55% held an unfavorable opinion of him.
Around six-in-ten Americans (59%) also view Vice President Kamala Harris unfavorably, while 36% express a favorable opinion of her. Views of Harris are more negative than they were last July, when 52% held an unfavorable opinion of her and 43% rated her favorably.
Democrats’ ratings of both Biden and Harris are somewhat less favorable than they were last year. Seven-in-ten Democrats view Biden favorably, down 5 points from July 2022. Roughly two-thirds of Democrats (66%) have a positive opinion of Harris, a 9-point decline during the same span.
Views of Kevin McCarthy and Chuck Schumer
Half of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, while a quarter view him favorably. A similar share (23%) have never heard of him. McCarthy has become better known over the past year: The share of adults who say they have never heard of him has declined 14 percentage points since then, and both favorable and unfavorable views of him have increased over this period.
About half of the public (49%) holds a very or mostly unfavorable view of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, while 27% view him favorably and 22% have never heard of him. Unfavorable views of Schumer have increased 6 points over the last year (from 43% to 49%), as the share saying they have never heard of him has declined by 4 points (from 26% to 22%).
It’s all tribal at this point. You can see why the election is going to be close again…
Florida Republicans knew that Democrats in the state who applied to vote by mail during the pandemic were new to the practice so they decided to force them to re-apply. Normally, once you apply they automatically send you a ballot for four years. Now it’s just two:
Florida Democrats say they’re spending and organizing to chase down people who vote by mail after election officials across the state canceled all standing mail ballot requests this year.
The mass cancellations were to comply with a 2021 election law that added new restrictions to mail-in voting. The legislation — which was celebrated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and slammed by voting rights advocates as discriminatory — cut the duration of mail-in ballot requests in half from four years to two. It also required that existing requests for mail ballots be canceled at the end of 2022, forcing election workers to cancel millions of requests and start their lists of vote-by-mail voters from scratch.
In practice, that means that voters who requested mail-in ballots in 2021 or 2022 will have to make such requests again to vote in local races and the 2024 primary and general elections. In previous years, voters would not have had to request a ballot again for four years.
Democrats in the state say the change disproportionately affects their voters, who have embraced mail-in voting more than Republicans since 2020, when then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed mail-in voting was rife with fraud. The new law is forcing campaigns to adapt; Democrats say they’re organizing aggressively to educate voters about renewing their mail ballot requests, sapping resources from voter registration and other outreach efforts.
“It’s doing exactly what they intended it to do, which is suppress voters and take resources,” said Nikki Fried, chair of the state Democratic Party. “Instead of focusing our money, resources and time on other endeavors and talking to voters, we’re having to spend resources to get people back on the rolls.”
Campaigns and volunteers who might have connected with voters once or twice to remind them to return their mail-in ballots may now need to connect with them three and four times to turn out a vote, Fried said.
“I’ll be very honest with you: In the Black community, it’s very top of mind,” said Shevrin Jones, a state senator who represents part of Miami-Dade County. He runs a group called Operation BlackOut, which focuses on getting Black voters to sign up for mail ballot requests. They are just one of the many groups mobilizing to get voters of color on the mail-in voting list, he said.
Election officials, too, say they’re sending out mailers and text messages and reminding voters of the change whenever they get the chance. But in the six months since the ballot requests were canceled, less than a third of voters in three large counties have taken steps to request mail ballots again.
They just want to make the Democrats have to put in tons and tons of work to get their vote out. As usual.
And they have the nerve to call the Democrats the cheaters…
