“This is the feeling we want to hold onto”
Didn’t know Anthony Ramos before. I do now.
“Why would we not want to hold onto this feeling?”
Enjoy.
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
Trump has a new chant at his rallies: “Send Them Back!” Isn’t that great?
Former president Donald Trump continued attacking the immigrant population in an Ohio town during a campaign rally Monday in Pennsylvania, saying, “You have to get them the hell out.”
As Trump spoke in Indiana, Pa., the crowd chanted, “Send them back!”
For weeks now, Trump has singled out Springfield, Ohio, over its Haitian population, echoing baseless claims that immigrants are eating pets and calling the immigrants illegal, despite their legal status. His attacks have upended life in the small town, where the Republican mayor has pleaded for civility amid bomb threats and event cancellations for security reasons.
Trump made his latest comments about Springfield at Monday’s rally while accusing Democrats of wanting to “inundate Pennsylvania communities” with migrants, “changing the character of small towns and villages all over our country and changing them forever.”
We’ve collected Harris’s and Trump’s stances on the most important issues including abortion, economic policy, immigration and more.
“Do you think Springfield will ever be the same?” Trump said. “The fact is — and I’ll say it now — you have to get them the hell out. You have to get them out. I’m sorry. Get them out. Can’t have it. … They’ve destroyed it.”
Trump’s campaign promoted a video clip of Trump’s comments on X.
After the chants, Trump added: “It’s terrible to say, and it’s a tough thing to do.”
Trump has long promised mass deportations in his 2024 campaign for the White House, though he has not provided much detail. And his comments Monday appeared to continue conflating the situation in Springfield with concerns about illegal immigration.
“What’s going on in Springfield is just fundamentally different,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said in a recent TV interview. “These people are here legally. They came to work. These are good people.”
Today he said:
The language is French but I don’t expect Trump has ever heard of it.
He wants to ethnically cleanse America of foreign born people from the countries he has deemed to be shitholes. (He won’t be hunting down Norwegian or German tourists or students who have overstayed their visas I’m quite sure.) Don’t kid yourself. That’s what his mass deportation plan is. And frankly, he doesn’t care about the citizenship status of any of these people, particularly not the minor American children of undocumented immigrants who he plans to deport along with their parents.
And don’t be sure the country will rise up en masse against this. Most Republicans think the constitutions shouldn’t provide citizenship for anyone born here in the first place. And according to at least one recent poll, a majority of Americans are in favor of the ethnic cleansing program.
This is a real threat, I hope people realize it. Most of the country has been brainwashed into believing that immigrants are the source of all their problems. They will enjoy seeing them suffer.
Oh right. She’s a woman. How could I forget?
You just can’t underestimate misogyny. And, by the way, a lot of people wearing these degenerate t-shirts and carrying these signs happen to be MAGA women.
As depressing as this is, the subtext of this election is that Donald Trump is a real man and Kamala Harris is a dumb whore.
Ben Wikler, the head of the Wisconsin Democratic Party tweeted this this morning:
Vice President Harris joined Wisconsin Public Radio and talked about what she’d do as president:
* affordable housing
* water quality
* reproductive rights… and more. Everyone should know what she said:
Okay, let’s dig into the Harris interview with Kate Archer Kent of “Wisconsin Today” on @WPR. (above)
The first question in the @KamalaHarris interview on Wisconsin Public Radio was on a topic on *many* voters’ minds: Wisconsin’s shortage of affordable housing.
Wisconsin Today (WT) to VP Harris: “The medium home price in our state has jumped by 41% since September of 2020. You proposed up to $25,000 in down payment assistance for first time homebuyers. What would it take to be eligible for that type of assistance?”
Harris answered directly: to qualify for the $25,000 in down payment assistance, you just have to be a first-time homebuyer.Again. Buying your first home? $25,000 in down payment assistance.This will change a lot of lives. This will help more folks buy homes—which, naturally, will increase demand. So the other part of the equation is increasing supply.
That’s the other part of her plan: “work with the private sector and home builders to create incentives for them to build three million new homes by the end of my first term.”
KH: “But let me just back up for a moment. Look, I grew up a middle-class kid. My mother worked long days, she worked weekends, and she was able to save up so that by the time I was a teenager, she was able to buy our first house.”
KH: “And so I understand being a renter and also what it means for families to aspire to own a home. But, you know, it takes a lot of time, and that was many, many years ago, and the American dream of homeownership has become even more elusive.”
KH: “People just need help, literally and figuratively, getting their foot in the door and, once they’re able to do that, having enough for a down payment.”
KH: “Folks work hard. They save up, and the monthly payments will be more within their reach, but that down payment piece is really one of the big obstacles for first time home buyers to be able to…build up their ability to buy a home.”
KH: “And frankly, home ownership is one of the best ways that people create wealth for their family and intergenerational wealth. So I’m very clear about the connection between this point and what can be a lifetime of economic opportunity for an individual or a family.”
Okay, so what is Harris’s plan to ensure these homes actually get built? Wisconsin Today asked: “How do you incentivize the building of new housing that’s affordable for the people who need it most?”
Harris: “So part of it is tax credits, and creating tax credits for home builders, but home builders who are going to do the work of building homes that are affordable to middle class people, to working people, to families.”
KH: “The second is to cut through the red tape…we don’t unnecessarily burden the ability to create this additional housing that brings down the cost of homeownership and rents. I have a plan to take on corporate landlords who have to be held accountable.”
KH: “We’ve seen in so many places around our country. These corporations come in, buy up a bunch of property, then jack up the prices. It becomes too expensive for people to actually be able to afford to live where they work and where they want to live.”
KH: “The factors contributing to high rents and housing affordability are many. My plan is to attempt to address many of them at once, so we can actually have the net effect of bringing down the cost and making homeownership renting more affordable.”
The second big topic in the interview was toxic “forever chemicals” that are found in tons of drinking water in Wisconsin: PFAS.
Wisconsin Today asked: “Communities all over Wisconsin are struggling with toxic PFAs in their water supply. … If you win the White House, would that lead to further federal regulation of PFAs?”
Harris: “Well, let me start with this. My commitment to these issues is long standing. You may know it. Twenty years ago, when I was elected DA of San Francisco, I created one of the first environmental justice units of any DAs office in the country.”
KH: “I, as Attorney General of California, was a real leader on making sure that we enforced rules and standards that were about reducing PFAs, about what we need to do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and also hold polluters accountable.”
.@KamalaHarris then outlined work she’s been doing as Vice President in the Biden Administration—including delivering nearly $2B in funding to help Wisconsin and communities within Wisconsin address PFAs chemicals.
Harris described how this administration is delivering $3B for replacing lead pipes in cities, including Milwaukee. And the Vice President talked about her administration’s work to protect the Great Lakes from the climate crisis.
The third big topic was a central one for Wisconsin voters—and for voters across the country.
Abortion.
Wisconsin experienced a near-total abortion ban for 451 days after Dobbs fell. Now it’s tied up in court. One bad election could rip away reproductive freedom here.
Wisconsin Today: “You said you want to work with Congress to pass a federal bill to codify abortion rights. How do you plan to get enough support in Congress to restore abortion rights when you’d likely need to pass the Senate filibuster?”
Harris: “Well, let me first say to all your listeners, you must reelect your Senator, @TammyBaldwin, because we need the votes in Congress to do exactly what you are saying.” YES!
“It is well within our reach to hold on to the majority in the Senate and take back the House.”
Harris: “We should eliminate the filibuster for Roe.”
That’s the key. If you do that, you don’t need 60 Senate votes.
Harris: “51 votes would be what we need to put back into law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
To make this happen, we need 50 Democratic Senators… and a Democratic Vice President. VP Harris cast a record number of tie-breaking votes as VP. VP Walz could cast the tie-breaking vote on Tammy Baldwin’s Women’s Health Protection Act and send the bill to President Harris.
So there you go! A substantive interview on topics voters actually care about, answered with clarity and candor by a candidate who wants to lift us up, not divide us. Refreshing, isn’t it? And, this being public radio, the conversation ended with usual warmth and civility:
Wisconsin Today: “Vice President Harris, thank you for joining us.”
Kamala Harris: “Thank you. It’s good to be with you. Thank you so much.”
It’s all the more interesting because the last time Donald Trump did a public radio interview was in January 2022. Here’s how that interview ended. He lied about the 2020 election—then cut off the interview and stormed off. A… contrast with VP Harris.
npr.org/2022/01/12/107…
Trump has been ducking nonpartisan public radio interviews ever since.Just like he’s ducking the second debate.
Want a candidate who can answer substantive questions with… substance?
As David Roberts quipped:
The Supreme Court refused to block the execution of Marcellus Williams last night in a 6-3 decision with the liberals all dissenting. Of course,
From an X thread on the story:
Marcellus Williams was fifty-four when Missouri killed him tonight. Or was he murdered? For over two decades, he sat on death row, convicted of a crime he had always insisted he didn’t commit—the brutal 1998 stabbing of Felicia Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter.
Despite DNA evidence that excluded him as the source of male DNA found on the murder weapon, the state of Missouri pushed ahead with his execution. Williams wasn’t just a faceless inmate confined to a cell. Over the years, he earned two college degrees while incarcerated, using his time to pursue self-improvement despite the looming death sentence. His story is one of resilience and transformation. He often mentored younger inmates, encouraging them to pursue education as a way to reclaim their humanity in a system designed to strip it away. H
His sister, Patricia Davis, once said, “Marcellus never gave up on hope. He believed the truth would set him free.” Even as his legal team fought to prove his innocence, Williams inspired those around him.
Yet, even the victim’s family—who lost a loved one in a horrific crime—expressed doubts about Williams’ guilt. As new DNA evidence emerged that excluded Williams as the source of the male DNA found on the murder weapon, the Gayle family called for leniency, believing that life without parole was a more just sentence given the uncertainty surrounding his conviction. Despite these pleas, Missouri moved forward with the execution, sparking outrage and disbelief among many who followed the case.
Felicia Gayle’s murder remains a tragic loss, and the urgency to bring justice to her case is understandable. However, the rush to execute Williams without fully addressing the new evidence creates a deeply unsettling question: could the real murderer still be free? By not allowing for a thorough re-evaluation of the case, the state may have failed both the Williams family and the Gayle family. Rather than achieving justice, the legal system may have prematurely closed a case that still had questions left unanswered. This rush to finality failed to provide the truth for either family, leaving them both with an unresolved sense of justice.
Missouri’s decision to execute William did not occur in a vacuum—it’s part of a much larger and troubling legacy of racial disparity in the state’s justice system. His conviction rested heavily on the testimony of two incentivized jailhouse informants, both of whom had much to gain by testifying against him. There was no physical evidence linking Williams to the crime. Despite DNA testing showing that Williams’ DNA did not match the male DNA on the murder weapon, Missouri courts never conducted a full evidentiary review of this critical fact. The courts proceeded forward, ignoring exculpatory evidence in favor of maintaining the status quo.
It’s sickening.
Paul Waldman has an excellent analysis of the tiresome elite media lament that the Kamala Harris isn’t giving them enough attention:
You can read many complaints about Harris’s lack of media accessibility (see here or here or here or here), though reporters seem unconcerned about the fact that Donald Trump does no interviews with them either. He talks to Fox News, other right-wing outlets, and dudebro podcasts, but he does not sit down with major newspapers or television networks, and somehow they don’t seem to mind. But as always, Democrats are held to a higher standard, scolded for failing to uphold the most elevated democratic norms while Republicans’ violation of those norms is taken for granted.
[…]
Let’s take a look at one New York Times column that I think reflects the prevailing sentiment. Written by Todd Purdum, who was a longtime Times political reporter and then moved on to positions at The Atlantic and Vanity Fair, it’s presented as friendly advice, explaining to Harris why she should want to give reporters the face time they crave. Purdum starts by saying it took too long for Harris to get to the meaty policy details in an answer she gave about the economy in an interview with a Philadelphia TV station. She needs to offer more “direct, succinct answers and explanations,” he writes, because “Being known as a straight shooter would also help persuade restive political elites, pundits and journalists that Ms. Harris is grappling with such scrutiny, and I think she’s apt to be rewarded in the end for it.”
This is unintentionally revealing. Purdum has little to say about whether Harris’ ideas are good ones; what he’s advising is that she put on a better show. She doesn’t have to be a straight shooter, she just has to appear to be a straight shooter, and then she’ll be rewarded not just by the voters but by the elites who pretend to care about substance, but actually don’t.
That is correct. This is mostly theatre criticism. When they get the chance to ask substantive questions they rarely ask them. They ask about the horse race or the accusations by the other side or typical gotcha questions. It’s why they are so happy with Trump’s press availability which is completely devoid of reason and substance and is all show.
As Waldman notes:
But if she follows Purdum’s advice, reporters will only reward her for it if they judge her to be a compelling performer and if they feel she has been properly deferential to them, which I suspect she and her campaign understand.
He also discusses the fact that all of this “advice” is delivered with an implicit threat — either do what we want you’ll pay. And we have a very recent example of what that looks like, don’t we?
Waldman references a piece by Judd Legum author of the popular newsletter Popular Information. Legum reports that he has received the hacked Trump emails, allegedly purloined by Iran, which were previously delivered to The Washington Post, Politico, The NY Times and Puck. (There are probably others.) They have all refused to publish these emails which are about the vetting processes for JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Doug Burgham and apparently some legal matters.
Legum won’t publish the emails because he was peripherally involved in the Russian DNC hack back in 2016 and he doesn’t see any reason to perpetuate this sort of thing. I’m not sure I agree with that in this case. It just seems like one more way to benefit Trump at a time when the stakes are monumental. Nobody’s principles in matters like this are going to matter much when he starts rounding up his enemies.
But Legum does at least give a scathing indictment of the media’s outrageous behavior last time, when it was the much hated Hillary Clinton they went after as part of their years long quest to take her down. (And they wondered why she didn’t much like talking to them…)
Waldman writes:
According to Legum, in the waning days of the 2016 campaign, the New York Times published an incredible 199 articles mining Democratic emails — stolen by the Russian government and passed to Wikileaks — for juicy tidbits. But that obsessive coverage, the Times said in an editorial published that October, was actually Hillary Clinton’s fault. “Imagine if months ago, Mrs. Clinton had done her own giant information release,” they wrote. “Journalists and the public could have waded through them, discussed them, written about them — and by now, everyone would have long since moved on.”
Which of course they wouldn’t have; the press had long before decided that Clinton was corrupt, and they were going to paint her that way no matter what (you may have noticed that reporters’ passion for policing proper email practices was decidedly muted when it was Trump administration officials using private emails for government work).
We see some variant of that excuse again and again, questionable or even appalling news judgments rationalized with “This would have gone better for you if you had given us what we wanted,” an assertion that is not only implausible but echoes the abuser’s victim-blaming. Look what you made us do. You brought this on yourself.
Of course. And one thing we know for sure: they will never take even the slightest responsibility for their role in any of it.
I guess the death penalty states are now racing to execute people at a record pace:
Death row inmates in five states are scheduled to be put to death in the span of one week, an unusually high number of executions that defies a yearslong trend of decline in both the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S.
If carried out as planned, the executions in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.
This country is in the grip of a death cult. Maybe it always has been.
I will never understand how a country can call itself civilized if it allows the state to kill people under a system that is nearly random and fraught with corruption and inequity. It’s pretty clear that it’s only done as a form of ritual punishment by the government to show that it can.
Update: Check out this piece by Bolts about the violent, criminal guards who carry out the secretive executions on Alabama. Yes, it’s barbaric.
It’s all about “policy” you see. As Philip Bump writes:
You will often hear that Trump has an advantage on policy; that, if the campaign set aside all of the fluff of personal emotion, Trump would prevail simply by virtue of the popularity of his positions. That his support is rooted in what he stands for, not who he is.
This is not true.
First of all, efforts to present Trump’s campaign as centered on policy are derailed more than a little by the paucity of policy proposals he’s offered. He had something he called “Agenda 47” that was the policy arm of his primary campaign, but it was mostly videotaped riffs about whatever furies were animating the right at any given moment.
This is why the effort to tie Trump to the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” has been so successful. Here was an actual outline of policy proposals, written by people close to Trump and/or who’d served with him. Trump’s ability to dismiss the outline as nonrepresentative is weakened by the lack of a campaign counterweight. (Polling released over the weekend by NBC News shows that most Americans have heard of “Project 2025” — and don’t like it.)
What Trump supporters mean when they say that he wins in a campaign focused on policy is that they think an election centered only on specific policy issues — the economy, inflation, immigration — is one that favors Trump. It’s not that Trump has a detailed paper explaining how he plans to steward the economy; his agenda can be summarized as “lots of tariffs” and “wasn’t 2019 cool?” The argument is instead that focusing on those things positions Trump more favorably than focusing on other stuff — like abortion or the stability of American democracy.
Another factor here is that many of Trump’s allies use “policy” as a way to minimize his toxic or bizarre rhetoric. We can see that in polling conducted by YouGov for CBS News that was released over the weekend.
About 9 in 10 Americans said that the candidate’s policies were important to their vote when asked, including 84 percent of Democrats, 86 percent of independents and 89 percent of Republicans. When asked whether personal qualities were important, a bit over half said they were — with a wide partisan gap. About 7 in 10 Democrats said personal qualities were important to the their vote; only 4 in 10 Republicans did. Because, you know, Trump supporters are simply focused on policy.
Also, he is a cult leader. That means he is right about everything. No need to sweat the details.
An explanation is warranted
Brian Beutler wisely suggest that Vice President Kamala Harris needs to remind voters why, if she’s ahead in the polls, she and Gov. Tim Walz are still underdogs.
“We’re not going back” suggests inevitability. So does “When we fight, we win.”
Beutler writes:
In this regard, as confident underdogs, the Harris campaign offers its supporters both hope and encouragement to put in work. It’s a simple strategy, and I think it’s a good one.
But I also think Harris herself might benefit from being a bit more explicit about why she and Tim Walz, despite leading steadily in national polls, consider themselves underdogs. They have a good case to make. It cuts right to the heart of critical weaknesses and corruption in our political system. And the messaging might work even better if more of her supporters understood why she’s running into the wind.
It’s the Electoral College. Political geeks know this. Greg Sargent knows this. It’s just a poor assumption that the general public busy with jobs and kids and shopping and church and soccer practice knows it. Team Harris-Walz wants supporters energized but not lulled into complacency by a popular vote polling lead. Tell them why they shoudn’t be.
The problem is: In the Trump era, that’s not good enough for Democrats. Trump lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.1 percent, representing nearly three million ballots, and still won the election. Joe Biden won the popular vote by 4.5 percent, representing over seven million ballots. It was good enough for him to become president, but he only won the tipping point state of Wisconsin by 0.6 percent, representing just a bit over 20,000 votes. It suggests that if Biden had won the national popular vote by just under four points—say, by five or six million votes, instead of seven—he, like Clinton, would’ve lost.
So as Han Solo once said, don’t get cocky. A 2.3 percent polling lead does not a Harris presidency make.
As of this writing, the tipping-point state is likely to be Pennsylvania. That’s the upper-midwest “blue wall” state where Harris’s lead is smallest—a mere 1.2 percent. Her lead there, though slim, mercifully suggests the Electoral College’s pro-GOP bias has shrunk since 2020—that a three point national popular vote margin will be good enough. It also suggests that a tiny change in the dynamics of the election could throw the whole thing to Trump, against the will of a popular majority.
But wait, there’s more.
Harris doesn’t just have to pad her popular vote margin to overcome Electoral College bias. She also has to overcome the margin of Republican cheating and insurrection.
Our Electoral College is indefensible, but its current bias isn’t part of some conspiracy against her. Trump supporters just happened to be better distributed geographically to win 270 electoral votes while losing head-to-head nationwide.
The corruption scandal is that Trump and the GOP want to exploit these arbitrary, antidemocratic aspects of our system to make it even harder for Democrats to win.
Put Tim Walz onto it
Okay, Nebraska’s split vote. The Blue Wall states. The 12th Amendment that could “throw the whole election to the 50 state delegations in the U.S. House of Representatives.” There are a host of Republican lawsuits in swing states aimed suppressing the votes of people Trump will lock up if handed the presidency again. It all matters. But it’s complicated.
Harris is busy selling herself to some voters and still introducing herself to others. Explaining why all that means she and Walz are still underdogs is a job for the guy with the 1979 International Harvester Scout. He can break it down and make the complicated simple.
There’s a difference between the two major parties so fundamental that former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney suggests the Republican Party is now too far gone to save.
But it’s not so weakened that it cannot cheat its way into the Oval Office, Beutler warns. That’s what the Harris campaign must better explain. That’s why it can be leading in the polls and still be the underdog.
This is just the most basic difference between the two parties juxtaposed before us. One that’s happy to ratfuck its way to power without popular support, another that would never dare. It’s why Harris can call herself an underdog. And if more people understood her meaning, Trump’s chicanery would be more likely backfire.
And don’t forget to vote on the first day.
“Revenge does take time”
Policy. We all know that’s what this presidential election is about. Fence-sitters like New York Times columnist Brett Stephens have inquiring minds. They want to know what policies Vice President Kamala Harris will pursue before voting for her. Even knowing the other entrée choice is, as humorist David Sedaris put it, “a platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it.”
Because everyone knows what Donald Trump’s policy agenda for his second term is: revenge. And lots of tariffs.
“I love getting even with people,” Trump told Charlie Rose in 1992, “if given the opportunity.”
Nothing has changed in the intervening years. Trump’s view of the world — of women especially, a pundit said this week — was frozen in amber in the late 1980s when his real estate empire was at its peak. On Trump’s revenge agenda should he win in November is an expanding list of enemies, many of whom he’s never met, against whom he holds grudges. People he wants rounded up by troops and deported. People he thinks should face military tribunals. Or IRS audits. Or federal investigations that upend lives. People he thinks should be put in jail for criticizing Supreme Court decisions or him.
This is not theoretical, Michael Schmidt wrote on Saturday in the New York Times. He sought to deploy the Department of Justice as a weapon for personal revenge in his first term. He was frustrated, albeit not entirely, by advisers who sought to stall, dissuade, and divert him:
In an Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump told startled aides that if Attorney General Jeff Sessions would not order the department to go after Hillary Clinton and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, Mr. Trump would prosecute them himself.
Recognizing the extraordinary dangers of a president seeking not just to weaponize the criminal justice system for political ends but trying as well to assume personal control over who should be investigated and charged, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, sought to stall.
Those efforts were not entirely successful. Schmidt and Matthew Cullen detailed ten people on Trump’s enemies list eventually hit with punitive actions that disrupted their lives and cost hundreds of thousands in fines and legal fees.
MSNBC’s “Deadline White House” opened on Monday with a montage of Trump’s musings on revenge. Treason is punishable by death in the Constitution, a reporter noted in May 2019: “Who specifically are you accusing of treason?”
Trump didn’t blink. He cited a list of people he felt had wronged him who should be charged with treason (extremely loosely defined).
“Revenge does take time,” Trump told “Dr. Phil Primetime.”
Trump is biding his. If he wins a second term and anyone opposes him, he told a rally last September, he’ll order his attorney general to indict them.
He’ll go full Queen of Hearts given a second chance at the Oval Office.