Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

It seems that every conversation I have about politics these days begins with someone making a breathless observation that “OMG! Joe Biden is soooo oooooold!” I get it. He is old. And he looks his age. Anyone but movie stars who have had extensive plastic surgery look old at 81 and they usually just look weird. He walks stiffly and he’s losing his hair — again. (He had a receding hairline before he was 30 and famously had hair transplants.)

He also stumbles over his words and rambles when he’s speaking spontaneously, but as someone who’s been watching the guy for decades I can tell you that he’s always done that. Everyone knows now that he’s been fighting a stutter all his life but he’s also one of those garrulous old-style East Coast politicians who tells stories and flits from subject to subject. Still, there’s no getting around the fact that he’s the oldest president we’ve ever had and he’s running for another term, so people are going to be concerned.

But if he’s so over the hill that he’s unable to function how come he’s done such a good job in his first term under very trying circumstances?

I don’t really blame people for focusing so much on his age because if they watch the news only casually or just read the headlines as most people do, they don’t know about his accomplishments. Political coverage is still focused on the Trump Show starring the the dancing House MAGAs (with special guest stars The Supremes) and there isn’t much time left to discuss the boring nitty gritty of what we used to call governing. As I’ve said before, the whole country was traumatized from the Trump years and the pandemic and frankly, the press has clung to a narrative of national misery for far too long, and it seeps out into the ether and infects the body politic.

It seems as if every bit of good news from the past year has been qualified with gloom and doom.:”Yes, the job market is the best it’s been in more than 50 years but … the price of toilet paper has gone up by 35% since 2019!” “Gas prices have dropped to less than they were before the pandemic but … interest rates are higher causing people to worry about their 401ks.” It’s not that these worries aren’t legitimate but it feels as though any positive news is required to be followed by something designed to keep people from feeling too optimistic about the future. So it’s been difficult to make the case that Biden’s presidency has brought material improvement to most people’s lives even though it manifestly has done so.

I’ve noticed that others are starting to make note of this phenomenon:

The US has one of the best recoveries in the world. Inflation is now lower than g7 peers. The hot labor market has put a real dent in inequality. And Biden had a historically great midterm.

And yet for two years, pundits have been totally consumed by alleged policy mistakes. https://t.co/S8bPpg6O16

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) July 7, 2023

Meanwhile, a domestic heavy industry boom is afoot. And there’s been a massive compression of the unemployment rate among different ethnic groups.

And so much of the Econ convo has been dominated by one number. Whatever CPI was that month.

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) July 7, 2023

I was like many progressive types who didn’t expect much from Joe Biden but I reconciled myself to the idea that it would be enough to have a caretaker president who would allow the country to calm down a little bit after the tumultuous Trump years. I was wrong. Biden has been one of the most active presidents in recent memory, making changes that are abrupt departures not only from Republicans but Democrats as well, including his old boss Barack Obama.

Taking office in the middle of a deadly pandemic and after an insurrection with a razor thin margin in both houses of congress, his legislative achievements include the American Rescue Plan which staved off an economic collapse and created a massive rollout of life-saving vaccines. Despite much handwringing and gnashing of teeth that this would drive the economy into the ditch, it has done the opposite, creating 12 million jobs, the most of any single presidential term in history. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act created major legacy defining progress on domestic manufacturing, infrastructure, climate change mitigation. deficit reduction, corporate taxes and out of pocket health costs. After another paroxysm of gun violence he even managed to usher through the first bipartisan gun safety bill in 30 years.

Did he get everything on his agenda done? Of course not. There have been many disappointments along the way. But these are, as he would say, “big f-ing deals” and that they were accomplished in a congress so closely divided is nothing short of miraculous.

On foreign policy the administration has done an admirable job restoring relationships with America’s allies and bringing together a coalition to back Ukraine as it defends itself against the Russian invasion. His withdrawal from Afghanistan was messy but at least he did it, which is something his predecessors all claimed they wanted to do and didn’t. (I’m not sure there was any other way but awful for such an awful war to end anyway.) He doesn’t seem to consider dictators and despots as his special friends which is a nice change.

Biden is starting to campaign now and is touting “Bidenomics” which is succinctly described as an overturning of trickle-down economics to focus federal money in ways that benefit the middle class. (Trump and his followers call this communism.) On Thursday he was in South Carolina touting a new manufacturing facility that will make solar energy products. Unlike a certain predecessor who constantly threatened to punish Americans who failed to support him he’s making the point that he’s the president for everyone, not just those who vote for him and his signature legislation is making a difference in a lot of red states (not that they will ever give him or he Democrats credit.) He is, however, good-naturedly taunting all the Republicans who are racing to take credit for these projects after voting against the funding by saying “I’ll be there for the ground-breaking.”

Meanwhile, the prices  of groceries and gasoline have come back down to earth and most economists have lowered their expectation of a recession as the US has seen better growth and lower inflation than any peer nation in the world over the past 12 months.

If this is what happens when you have an elder as a leader maybe we ought to think about amending the constitution and raising the eligibility age for president.

There were reports a couple of weeks ago that Hollywood producer and big Democratic donor Jeffrey Katzenberg was advising the Biden campaign to lean into the age thing pointing out that people aren’t as ageist as we may think. After all, the biggest box office draw this past weekend was 80 year old Harrison Ford reprising his role as Indiana Jones. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, both 79, are about to go on tour again and can be expected to sell out. Paul McCartney at 81 is producing AI Beatles records.

Some people just have a strong life force no matter what their age and if they’re lucky they have wisdom, confidence and judgment too. Joe Biden seems to be among that group and his bucket list is to leave a legacy of major improvements in the way government works. For an old guy he sure is getting a whole lot done and wants to do more. The country will be much better off if we let him.

Salon

FDA approves Alzheimer’s treatment

Whatever your age now, you’ll be old sooner than you’d like. Old age carries risks. Joints wear out and bones get brittle. Live long enough and cancers of various kinds may catch up with you. Cancer claimed Joel Siberman, a media trainer and friend, one of progressives’ brightest lights, five years ago. But perhaps the most frightening of scaries is mental decline. Particularly from Alzheimer’s. Watching it claim the mind of someone you love is tragic enough.

For the first time, the FDA has approved a medication for Alzheimer’s. Not a cure, but a drug shown to “modestly” slow the disease in its early stages (Associated Press):

U.S. officials granted full approval to a closely watched Alzheimer’s drug on Thursday, clearing the way for Medicare and other insurance plans to begin covering the treatment for people with the brain-robbing disease.

The Food and Drug Administration endorsed the IV drug, Leqembi, for patients with mild dementia and other symptoms caused by early Alzheimer’s disease. It’s the first medicine that’s been convincingly shown to modestly slow the cognitive decline caused by Alzheimer’s.

Japanese drugmaker Eisai received conditional approval from the FDA in January based on early results suggesting Leqembi worked by clearing a sticky brain plaque linked to the disease.

The FDA confirmed those results by reviewing data from a larger, 1,800-patient study in which the drug slowed memory and thinking decline by about five months in those who got the treatment, compared to those who got a dummy drug.

Five months? OK, modestly.

It’s a start. As with most drugs like this, you really don’t want to read the side-effects warnings of “serious and life-threatening events” and “some of which have been fatal.”

Then again, as Warren Zevon sang, Life’ll Kill Ya.

New York Times:

Still, some Alzheimer’s experts have said it is unclear from the medical evidence whether Leqembi’s ability to delay erosion of memory and cognition would be enough to be noticeable or meaningful for patients and their families. And while most cases of brain swelling and bleeding have been mild or moderate and have resolved, there have been some serious cases.

“The risks are very vivid,” said Dr. Jason Karlawish, a co-director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Memory Center, who said he will prescribe Leqembi after carefully evaluating patients and explaining the potential pros and cons. “Within the first few months, you may have small bleeds or swelling in your brain, which may or may not be symptomatic and if not detected in time can cause disability.”

That’s a lot of risk/reward to ponder for Leqembi’s $26,500 cost, even if Medicare covers 80 percent. Co-payments could run into the thousands for a drug whose effects may be unnoticeable.

Life is a crapshoot too.

Is Kari Lake coming on too strongly?

Kari Lake’s oh-so-unsubtle efforts to audition as Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate may be backfiring. Sure, she came in first for VP in CPAC’s straw poll this year. But the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate and championship election-denier seems not to know to avoid upstaging The Donald.

Lake has spent more time at Mar-a-Lago than Melania Trump lately, a source told People, in “a suite there that she practically lives in.” The Daily Beast reports that Lake is falling out of Trump’s favor:

“She’s a shameless, ruthless demagogue who wants power and will do whatever she has to do to get it,” a Trump adviser told The Daily Beast.

This adviser added that, in recent months, Trump has been less enthusiastic about Lake himself.

Two Trump advisers who spoke to The Daily Beast said the heart of Trump’s frustration with Lake is that, in his eyes, she always wants attention.

As one of the advisers put it, she’s a “spotlight hound.”

People called Bill Clinton “the Big Dog.” But nobody had better stand between Trump and center stage. He’s the biggest spotlight hound in any room.

“I don’t think President Trump needs a vice president,” she said. “He is that powerful as a leader, he doesn’t really need anyone.”

Her over-the-top adoration aside, Trump has continued to publicly support Lake.

Trump apparently doesn’t ding her too much for her loss in the Arizona governor race, with one adviser saying Trump views Lake’s defeat as “similar” to his—with election fraud to blame.

Lake may be coming on a bit too hard, at least for Trump advisers who spoke to Daily Beast. But Lake is still on the short list. Especially, as one adviser said, “He definitely wants someone who can defend him well on TV.” Yeah, Lake can do that.

The Daily Beast previously reported that a slate of female lawmakers—including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, even former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii—were names that Trump had been entertaining as possible 2024 running mates. But since then, Trump and advisers who have discussed the matter with him agree that needing to select a woman candidate might be a “false premise.”

For a misogynist? Of course. Plus, Trump should be enough for the red-hatted MAGA faithful. He may prefer a pretty face like the one he married (last), but not one who will try to steal his spotlight. Even soft-focus on Lake may be too much focus for Trump.

Perhaps she’ll just run for Senate.

“I'm just getting started. I am seriously contemplating a run — possibly for Senate. I may have to do it. We'll see what happens.”

— Former Arizona governor candidate Kari Lake (R) pic.twitter.com/CUmB8AaTbM

— The Recount (@therecount) July 5, 2023

Lolololol!

QAnon congresswoman-turned-GOP House leadership darling Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) membership with the House Freedom Caucus has been in question ever since she laid down her life/remaining dignity to back House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) in his speakership race. Since then, she’s been picking fights and at odds with members of the rebellious faction for being too tight with the establishment crowd.

While there’s been speculation for weeks that the Georgia congresswoman may soon get the boot from the fringe group, it turns out that the Freedom Caucus has actually already voted to punish Greene for forgetting where she came from.

Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) told Politico Thursday that “a vote was taken to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene from the House Freedom Caucus for some of the things she’s done.” Harris reportedly wouldn’t say how he personally voted on the matter, but said that the ousting was “an appropriate action.” When Politico asked if the vote meant she was officially excommunicated, Harris said: “As far as I know, that is the way it is.”

While Harris also claimed to Politico that she was booted because she called Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) a “little bitch” on the House floor, members’ irritation with Greene and her cozy relationship with McCarthy and other members of Republican leadership have been seemingly growing for some time. Per Politico:

Asked if Greene breaking from the group on the debt bill or her support for McCarthy were factors, Harris said, “I think all of that mattered.”

“I think the straw that broke the camel’s back was publicly saying things about another member in terms that no one should,” he said.

I’m going to guess that she told Kevin about the Freedom Caucus strategy. She’s an amoral harpy even toward her own. Trump should watch his back.

Marge Greene may implode. If she doesn’t she could end up owning the MAGA cult.

You have to love that puts President Trump in quotes…

I don’t know who has told him this garbage or if anyone has. He might have just heard something in passing and turned it into this preposterous narrative. And it is true that the more he says this the more his cult will be convinced that he’s the one living in reality while everyone else is involved in a massive conspiracy to destroy Deal Leader. That’s how brainwashing works.

But the fact is that he is completely unhinged on this subject and you have to wonder what’s setting him off right now. Maybe it’s this:

28% of Republicans and 31% of Independents say a conviction would make them less likely to support Trump.

The good news for him is that most people don’t want to see him in jail. I think that’s ok. You can’t put secret service agents in jail with him and they are required to protect him. Years of house arrest would suit me just fine, along with restrictions on his use of internet and television.

Law schools that give preferences to minorities and women in admissions and hiring risk getting sued by America First Legal, the conservative legal group warned in a letter to 200 U.S. law schools following last week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.

America First Legal, a nonprofit group headed by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, said on its website that it sent the letter threatening to sue the law schools if they extend any “discriminatory preferences” based on race, gender or national origin. The group also said decisions based on factors in an applicant’s biography that could serve as a proxy for race—such as socioeconomic status—is also unlawful.

The letter, dated June 30 and reviewed by Reuters, came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court held that giving some minority college applicants a boost over others based on their race violated the U.S. Constitution.

“You must immediately announce the termination of all forms of race, national origin, and sex preferences in student admissions, faculty hiring, and law review membership or article selection,” the letter said, adding that law schools “must” announce policies prohibiting preferential treatment before the start of the school year.

Who the hell do Stephen Miller and his grubby little minions think they are? The last I heard we have a judicial system and you need to have standing if you want to sue someone. Is the new rule that everyone can just bring a hypothetical case against anyone just in case they might violate what some jerk like Miller decides is the interpretation of the law? Even that awful wedding website business wasn’t thin bad.

But then it appears there is a coordinated strategy to intimidate colleges and universities before they take any actions at all:

Ohio GOP Senator JD Vance demanded 10 colleges and universities preserve their communications after their “expressed open hostility” to the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action ruling.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that race-based affirmative action at institutions of higher learning is unconstitutional in a case involving Harvard University’s application policies that adversely impacted Asian students’ admissions. Schools can, however, weigh race as a factor if the applicant has discussed how his or her race has impacted their life.

Following the decision, several presidents of top American colleges — including the entirety of Ivy League universities — announced their institutions’ commitments to “diversity” on campus in light of the ruling.

“I write to express concern about your institutions’ openly defiant and potentially unlawful reaction to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which reaffirmed the bedrock constitutional principle of equality under the law and therefore forbade invidious race-based preferences in college admissions,” Vance wrote college presidents in his Thursday letter.

“As you know, the Court has instructed you to honor the spirit, and not just the letter, of the ruling,” he continued. “Going forward, the Court explained, ‘universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.’”

Vance noted that “within hours of the decision’s pronouncement,” the presidents and their “institutions expressed open hostility to the decision and seemed to announce an intention to circumvent it.”

I’m pretty sure we are heading toward an open declaration that hiring or admitting racial and ethnic minorities at all is discrimination against white people. They are clearly hostile to diversity at all. These people long for Jim Crow and they aren’t trying to hide it.

It’s awful

NeverTrumper Tim Miller has some interesting thoughts on Supreme Court reform:

How Normal Is This Court, Really: A Meditation From a Conflicted Man 

People on the right bristled at a frank comment from President Joe Biden as he exited a press conference last Thursday: “This is not a normal Court,” he said. In their view, this was an example of Biden betraying his promise to be a steward of our norms and institutions and taking an unnecessary swipe at a SCOTUS that has executed constitutionally sound, conservative jurisprudence. 

Here’s a version of this position that was posted by an pseudonymous anti-Trump conservative I follow on Twitter: 

Supreme Court rules against racial discrimination in college admissions. A position supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. Biden responds by questioning the normalcy of the court. This is not a normal President.

Preparing for today and tomorrow has been the whole point of the recent campaign to try to undermine the legitimacy of the court majority. They cannot defend their legal positions so instead they do this and we get deafening silence from much of the norms crowd.

I assume we at The Bulwark are part of the “norms” crowd he is referring to, and while I don’t speak for everyone here, my view is that critiques of this Court and discussions of reform are totally legitimate and within the bounds of standard political discourse. 

For starters, the size of the Supreme Court has changed several times before; the current number of justices was not set out on stone tablets delivered from on high. Lifetime appointments are written in the Constitution, but they’re opposed by a majority of Americans. Norms-abiding Republican legal luminaries like Don Ayer have expressed openness to adding more justices to the high court. 

Personally, I think there would be value in hearing all kinds of different arguments for how we might best redesign the system so that every SCOTUS appointment doesn’t turn into a partisan deathmatch where fundamental rights hang in the balance. To the extent that “normal” people think about this issue at all, I suspect this kind of openmindedness is pretty typical. 

These kinds of conversations make even more sense when you put the Democratic agita over the current Court into a fuller context. The reality is the GOP stole a Supreme Court seat. That might sound overwrought, but if you strip away all the talking points and all the bullshit, it becomes clear that in any fair system, either Merrick Garland should have the Gorsuch seat or a Biden appointee should have the Barrett seat. The situations were exactly the same, and the McConnell Senate blocked one appointee while jamming through another.  The fact that they did it without even having majority popular support adds to the distrust, as I’ve written about before. 

If this were a situation where because of term limits the left could get another shot at one or both seats in 4 or 8 or 12 or, hell, even 20 years that would be one thing. But those were lifetime appointments of young judges. So if you are a conservative who thinks Cocaine Mitch deserves praise for the extreme lengths he went to to take those seats, then you can’t clutch your pearls when the left looks at ways—within the Constitution and the law—to try to balance the playing field. 

But despite all the reasons a person who values institutions might sincerely think the Court would benefit from some reforms, there is one prominent institutionalist who disagrees: President Biden!

That’s right. He might have made a little jab about the Court’s normalcy in the wake of a decision he found disappointing. But then he went on Nicolle Wallace’s show and said he opposes reforms because he worries it will politicize the Court in a way that isn’t fixable. Here’s Biden: “I put together a group of constitutional scholars to try to expand the Court . . . [and] the judgment was, ‘That doesn’t make sense because it can become so politicized in the future.’”

On the one hand, I’m not sure that’s right. Our current system might be hopelessly politicized already, and the Court is partly responsible. Moreover, it’s hard to say that expanding the Court, if it could be accomplished, would exacerbate the ills of our politics; predicting the downstream effects of changes like that is a fool’s errand.

But there’s something to be said for Biden’s argument. As imperfect and enraging as some of the present Court’s decisions have been, the Trump appointees have demonstrated a willingness to buck GOP partisans desires on some cases touching major issues like LGBT rights, immigration, and, most importantly, democracy/voting rights.

Given all that, maybe the best long-term answer to the problem presented by the Court’s current 6-3 conservabloc is to follow Biden’s lead and ride it out, let elections take care of themselves, and hope that with John Roberts’s pseudo-moderateness and the possibility of a Democratic president replacing SCOTUS’s oldest current member, there might be a path away from the extremes. Or maybe that’s naïve wishcasting and more dramatic action is called for.

But regardless of whether Biden is right about Court reform, the unmistakable reality is that he is the only one acting with even a modicum of proportionality in the debate. He is trying to do right by SCOTUS even after they ruled against him on a series of major issues! I don’t even need to ask, but: Can anyone imagine Trump doing that? In fact, of all the leading players in American political life right now—McConnell, Trump, DeSantis, McCarthy—it is Biden who has by far shown the most willingness to sacrifice partisan gains for the sake of protecting democratic institutions including the Court.

In spite of his good intentions and continued norms-loving rectitude, he finds himself in the sour spot on this issue: upsetting progressives who want more radical action faster, and catching heat from the dwindling number of reasonable Republicans for being “divisive” even as he resists those on his left flank who want to rebalance a court that the right went to extreme lengths to stack in their favor. 

Maybe staring every day at a big painting of Franklin Roosevelt in the Oval Office reminds Biden that this is the sort of issue that can almost sink a presidency.

It did almost sink a presidency — but it also had the effect of moderating the court. I’m not sure that would happen with the collection of corrupt wingnut weirdos and theocrats that make up the current majority but I suppose you never know.

Biden is an institutionalist for better or worse. But Miller is right to condemn those Never Trump conservative lawyers for criticizing him when he’s the guy who is actually taking his lumps from the court and accepting his fate. These guys like what the court is doing and they don’t care that Mitch stole the majority from the Democrats to get it. So are they really the great believers in norms they pretend to be or is it just that Trump is an embarrassing buffoon and they want to replace him with someone a bit less personally repugnant?

They’re super white too…

Those numbers of Millennials and Gen Z are just astonishing. NBC News reports:

Republican primary voters are older, whiter and much more conservative than the electorate at large.

That should surprise no one who follows American politics, but our most recent national NBC News poll captures the profile of what the GOP primary electorate looks like.

Thirty-nine percent of Republican primary voters are age 65 and older, compared with 25% of the overall electorate and 25% of Democratic primary voters, according to the poll.

Eighty-nine percent of GOP primary voters are white, versus 72% of all voters.

And 67% of Republican primary voters say they are conservative, including 41% who are “very” conservative. 

That compares with 36% of all voters who are conservative, including 18% who are “very” conservative.

There are two slight — but significant — changes to the composition of the Republican electorate since the 2016 election cycle, when Donald Trump won the party’s presidential nomination and the White House, per the NBC News poll’s historical results.

One, the GOP is slightly more diverse than it was in 2016, when 92% of all Republican voters were white (versus 89% now). 

And two, the share of the GOP electorate without college degrees is larger. In 2012, 48% of Republicans didn’t have college degrees. By 2016, that percentage had increased to 58%.

Now it’s 63%, according to the NBC News poll

That last is actually bad news for Trump:

One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election has emerged largely under the radar. From 2016 to 2022, the number of white people without college degrees — the core of Donald Trump’s support — has fallen by 2.1 million.

Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college — an increasingly Democratic constituency — has grown by 13.3 million.

These trends do not bode well for the prospects of Republican candidates, especially Trump.

They have lost many college educated over the past 8 years. And the ranks of the non-college educated is shrinking. It’s a bad formula for victory.

Not exactly news, but this analysis pulls it all together:

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, looking to shift his run for president into a higher gear after an early series of missteps, spent the last two weeks rolling out an immigration policy and holding town halls with voters. But rather than correcting course, he stumbled again this week, raising questions about where his campaign is heading.

First, Mr. DeSantis’s team was forced to battle allegations, including from fellow Republicans, that it had shared a homophobic video on social media. Then, a top spokesman for the main super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis acknowledged that former President Donald J. Trump was the race’s “runaway front-runner,” while Mr. DeSantis faced an “uphill battle.”

“Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” the adviser, Steve Cortes, said in a livestream Twitter event on Sunday. It was an admission notably at odds with the confidence that the governor’s advisers usually project in public.

To top it off — in a visual representation of his recent troubles — Mr. DeSantis got soaked by a rainstorm as he marched in an Independence Day parade alongside several dozen supporters in New Hampshire — the crucial early nominating state where his super PAC, Never Back Down, stopped running television advertisements in mid-May.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump hosted a rally in South Carolina that attracted thousands of people over the holiday weekend, a reminder of his enduring popularity with Republicans despite losing in 2020 and now facing at least two criminal trials.

The race is still in its early days, but Mr. DeSantis’s rough week highlights the challenges his underdog campaign faces as it seeks a coherent strategy to break through against Mr. Trump.

So far, Mr. DeSantis has tried to undermine his chief rival by subtly contrasting their ages, temperaments and records on issues like the coronavirus pandemic without saying anything too unkind about the former president, whom he almost never mentions by name. He has also attempted to move to the right of Mr. Trump on issues like abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, at the same time as he argues that he is the Republican candidate best placed to attract swing voters and defeat President Biden.

But Mr. DeSantis, who has not shown that he is a natural campaigner, has failed to take off in the polls, and his carefully choreographed public events have offered few headline-generating moments, as his campaign, until recently, has worked to shield him from potentially awkward unscripted interactions with voters and the news media.

The wobbly launch of his presidential campaign makes for a stark contrast with the confident way Mr. DeSantis has governed Florida, where he silenced opposition within his own party and crushed Democrats at the polls during the midterm elections. It also has given hope to other primary candidates, several of whom have jumped into the race in recent weeks, that they can replace him as the party’s most plausible alternative to Mr. Trump.

“DeSantis’s argument is electability,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who holds regular focus groups with G.O.P. voters. “But he is undermining the electability argument by running to Trump’s right. He is alienating college-educated, suburban voters who want to move past Trump,” as well as the independents he would need to beat Mr. Biden in a general election.

Ms. Longwell said Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to differentiate himself from Mr. Trump without directly criticizing him risked leaving the Florida governor without a natural constituency in the primaries.

“You cannot go around Trump,” she said. “You have to go through him.”

National polls show Mr. DeSantis trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 points — a gap that has widened significantly since Mr. DeSantis began traveling the country this spring to introduce himself to voters.

He defended his grotesque anti-LGBTQ ad yesterday, saying it’s fair game to accuse Trump of being soft on transgender people which is as sick as the ad itself. (And anyway, Trump changed his attitude once in office — remember his transgender military ban?)

Mr. DeSantis has also become known as a provocateur, successfully drawing criticism from liberals and using it to gin up support from his base. But a recent attempt that seemed devised to garner such attention — a video that condemned Mr. Trump for expressing support for L.G.B.T.Q. people — appeared to backfire over the weekend, leading to criticism not only from Democrats but also from other Republicans, including the largest group representing gay, lesbian and transgender conservatives.

The video, taken from another Twitter user and reposted by Mr. DeSantis’s rapid-response campaign account, relied heavily on obscure conservative memes.

Richard Barry, a former New Hampshire state lawmaker who attended a rainy Fourth of July breakfast visited by several presidential candidates, said he was eager to support someone other than Mr. Trump. But Mr. DeSantis has turned him off, he said, citing a criticism some voters have leveled against Mr. Trump — a sign that Mr. DeSantis is not yet differentiating himself from the former president in a meaningful way.

“He has a street kid attitude that says, ‘It is my way or the highway,’” Mr. Barry said of Mr. DeSantis. “He doesn’t listen to people.”

Hey, he’s just trying to give the GOP voters what they want. But they like their hate to be fun. And nothing about DeSantis is fun.

Tom Cruise gets endless rehearsals. We don’t.

“Well, this is more than a little terrifying. Shouldn’t we all be paying a little bit more attention?” asks Dan Froomkin.

It’s like something out of Mission Impossible. Recent Wagner mercenaries’ moves against Moscow leave the West wondering about Vladimir Putin’s fate, the stability of the Russian state, and the security of the Russian nuclear arsenal (Washington Post):

And in recent weeks the drumbeat has intensified, with some well-connected Russian strategic analysts and think tank experts openly proclaiming the “necessity” for Moscow to carry out a preemptive tactical nuclear strike on a NATO country, like Poland — to avoid defeat in the war on Ukraine and to revive Western terror of Russia’s nuclear might.

Since the Wagner rebellion, Sergei Karaganov, a former Kremlin adviser and influential Russian political scientist, has doubled down on calls for Moscow to do so. In an earlier article last month headlined, “A Difficult but Necessary Decision,” Karaganov argued the risk of a retaliatory nuclear strike on Russia, and nuclear Armageddon, “can be reduced to an absolute minimum.”

No sane American president would put the United States at risk by “sacrificing conditional Boston for conditional Poznań,” he wrote, referring to a city in Poland.

A hawkish Moscow-based military analyst, Dmitry Trenin, supported Karaganov, arguing that “an unambiguous — and no longer verbal — signal should be sent” to Washington.

Karaganov and Trenin sound like Mission Impossible villains. Zealots. Karaganov believes Russia was “chosen by history” to destroy the “Western yoke.”

You picked a bad week to stop sniffing glue, right?

Many Russian nuclear arms experts gasped in horror at the calls from Karaganov and Trenin. One, Ivan Timofeev, called it “extremely dangerous.”

There is no indication that Putin would deploy nukes save in the event of an existential threat to Russia.

But a worrying question is what would comprise an “existential threat” to Russia in Putin’s mind, given his profound conviction that he is the state’s sole guardian and protector.

It’s all a lot easier to live with in the dark of a movie theater when you know Ethan Hunt and his IMF team always save the day. The world does not get rehearsals.

[last lines]
Benji Dunn: How close were we?
Ethan Hunt: The usual.
Ilsa Faust: [incredulous] Usual?
Ethan Hunt: [chuckling] Please, don’t make me laugh.