Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Harris demonstrated Trump’s weakness

Kamala Harris is hardly the first person to observe that Donald Trump is easily manipulated with flattery. Particularly, flattery from autocrats and dictators he admires and whose respect he craves. They belong to an exclusive club he desperately wants to join, a strongman club that wouldn’t have an infant like him for a member.

Harris said of Trump during last night’s debate:

He’s trying to again divide and distract from the reality, which is it is very well known that Donald Trump is weak and wrong on national security and foreign policy. It is well known that he admires dictators, wants to be a dictator on day one according to himself. It is well known that he said of Putin that he can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine. It is well known when that he said when Russia went into Ukraine it was brilliant. It is well known he exchanged love letters with Kim Jong un. And it is absolutely well known that these dictators and autocrats are rooting for you to be president again because they’re so clear, they can manipulate you with flattery and favors. 

But flattery and favors are not the only ways Trump is easily manipulated. Time and again in last night’s 90 minutes, Harris baited traps for Trump, and he walked straight into them.

Time magazine:

Over the course of almost two hours Tuesday night, the Vice President effectively needled the former President on his deepest insecurities while painting a clear choice for voters. Trump in response repeatedly took the bait and doubled down, leading him to go on wild tangents, engage in angry outbursts, and relitigate old battles. It was a striking dichotomy for voters to take in from two figures who share so little when it comes to political instinct, personalities, and even personal discipline. Harris leveraged Trump’s total lack of that last element to set the agenda for the evening.

When Trump boasted about receiving 75 million votes in 2020 and complained about alleged irregularities in Georgia, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Harris pounced.:

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. So, let’s be clear about that. And clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.” World leaders, Harris said, “are laughing at Donald Trump.”

Trump responded by citing Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán as a character reference.

Harris invited people to attend Trump’s rallies and watch him babble about

…. fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your, your desires. And I’ll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.

Trump took the bait again (Time again):

Then he puffed up his political chest: “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.” The dispute was completely immaterial for undecided voters and would win him zero new votes, but Harris understood exactly what she had done: in inviting Trump’s ego to overtake actual issues, she was showing his pettiness in full display. And, for millions of voters watching Harris in such an environment for the first time, it’s impossible to imagine a better first showing.

What Harris showed (after a shaky first few minutes) was that she was in control in that space and Trump was not. Trump charged that Democrats threw Biden out of the campaign “like a dog.” Harris led Trump around like Pavlov’s. And she didn’t do it with flattery like Trump’s dictator pals. She pressed his buttons and he salivated.

There was only one leader on the stage last night.

The childless cat lady sings

You can’t unsee it. Donald Trump last night bested Joe Biden with a Grandpa Simpsonesque debate performance even more unsettling against Vice President Kamala Harris. If Trump’s goal was to be best of the worst, congratulations, Donald, you did it.

Trump made at least 33 false claims during the debate, fact-checker Daniel Dale told CNN viewers Tuesday night. But that’s not the point anymore. Facts have never mattered to Trump, nor to his MAGA cult. As Maya Angelou said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

How did they feel about seeing Trump afraid even to look at Harris?

How did Americans feel about Harris pledging to fight for them, all of them, while Trump whined about his crowd size?

How did they feel about Trump citing Viktor Orbán, the autocratic prime minister of Hungary, as a character reference?

There were too many memorable moments to review. Too many Harris zingers and Trump belly flops. But I’m reminded of Gov. Tim Walz telling an audience: Who is asking for for the agenda Trump and Republicans advocate? For more tax cuts for the rich? To shred the social safety net and take away more of our freedoms, etc.?

More to the point after last night, who is asking for four more years of Trumpism? Who is asking for four more years of race-baiting? Who is asking for four more years of this kind of insanity? How did they feel about this?

This is the moment when Trump left ZERO doubt that his mind is in a state of rapid deterioration: "In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there." pic.twitter.com/5T5oKxxyZz

— Bill Madden (@maddenifico) September 11, 2024

Shortly after the debate, a famous “childless cat lady” who sings endorsed Harris in a cogent Instagram statement while urging Americans to register and vote.

Ready for it 🫶 pic.twitter.com/TqDdzlhWto

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) September 11, 2024

Dog my cats.

Joe Ross: Funny old world.
Susan Ricci: Funny old world? Dog my cats!
Joe Ross: Dog my cats indeed.

Trump arrives with his debate prep team headed up by Laura Loomer. pic.twitter.com/4RpO3dSHoX

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 10, 2024

Here’s the story on Loomer, from last May. She is on the inside of the Trump campaign:

Loomer, a far-right activist and former Republican congressional candidate, has plenty of evidence that Trump likes her. There are all the times he’s boosted her videos on Truth Social. There was the event last summer, at Trump’s New Jersey golf club, when the former president spotted Loomer on the rope line and invited her onto his private balcony. There was the shout-out at a rally in Iowa, in January, when Trump praised her as “a very important person, politically.” There were the former president’s invitations to fly on Trump Force One, his Boeing 757 — Loomer remembers being a passenger three times, Trump aides recall only two — bobbing along to Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U”en route from Palm Beach to Des Moines last January. There’s also the fact that Trump reportedly wanted to hire her for a campaign role last spring,before aide sintervened.

So she’s been working toward a second coming of Trump on her own, as something of a cheerleader-slash-opposition researcher. Loomer has made Trump’s causes her own since 2015, when Trumpaccused Mexico of sending “rapists” across the border and called for a “complete and total shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States. That kind of incendiary rhetoric didn’t keep Trump out of the White House, but Loomer’s anti-Islam utterances, among other alleged terms-of-use violations, cost her access to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. She can’t use Lyft or Uber (including Uber Eats) because she criticized the companies for employing “Islamic immigrant driver[s].” (“I’m not anti-Muslim,” she told me, “but I am anti-Islam.”) She claims PayPal, Venmo, Cash App and GoFundMe also booted her.

None of this has chastened Loomer, who maintains she’s done nothing wrong. “I actually collect Mohammed cartoons,” she told me at one point, referring to the prophet of Islam,the depiction of whom is considered offensive among Muslims. She hasa copy of a January 2015 cover of Charlie Hebdo — the one depicting a tearful Mohammed, published in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on the headquarters of the French satirical magazine. “It’s iconic,” she says of the magazine cover. “It’s about free speech. It’s a testament to how barbaric Islam is.”

Loomer is too much for even her ostensible allies in the MAGA-friendly media to stomach. She often claims Fox News has blacklisted her andlaments that the right-wing media personalities of Turning Point USA and the Daily Wire don’t invite her on their shows — even though they’re quick to applaud her handiwork online. A Fox News spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment; a spokesperson for Turning Point USA said that Loomer has attended their events and that hosts have shared her reporting. In a recent post on X, Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing called Loomer “occasionally effective,” if also “occasionally hyperbolic” and “prone to seeing correlation as causation and connection as conspiracy.”

[…]

“I get calls all the time — from our allies in the House, for example — ‘How can you have that sewer rat on?’” says Stephen K. Bannon, the MAGA field general and “War Room” podcast host,of Loomer.

“Laura Loomer is a political science experiment gone wrong,” says Peter Schorsch, a former Republican operative who now runs the website Florida Politics. “She’s what happens when you take a gadfly and inject it with that radioactive waste from Godzilla.” “Some people say, ‘Oh, Laura has a personality disorder,’” Loomer says. “I don’t. I just don’t like how disloyal people are.”

But never mind all that, because Trump himself likes her — which makes her,potentially, a player. A person of relevance. An influential figure, despite it all. The presumptive Republican nominee for president “appreciates her fearlessness and tenacity,” according to a senior Trump campaign aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.

She is a player.

Oh my dear God.

Just a few weeks ago, Loomer called Harris "a brain-dead bimbo who sucked so much c**k in order to get to the political position that she's in today."

Now she's accompanying the GOP presidential nominee to the debate. https://t.co/oL0mTDYQeL

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 10, 2024

Enjoy a little pre-debate fun.

Holy sh*t this new VP Harris ad airing on Fox is going to drive Trump nuts pic.twitter.com/I6Mt59h6Vg

— MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 10, 2024

Rebecca Traister has written an inspiring feature about the Harris candidacy that you don’t want to miss. She talks about the fact that the burst of enthusiasm around her candidacy was fuelled almost entirely by the grassroots, much of it led by women, especially Black women’s groups that have been around awhile, quietly going about the business of electing Democrats.

She writes:

As we settle into the second phase of this candidacy and old hands regain control in preparation for the presidential debate on September 10, the question is whether the cautious, moderating forces that have long guided Democratic electoral politics will tamp down the people’s power that was unleashed this summer and jeopardize Harris’s chances of victory. And also whether those in charge in the Democratic Party and in the Washington press corps even understand where that power comes from: a true women-led movement, built over decades and given new life in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016, working in service of a female presidential candidate running on a set of policies around housing, care work, abortion, health care, and labor that this candidate understands to be inherently, but not exclusively, “women’s issues.” It is a movement galvanized by a devastating setback for women’s rights — for civil rights — that seeks to rectify that wrong and usher in a new era of American politics.

“It feels like finally our political culture is catching up to the extent to which women are shaping politics and shaping our democracy,” said Ai-jen Poo, senior adviser for Care in Action, a domestic-workers organization. “Women are owning and organizing to protect democracy in a totally different way.”

She describes how, in the days leading up to Biden’s withdrawal, all the Democratic poohbahs were determined to hold some kind of “blitz primary” and create some rube goldberg mechanism for “choosing” the right person to replace him. Those of you who read this blog regularly will remember that Tom Sullivan and I were adamantly against all of that, from the very beginning believing that Harris was the only choice and that the people who were pushing this nonsense were completely out to lunch. Traister points out that some of those people include Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama. But then Biden endorsed Harris right away (I think she sort of ungenerously questions his motives there) and while it took a few days for the naysayers to come around, the instant grassroots enthusiasm left them no choice but to get onboard:

Whatever reservations these leaders might have had were swept aside by a fervor for a Harris presidency that few people in Washington could have predicted. In her first week, she raised $200 million, two-thirds from first-time donors; more than 170,000 people volunteered for the campaign. The first day alone, 28,000 people signed up, more than 100 times what the Biden campaign had been seeing on an ordinary day. Within 48 hours of Biden’s stepping aside, I was crossing the street carrying a newly minted HARRIS sign for my kids and was greeted by honking horns, thumbs-up, people yelling from cars, “Where did you get that?” As Eaddy put it to me, “If you’ve seen The Wiz on Broadway, it was like when they sing ‘A Brand New Day.’”

The Win With Black Women call “really set the tone for the energy and momentum we’ve seen,” said Harris’s campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who is the granddaughter of famed labor activist César Chávez and describes herself as “an organizer by birth and by blood.”

One person who worked for Clinton in 2016 and afterward for Biden called me that first week nearly in tears. “They were just there for her,” she said, marveling at that first Sunday call. “It’s like these women just knew what to do. They formed a protective cocoon or maybe a kind of platform that could raise her up with joy and confidence. It was just like, ‘We got this. We got you.’”

The party came together in an unprecedented show of unity. I’m still reeling to tell you the truth. But it’s because the “cringe” Resistance just kept going (as Hillary Clinton exhorted them to do) and when the time came they were ready:

“You can see people reaching in and wanting to be a part of this and fuel it,” said Whitmer, a co-chair of Biden’s campaign and now of Harris’s. “Normal people. People that were sitting on the sidelines are now activated, people that were at the Women’s March and see that this is the moment where we can use organizing to push Kamala Harris over the finish line. The reason we’re having so much success as a campaign is because that work has been done — not finished, but the ground game has been growing — at that grassroots level over the last eight years.”

It’s quite a story and a hopeful one. I highly recommend the whole thing. She concludes with:

The people have the power, Harris told the Women’s March. The strength of the nation has always relied on the organizers, she told the Win With Black Women call in 2023. When we fight, she tells us now, we win. Maybe this time, we finally will.

We have to.

Asked of a panel of likely voters in swing states what they thought Harris and Trump most wanted to achieve from a term in office:

Harris:

Trump:

Sounds about right. I would just ask you to contemplate what it means that nearly half the country says they plan to vote for the second one.

Mark Cuban tweeted this and I thought it was useful:

I think one major point the discussion of tariffs is missing is the time and cost to businesses, even the smallest single person company.

It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of bureaucracy. It almost always required hiring a broker to deal with all of it.

And of course there is the ongoing record keeping that each business is responsible for.

Here is what @grok had to say (really growing attached to @grok @elonmusk)

When importing products that are subject to tariffs, here’s what you generally need to do:

1. **Determine the Tariff Rate**: Use the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States (HTSUS) to classify your product and find out the applicable tariff rate. This classification involves determining the correct HTS code for your product, which can be complex and might require consulting with a customs broker or trade specialist.

2. **Calculate the Duty**: Once you know the tariff rate, calculate the duty you’ll owe. This duty is based on the customs value of the goods, which includes the cost, insurance, and freight (CIF) value. The formula typically looks like this: Duty = Customs Value * Tariff Rate.

3. **Customs Entry**: File a customs entry through the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system, usually with the help of a customs broker. This entry includes all necessary documentation like commercial invoices, packing lists, and possibly a bill of lading or airway bill.

4. **Pay the Duty**: You’ll need to pay the calculated duty, along with any other fees or taxes, to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) before or at the time of entry. If you’re using a customs broker, they might handle this for you, but you’re ultimately responsible.

5. **Compliance with Other Regulations**: Beyond tariffs, ensure compliance with regulations from other agencies like the FDA for food products, USDA for agricultural products, etc. This might involve additional certifications, inspections, or permits.

6. **Record Keeping**: Maintain detailed records of all transactions, including invoices, duty payments, and any other documentation. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) might audit these records, and you need to prove compliance with trade laws.

7. **Consider Tariff Engineering**: If possible, look into ways to reduce tariffs. This might involve changing the product’s design, sourcing materials from countries with lower tariffs, or qualifying for free trade agreements like the USMCA (for products from Mexico or Canada).

8. **Price Adjustment**: Since tariffs increase the cost of your goods, you might need to adjust your pricing strategy. This could mean raising prices, absorbing some of the cost, or finding ways to reduce other costs.

9. **Understand the Impact**: Be aware that tariffs might affect your competitiveness. Consider how these costs impact your market strategy, including potential price increases for consumers or the need for alternative sourcing.

10. **Stay Informed**: Tariff rates can change due to trade agreements, policy changes, or disputes. Keep abreast of any updates through official channels or trade publications.

Remember, while customs brokers can handle much of the paperwork and payment processes, as the importer of record, you’re responsible for ensuring all information is correct and all duties are paid. If your business involves frequent imports, investing in knowledge or hiring experts in international trade compliance might be beneficial. 

#8 is especially relevant, don’t you think? It’s inflationary. But you knew that.

Any small business person who imports anything and votes for Trump is a fool. He’s talking about imposing tariffs on everything.

The Philly Inquirer proposed a set of questions for Donald Trump tomorrow night that would be fantastic:

I wish I had confidence that this is the caliber of questions we can expect but I don’t. Get ready for more questions like “how do you answer Vice President Harris’ accusation that you are anti-democratic?”

“People need to know what they’re up against”

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick spoke with Ari Berman of Mother Jones, author of “Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People―and the Fight to Resist It.” He warns that anti-democracy forces inside this country are doing what the far right always does: doubling down.

Republicans love few things more than a twofer. They have one in spreading a new conspiracy theory that noncitizens are voting in numbers and tipping elections away from decent, All-American white people.

Berman says, “[I]t’s the newest version of the Big Lie, and it’s really a twofer for them because they are fusing voter fraud paranoia with anti-immigrant hysteria. And in doing so, they’re building support both for new restrictions on voting, but also for new restrictions on immigration. So it’s basically taking two of the most important planks of the MAGA agenda and putting them together.”

But that’s just filigree. The real meat of Stop The Steal 2.0 is far more sophisticated than Rudy Giuliani’s Four-Seasons-Total-Landscaping presser and dripping hair dye:

This is a much more organized effort, because they have changed the laws in a number of places to make it easier to effectuate these outcomes. They don’t need to bang on the doors outside the polling place in Michigan anymore, because they’re inside the polling places in a lot of these places now. They are the election officials who will be counting the ballots, or election observers who will be much closer to counting the ballots.

They’re inside the courts too.

Berman continues:

That’s why they changed the rules in Georgia well ahead of time. To get ahead of the thing so they don’t need to challenge it after the election. They’re already laying the groundwork not to certify the election in Georgia. We don’t know if they’ll be successful—it’s very likely their efforts to try to not certify elections will be blocked by the courts ahead of time or blocked by the courts after the fact; I think most people are confident of that.

What I worry about most is that they’re also trying to send a signal to other states and other Trump people to do this ahead of time. I worry that the votes were counted in 2020 and then lawsuits were filed to overturn the votes, but the votes had already been counted. What if the votes aren’t counted? What’s a court going to do then? That changes the whole process. Then you might have disputes that look much more like Bush v. Gore as opposed to what we saw in 2020 and just outright trying to steal an election.

Very clever, these criminal minds. And like Ford’s pardon of Nixon, the legal system going easy on the people behind the insurrection means they’ve just learned from their 2020 mistakes. They’re thinking ahead:

Not only did the “Stop the Steal” people seemingly face no accountability other than maybe being slapped on the wrist here or there, maybe disbarred or losing their license, but basically they have been resurrected to lead “Stop The Steal” 2.0, which is a lot more sophisticated than it was the last time. All of these Trump-aligned think tanks are laying the groundwork for these policy changes this time around. You have the Conservative Partnership Institute raising millions and millions of dollars to work with state officials and to put election deniers in positions of authority.

Berman believes Democrats are fighting asymmetric warfare where it comes to election protection and court battles. The real fight is happening now under their noses.

[Republicans are] not fighting on policy. They don’t care about policy. They’re laser-focused on changing the rules to make sure they can succeed where they failed in 2020. That is the overriding goal of the MAGA movement right now.

Question: If Donald Trump doesn't win, what will you do?

Trump supporter: I hope that I’m going to die. I don’t want to live like this anymore.

It's a cult pic.twitter.com/hthvsSUoTw

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) September 9, 2024

And they’ve got a large swath of MAGA voters convinced they are in an apocalyptic fight for “their” country. They’ve built a well-funded network of operatives planning to “win” elections no matter how the votes totals go. Democrats are bringing a butter knife to a gunfight, if I read Berman right.

I’m inquiring into what contingency plans are being made for direct, nonviolent actions if needed in the post-election period to protect the vote count and elector process from physical disruption. Taking nothing away from Marc Elias and his network of election protection lawyers, I worry that we’re going into democratic battle armed with little more than harsh language. 

Register. Vote. Volunteer.

Update: Will Bunch just weighed in on this topic.

“Americans are being impacted by the authoritarian threat right now,” Amanda Carpenter, the disaffected former aide to Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz, posted on X/Twitter, referring to assaults on voting rights in Texas and Florida. “Believe it. This is what authoritarians want to put on steroids and enact on a federal level.”

Republicans would rather rule

The mailing of over 100,000 North Carolina absentee ballots in-state and to armed service members and others residing overseas will be delayed for weeks. (Dare we again use unprecedented?) North Carolina’s state Supreme Court on Monday ruled for RFK Jr. on his demand that his name/party that he fought to include on state ballots now be removed. One hundred county Boards of Elections have already printed roughly 3 million in-person and absentee ballots with Kennedy’s name on them. His delay in withdrawing from the presidential contest to endorse Donald Trump means strapped county boards must pay reprinting costs.

As we noted on Saturday, “2,348 ballot styles will have to be reformatted, reproofed, reprinted, mailings re-prepared by staff, and voting machines recoded in 100 counties.” The cost of Kennedy’s vanity project to North Carolina taxpayers and delay to voters will be considerable.

State law requires absentee ballots to be mailed 60 days ahead of the general election. That was Friday, September 6. The court split 4-3 to circumvent that law , with one Republican justice joining two Democrats in dissent (WRAL):

Democratic Justice Allison Riggs, who is also on the ballot this year as she seeks to retain her seat against state Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, wrote in dissent Monday that Kennedy’s request wasn’t worth missing what could end up being close to a month of the state’s mail-in voting period.

She referenced the fact that until recently, Kennedy had been fighting to get onto the ballot in North Carolina and said that it’s not clear if he has actually dropped out of the race.

“Elections — the cornerstone of our democracy — are not games or exercises in ego-stroking,” she wrote. “With a disturbing disregard for the impact on millions of North Carolina voters, [Kennedy] seeks to have his cake and eat it, too. Forcing the state to put his name on the ballot, creating for the state costs both practical and legal, he now wants to reprint millions of ballots because he has decided to suspend his campaign without actually ending it or foreclosing the possibility of his election.”

“It amounts to a suspension of state law not mandated by the representatives of the people and grants a favor to one candidate not extended to other candidates, namely, additional time to decide whether to stand for office,” Democratic Justice Anita Earls wrote in her dissent.

State officials have said that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and could delay the start of mail-in voting for weeks, blowing well past the deadline Friday set by state law. They made those points to the Supreme Court, asking for a reversal of the Court of Appeals order so that they can go ahead and send out the ballots they’ve already printed with Kennedy’s name. They also question Kennedy’s true motives, noting that even as he claims he will face “irreparable harm” if his name appears on the ballot in North Carolina, he’s also fighting separate legal battles to make sure his name does appear on the ballot in other states including New York and Mississippi.

“It’s hard to know what the answer is as far as what Kennedy’s thinking?” said Shawn Donahue, a political science professor at New York’s University of Buffalo of Kennedy’s efforts to get placed on the ballot in New York. In denying RFK Jr. access, a New York court found that the address Kennedy used in his petition was a sham, and that he exhibited (NPR) a pattern of “borrowing addresses from friends and relatives” while actually living in California.

Republican control of the courts both federal and state mean that thumbs are on the scale. The GOP is pulling out every stop and working every lever to gain advantage in this election. GOP operatives display remarkable creativity in devising new ways to monkey-wrench democracy to thwart the will of the people. If only they applied those talents to solving problems Americans face day to day, to improving people’s lives. That they do not, compounded with their rejection of democracy, their embrace of authoritarianism, and promotion of a convicted criminal for president, testifies to the fact that power is their political project, not governing. They’d rather rule.