Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Turn in your hymnals to…..

Inflation is down. In fact, it is down to four percent from its four-decade high of 9.1 percent last June, writes John Cassidy in The New Yorker. But that seems not to have penetrated public consciousness. President Biden is getting little credit for the improvement, pushed out of the headlines by the Trump indictment. Perhaps also, Cassidy suggests, because there are lags between numerical improvements and people’s perceptions. Biden’s approval ratings have not recovered like the economic indicators.

Egg prices have plummeted since avian flu sent them skyrocketing in 2022. But prices are still more than 80 percent higher than in January 2021.

“The price of gasoline is another example. At about $3.70 a gallon, the average price across the country has fallen considerably since last year’s peak of $5.10 a gallon,” Cassidy reports. “But the price is still well above its January, 2021, level, which was about $2.50 a gallon.”

Other consumer prices remain higher. Consumers still feel pinched:

Figures like these leave the White House in a bind. Even though inflation, job growth, and G.D.P. growth have all come in better than expected this year, Administration officials appear to be wary of bellowing the good news about the economy from the rooftops and getting accused of being out of touch. On Tuesday, when the inflation report was released, even the White House didn’t make much of it; the press office put out a statement in Biden’s name which hailed the numbers as “good news for hard working families,” but that was all. When Biden himself spoke publicly about the economy, on Thursday, his focus was on reducing hidden “junk fees”—a worthy initiative, but hardly a headline-grabber.

The White House may be being cautious yet might still nudge public consciousness in a more positive direction with repetition. But Democrats have never been great at horn-tooting.

Having been criticized in 2021 and 2022 for failing to react quickly enough to the rise in inflation, the White House clearly doesn’t want to get stung again. That’s understandable, but the media doesn’t face the same constraint. Last year, it provided blanket coverage of the inflation crisis, giving extensive airtime to inflation hawks like the Harvard economist Larry Summers, who said “we need five years of unemployment above five per cent to contain inflation.” Now that the inflation rate has come down further and more quickly than many so-called experts predicted, and without a big jump in the joblessness rate, surely the media should focus on this positive news, too.

Don’t count on it. Good economic news or bad, and even Republicans’ face-plant failures, always seem to be “bad news for Democrats” in the press. Washington press corps stenographers reflexively repeated then and repeat now Trump’s lies. Lies about himself and about Democrats. They might be retrained to amplify truths told by Democrats if only Democrats were as disciplined and relentless in repeating positive messages. But statistics are neither messages nor narratives.

What the left in general seems not to grasp is that data are not what matter to voters. What matters is Patrick Caddell’s insight that Rick Perlstein recounted in “Reaganland.” What matters more than data, even more than people’s personal economic fortunes, is how candidates made voters feel. Joe Biden in 1972, then 29 (he would turn 30 before taking office), won his Senate seat, in part, by following Caddell’s advice.

With his “it’s never ever a good bet to bet against America” rhetoric, Biden expresses a core belief that whatever the challenge, Americans are up to it. It is a reflex the rest of his party would be wise to train, because his relentless optimism cannot be as contagious as it could be, or as beneficial for Democrats’ prospects, without the rest of his party singing from the same hymnal.

Messaging authority Anat Shenker-Osorio recently told The Intercept’s Ryan Grimm, “as far as what you’re actually selling to voters, you want to sell the brownie, not the recipe. Meaning, you want to sell what the policy is going to deliver.”

What matters more is evoking in constituents a positive feeling about life in Joe Biden’s America vs. Donald Trump’s “carnage.” That requires more emotional intelligence than many on the left have developed the chops to accomplish. But it’s not too late to learn.

QAnon seemed mostly harmless too

QAnon appeared to be just a loose network of conspiracy crackpots until a bare-chested guy wearing horns and face paint stood on U.S. Senate’s dais on Jan. 6. Fred Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, has worked to draw attention to another loose network of believers with political designs on the country: The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). This network of nondenominational churches aligned with Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA has aspirations for replacing our “demon-infested bastions of ungodly government,” he Clarkson writes.  

Clarkson provides an overview at Salon:

The NAR seeks to consolidate those Christians it recognizes as “the Church” in what it believes to be the End Times. Although many NAR leaders have been closely aligned with Donald Trump, they insist that they aim for a utopian biblical kingdom where only God’s laws are enforced. Most therefore hold to a vision of Christian dominion over what they call the “seven mountains“: religion, family, education, government, media, entertainment and business. (This is what is meant by Dominionism.) 

But as with any religious movement, the NAR’s notion of what God requires is a matter of interpretation, and in this case God’s intentions are said to be revealed through modern-day, mutually recognized apostles and prophets, some of whom lead vast networks of believers, whom they often call “prayer warriors.” These dynamic networks seek to dissolve traditional Christian denominations and institutions, peeling away members and sometimes whole congregations. When pundits speak of non-denominational Christianity, this is mostly what they mean.

The NAR’s long-term plan is to transform all of institutional Christianity to their vision of how the church was organized in the first century A.D. In their view, the only legitimate church offices, as described in the Book of Ephesians, are apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors (but no popes, bishops or presidents). This is called the “fivefold ministry.”

The “interpretation” Clarkson references flows from a selective reading of cherry-picked Bible passages that fit into not just a right-wing theological framework but a political one. As messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio said to Lawrence O’Donnell, “motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug.”

Pastor and musician Sean Feucht partnered recently with TPUSA for a “Kingdom to the Capitol,” 50-state revival tour. Apostle Clay Nash of Arkansas hosted “a series of 50 prayer conference calls staged by leading apostles in the first four months of 2023″ to rally the faithful, Clarkson reports. The transcripts may be found here.  

Lots of blustery “sword of the Lord” and “full armor of God” and “take back the Kingdom” stuff. Nothing new there. For over half a century that rhetoric has fueled what Dr. Anthea Butler, a historian of African-American and American religion at the University of Pennsylvania, describes as an evangelical Christianity “captured by Pentecostals and Charismatics.”

What has added spark to the fuel is the Internet. As with QAnon and the white nationalist movements, that network has allowed this religious network to grow and spread. Clarkson offers much more at Salon.

NAR leaders … will likely continue to stoke distrust in the normal function of elections and government. The struggle between what actually happens and conspiracy theories about what doesn’t happen will almost certainly continue. There will always be someone to blame — Freemasons, Communists, witches, antifa, Black Lives Matter or someone else from the long menu of potential scapegoats. The responses will not necessarily be peaceful.

UPDATE: You think I’m kidding?

“It just felt icky”

Some local Iowa news. Lol:

Never Back Down PAC, the political action committee supporting Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has caused a stir in early voting state Iowa — but maybe not in the way they had hoped.

The PAC is being accused of disrespecting the Black Hawk County Republicans by sending too many activists to the group’s participation in a local parade last weekend.

The Black Hawk County Republican chair, Craig Lohmann, sent an email invitation to the campaigns of the GOP primary candidates to walk with them in the annual My Waterloo Days parade. In the email, Lohmann says that campaigns may send “a few” representatives “with shirts with names and some handouts.” He cautioned the campaigns and associated PACs to avoid giving the impression that the Black Hawk County GOP was endorsing any candidate.

[…]

According to April Melton, a Black Hawk County GOP central committee member, the group was taken aback when the Never Back Down PAC showed up with twenty-two activists carrying triple-stacked signs and a large “DeSantis 2024” flag.

“As Iowans, we take our responsibility to vet candidates very seriously. And we invite everybody to come as a general rule,” Melton explained. “But there’s a trick called astroturfing, and that is where a candidate or a candidate’s PAC will kind of descend on the county and basically fall in on the back side. And that’s what happened.”

“We invited every candidate to send two or three people,” Melton continued. “[Never Back Down] sent about twenty-five people and they brought their own flags. At the time, we didn’t really want to say no because we had invited them. But at the same time, it was a little overwhelming because they marched so close to us that it just felt icky.”

Another source familiar with the incident told The Spectator that county party members expressed that they viewed the Never Back Down group as “unruly” and “rowdy.”

“They brought about thirty unruly kids who were clearly from out of state and who were disrespectful and rowdy,” the source said.

The Black Hawk County GOP only had about sixteen volunteers marching in the parade to Never Back Down PAC’s twenty-two staffers.

Melton said she believed only one of the Never Back Down PAC activists was from their county and added that their outsized presence at the parade was disruptive to their efforts to support other candidates and the Republican Party more generally.

“While we were marching and passing out candy, they kind of jumped up in front of our our group passing out stickers and stuff like that,” she said. “We were trying to support our governor, Kim Reynolds, and our local candidates as well. So to have a big group for just one candidate fall in like that, it was really kind of unnerving.”

A Never Back Down official contended to The Spectator that its staff members followed all instructions from the party officials at the event and took great care not to provide any disruption. The official also noted that no complaints were made to the team at any time.

The incident apparently bothered the Black Hawk County Republicans enough, though, that was brought it up at their monthly meeting Thursday night. Melton introduced a resolution to ban PACs from joining their future parade entries to prevent similar incidents.

Is it the worst campaign ever? I think it might be. He and his people make enemies wherever they go — because they are all assholes.

It’s not just about CRT

Jonathan Chait points out that DeSantis’ rhetoric and policies go way beyond opposition to educational theories. He’s happy to indulge the lowest common denominator:

Last week, Florida governor Ron DeSantis promised to rename Fort Liberty after Confederate general Braxton Bragg, a slave owner who fought against the United States whose name previously adorned the base.

On Thursday, DeSantis vetoed spending for a Black History Month celebration in Orlando and cut $200,000 for a festival celebrating Florida’s Black Music Legacy. Last year, DeSantis vetoed a $1 million appropriation for Valencia College to create a film about the 1920 Ocoee Election Day massacre, in which a white mob murdered dozens of Black Floridians.

There does seem to be a pattern here.

DeSantis likes to feature these issues. The message he prefers to emphasize is his fight with the radical left over critical race theory and other abstruse left-wing academic concepts. “We believe in teaching kids facts and how to think, but we don’t believe they should have an agenda imposed on them,” he said earlier this year. “When you try to use Black history to shoehorn in queer theory, you are clearly trying to use that for political purposes.”

His supporters like to pretend this is the whole of DeSantis’s agenda on racism and American history. “This fight isn’t about blocking history or erasing the country’s sins but drawing a line between hifalutin political advocacy and thorough, truthful instruction in the American past,” insisted National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry earlier this year.

Fighting left-wing academic fads is certainly a part of DeSantis’s agenda. But it is not the whole of it. The operational end of DeSantis’s approach to racism has always contained large doses of old-fashioned blunt-force attacks on Black political power. He signed a poll tax to disenfranchise ex-felons, whose voting rights had been restored by a state referendum. He pushed through a redistricting plan that reduced Black representation, in the face of opposition from not only all the state’s Democrats but even many Republicans, who deemed it far too aggressive.

DeSantis is assembling a coalition that contains all the right-wing elements that were drawn to Donald Trump. That means merely fighting the far left isn’t enough. He needs to court voters who believe in honoring the Confederacy and get offended by recognition for important milestones in Black history. The rise of the new left has given him a convenient foil, but beneath the surface, his racial agenda is an old-fashioned nostalgia for a time when open racism prevailed.

He’s trying to include the old fashioned unreconstructed confederate flag waving racist into his “anti-woke” crusade. It’s not a stretch. But the question is whether or not he can keep that under the radar enough not to appall the majority of Americans who don’t much want to celebrate the confederacy and bring back Jim Crow.

He continues to embrace the most grotesque wingnut policies and somehow he thinks he can finesse all that in a general election under the assumption that a majority of the country will take a look at him and say “well, he’s young and Biden’s old so I’ll vote for him even though he’s to the right of George Wallace and Mussolini.”

I don’t think it would work. There will be no escaping what he’s said and done as Governor and in this primary campaign and he’s made it very clear that he’s way too far right for this country. It’s a pivot too far.

Not that they will thank him for it but …

Last week Mayor Secretary Pete announced something the Biden administration is doing in Alabama to push their radical, woke, socialist agenda:

Here’s the Shelby County Reporter:

“County Road 52 in Pelham that’s a heavy, heavy corridor, and those tracks have been a challenge for a long time,” County Engineer David Willingham said. “That’s a huge win for Pelham.”

Man, when will these guys stop pushing their liberal elite values on Real America?

This road project is in Shelby County, Alabama, which went for Trump in 2020 by +41. (Not a typo.)

I mention this because what we have here is a clear case of the Biden administration centering the real-world concerns of rural voters who did not support him and taking action to make their daily lives better.

I do not expect the voters of Shelby County to give Biden credit for this work. But the rest of us should give him credit for trying. Credit for reaching out to the 46.8 percent of the country that didn’t vote for him. Credit for treating them as citizens and neighbors who deserve the government’s help—not as enemies to be punished.

For instance, the Biden administration is doling out $11 billion in grants to help rural electric co-ops modernize and compete with for-profit companies in places like Tennessee.

Then there’s the $42.5 billion he’s spending on bringing broadband internet to rural areas so that Trump voters can get InfoWars videos to load faster access to remote jobs and services.

When I wrote about Biden’s Morning in America yesterday a lot of people in the comments asked why he doesn’t get credit for the good stuff that’s going on, even as he gets blamed for the bad stuff. Part of the answer is that governing is boring.

Everyone wants to fight about retail theft in San Francisco, or the imaginary Border Wall, or trans stuff. These are all exciting topics and the Conservative Entertainment Industrial Complex spends hundreds of thousands of man-hours covering them precisely because people will tune in to listen.

No one wants to talk about putting bridges over railroad crossings, or helping rural electric co-ops, or laying fiber in West Virginia, because there’s no audience for that.

But that’s the media side. What about the voters?

My sense—and perhaps this is unfair—is that the voters of Shelby County would rather have a president who makes the liberals in San Francisco and New York City mad than a president who puts a bridge over a railroad crossing in their neighborhood so that fire trucks and ambulances can get to them quicker in an emergency.

Further: I would guess that more presidential votes in 2024 will be decided by opinions about high school trans athletes than by the facts of infrastructure spending.

But Joe Biden is governing as if this is not the case. And God bless him for it.

Liberals values have always held that it’s important to enact policies that help people regardless of whether they are Democratic voters or not. After all, the beneficiaries of these policies are also children who don’t have a say in where they’re born or who gave birth to them. It also helps other vulnerable citizens who aren’t political and those who are just plain ornery but need the government anyway. Republicans are all about loyalty tests and punishing their enemies. It’s a big difference.

I think this is the correct value but I also think that it would be wise for Democrats to work harder to take credit for these things. Brand infrastructure projects as Democratic and/or Biden, take out ads, let people know how they are benefiting from Democratic policies. I know it’s not as sexy as transgender bashing and Dr Seuss but over time these things might penetrate a few minds.

No, it’s not about the cat….

Late yesterday afternoon, Donald Trump published an item to his social media platform, declaring that he’s been “totally exonerated” in the classified documents scandal that led to his federal indictment. Of course, the former president has long struggled with the meaning of the word “exonerated,” so the missive wasn’t too surprising.

But as part of the same all-caps message — which included Trump suggesting the authorities should give him back the documents he stole from the White House — the Republican said he should now be in the clear thanks to “the Clinton Socks case.” He made the same point during his weird speech on Tuesday night in New Jersey:

“I had every right to have these documents. The crucial legal precedent is laid out in the most important case ever on the subject known as the Clinton socks case.”

When Trump references this in writing, as he often does, he invariably capitalizes “Socks.” This, of course, has led to questions about whether he’s confused about the grammatical rules — the former president tends to capitalize random words he finds important — or whether he thinks the story relates to the former Clinton family cat.

Either way, if Trump still thinks the “socks” case helps him, he’s mistaken.

Revisiting our earlier coverage from last summer, Bill Clinton, during his White House tenure, spoke at some length with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Taylor Branch, and as part of the project, there were many recordings of their conversations. According to one 2007 account, tapes were at one point stored in a sock drawer.

A conservative group called Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit, demanding that Clinton be forced to turn over the recordings. In 2012, a federal court rejected the organization’s claims, concluding that the tapes were personal records, not official presidential materials.

Trump would now have people believe this precedent helps him. It does not.

As NBC News reported last year, the 2012 court ruling “explicitly states that the Presidential Records Act distinguishes presidential records from ‘personal records,’ defined as documents that are ‘purely private or nonpublic character.’”

In contrast, Trump took highly sensitive national security secrets to his glorified country club. To see the two as comparable is to overlook every relevant detail.

University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. Attorney and an MSNBC legal analyst, had a great Twitter thread on this yesterday, calling the former president’s argument “nonsensical”:

…Clinton’s recordings were from his own interviews, qualifying as diaries, which the Presidential Records Act says are not presidential records. No law precluded Clinton from keeping them. Trump is charged not with violating the Presidential Records Act, but instead with violating the Espionage Act. The records Trump is alleged to have illegally retained are agency records, such as records of the CIA, NSA, and Department of Defense, not presidential records.

How does any of this relate to “the Clinton Socks case.” It doesn’t. Trump will need to think of something else the next time he wants to pretend he’s been “exonerated.”

Like the world needs reminding?

American Bridge on Friday announced its new campaign: “This F*cking Guy”. The super PAC means to remind voters of the “chaotic moments from former President Trump’s first term in the White House,” The Hill reports.

Well, if you must, so long as rubbing our noses in Donald Trump gets under Dear Leader’s skin (The Hill):

“The American people already paid the price for Trump’s daily incompetence, inaction, and irresponsibility. He was just as much of a disaster in the White House as he is out of it, and American Bridge is here to remind voters just how much of a nightmare another four years of Trump would be,” Tom Perez, an American Bridge co-chairman who is joining the White House as the head of intergovernmental affairs, said in a statement to The Hill.

Russian troops struggle to adapt

A Ukrainian team had just exited their armored personnel carrier near Bakhmut in March when it came under Russian fire from multiple directions. One killed, nine wounded (New York Times):

The ambush was part of a patient, disciplined operation that was in contrast to the disorderly Russian tactics that marked much of the first year of the war, which began in February 2022. It was a deadly demonstration that the Russian military was learning from its mistakes and adapting to Ukrainian tactics, having grossly underestimated them initially.

Russians are adapting to Ukrainian tactics, reports say, as Ukraine begins its counteroffensive reinforced by NATO weapons and communications equipment.

But Moscow’s forces have improved their defenses, artillery coordination and air support, setting up a campaign that could look very different from the war’s early days. These improvements, Western officials say, will most likely make Russia a tougher opponent, particularly as it fights defensively, playing to its battlefield strengths. This defensive turn is a far cry from Russia’s initial plan for a full-scale invasion and Ukrainian defeat.

To be sure, along a roughly 600-mile front line, Russia’s military abilities remain uneven. Prison inmates have become part of its operations, having emerged prominently in the battle for Bakhmut, despite their lack of training. The Kremlin’s increasing reliance on “kamikaze” drones or airdropped glide bombs reflects an ammunition shortage as much as an innovative strategic shift.

And perhaps a shortage of prisoners as the Wagner mercenary group ran low and had to throw its more seasoned fighters into the battle for Bakhmut.

But?

Near the eastern Russian-occupied town of Svatove, Ruslan Zubariev, a Ukrainian soldier who goes by the call sign Predator, said the Russians used textbook tactics to try to break through his line of trenches in February.

“They have changed tactics in the last six months,” he said, describing an assault that relied on a certain degree of strategy atop brute force.

For four days, Russian shelling destroyed the foliage overhead to reveal Ukrainian positions. Then, he said, they advanced with an armored personnel carrier flanked by about a dozen soldiers.

But in an indication of the limits of tactical improvements, Mr. Zubariev said, the Russians did not have enough intelligence about the locations of the Ukrainian trenches. In the ensuing battle, which he captured on video, Mr. Zubariev, 21, managed to stop the Russian assault almost single-handedly.

“They did everything perfectly,” he said. “But something didn’t work out for them. Not enough information, as always.”

Things have a way of not working out for Russia, as this #Fail video flooding Twitter suggests:

But Russia knows how to leave a mess for others to clean up.

“Ukraine is the world’s largest minefield,” tweets Ryan Hendrickson, founder of Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal. “This is going to take an effort by so many to make areas safe again for the civilian population. First step in this is awareness. The world needs to know the landmine crisis in Ukraine. Thank you @USAmbKyiv for spreading this message.”

Baby wolves!

A zoo in South Dakota has welcomed a litter of critically endangered red wolf pups — a litter vital to the existence of the species with only an estimated two dozen left existing in the wild.

The Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, said that they were “thrilled to announce the births of six critically endangered red wolves” on Thursday in a statement on the zoo’s website.

The six pups — two females and four males — were born to first-time parents Camelia and Uyosi, who only arrived at the Great Plains Zoo in October of last year from facilities in Washington and Texas, respectively.

These six pups are vital to the existence of the species with an estimated 23 to 25 red wolves remaining in the wild and only an estimated 278 alive in captivity, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Red Wolf Recovery Program.

“Camelia and Uyosi are amazing parents, I wouldn’t expect anything less from them,” said Joel Locke, the Animal Care Director of the Great Plains Zoo. “We are fortunate to have vet staff and animal care staff that have worked with red wolves for more than 15 years. We had our last litter from our previous pair of red wolves in 2016, so the team is well-versed in red wolf care.”

Red wolves are currently the most endangered canid species in the world, according to the zoo, and the red wolves at the facility are part of the Red Wolf Species Survival Plan, which aims to “breed pairs with the greatest possible genetic diversity, with the goal of bolstering the wild population.”

“We will soon see the pups wandering around the exhibit, as they get bigger and braver,” the Great Plains Zoo said in the birth announcement. “However, zookeepers request that everyone in the area continue to use low voices, as new wolf parents can be especially susceptible to environmental stressors.”

The pups are now under close observation by the zoo’s veterinary and animal care teams and are also being monitored very closely by camera as well as regular check-ups on their health and wellbeing.