Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Not that he had it to lose

President Biden upset someone’s evil plans by handing off his party’s (presumptive) presidential nomination to VP Kamala Harris.

“Discount Goebbels” has a sad. Trump adviser Stephen Miller is freaking out. This is absolutely delicious. I could have stripped naked and danced in the street. Christmas came early.

Miller is as vile as Trump, but far more strategic. He relished the idea of running Trump against Biden almost as much as sending troops to round up immigrants in detention camps and deporting them by the millions.

The prospect of Biden resigning and handing Harris the presidency meant she, not Trump, would be president No. 47. All that Trump 47 merch would be instantly obsolete. But with Biden’s withdrawal, a whole lot more MAGA gear is obsolete as well as demolishing Miller’s and Trump’s campaign plans.

Miller and Trump are furious. They now have to heavily retool their campaign with only months to go.

Trump hates losing money almost as much as he hates America. (He could declare bankruptcy on the Taj Mahal, and did, one of several Trump bankruptcies.)

But never fear. They’ve already moved on to deploying misogynism and racist stereotypes against Harris.

Will Trump dare debate Harris, former prosecutor os sex offenders, or be branded a coward? Stay tuned.

The worst, ugliest impulses of Trump and his MAGA base will be on display for independent voters to see.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

North Carolina is in play

“Sunday was the single biggest day for online Democratic donations in years, reads the subhead at The New York Times this morning. With President Biden’s withdrawal Sunday, with his endorsement of his vice president as his replacement, and with Kamala Harris the clear pick of multiple state Democratic delegations, now comes the veepstakes.

An avalanche of cash for the Harris coffers followed the announcement — more than $50 million. Endorsements flooded in as well, including 50 state Democratic chairs, members of Congress and governors. A palpable sense of relief flowed through the Democratic Party.

The next big question, and Harris’s first big decision, will be her vice presidential pick.

Swing state governors are clear favorites. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (46), Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (51), and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (52) are in Slate’s Tier 1. But Whitmer has said she doesn’t want it. When did Kentucky become a swing state? Donald Trump won it with over 62 percent in both 2016 and 2020. Shapiro is a possible. He could bring with him 19 electoral votes. Others mentioned in the press are more fantasy football. California Gov. Gavin Newsome brings no new electoral votes into the Democrats’ column, and he’s got a 12th Amendment problem. Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker has been named, but he brings no additional electoral votes for Democrats either. Quick-witted Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, would be an excellent foil for Trump’s VP pick, Sen. J.D. Vance.

Slate names some replaceable senators as possible VPs: Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet (59), Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (60), and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy (50).

I’m going to make a pitch for North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (67). “I’ve literally never heard of Roy Cooper,” a Left Coast friend said over the weekend. Let my friends at Carolina Forward introduce you.

North Carolina (16 electoral votes) has not gone blue since 2008, but it has been narrowly contested. Trump won it in 2016 by under 4 points, and in 2020 against Biden by under 2. Cooper won the governorship in this purplish state in both those elections. He knows Harris going back to their days as attorneys general. He is past president of the National Association of Attorneys General and past chair of the Democratic Governors Association.

The Biden-Harris campaign sees North Carolina as in play and has been pouring more field organizers into the state (and farther out into the red counties than I’ve ever seen). Biden appeared in Raleigh the day after his debate. Harris popped into the state days ago for a rally in Fayetteville that received national press. She has appeared in the state a half-dozen times so far this year. Democrats’ Gen Z state chair Anderson Clayton cut her teeth as an Iowa field organizer for Harris in 2020, so as with Cooper they have a personal connection.

Harris has spoken at length with both Beshear and Cooper. Cooper is also term limited. His dance card is wide open.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

I thought this was satire at first. It’s not:

The problem in the real world is that there isn’t a Democrat who is polling significantly better than Mr. Biden. And quitting, as heroic as it may be in this case, doesn’t really put a lump in our throats.

But there’s something the Democrats can do that would not just put a lump in people’s throats with its appeal to stop-Donald-Trump-at-all-costs unity, but with its originality and sense of sacrifice. So here’s my pitch to the writers’ room: The Democratic Party should pick a Republican.

At their convention next month, the Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney.

You read that right.

I guess Sorkin as lost his touch because that wouldn’t be a lump in the throat it would be a primal scream. Besides, Mitt Romney is 77 years old. Come on.

He’s not the only one. Get a load of the “plan” that’s being circulated for the “mini-primary.”

Uhm. No. We’re not doing this. Biden has endorsed Harris and I believe the party will coalesce around her as well. This fantasy football stuff is nonsense.

James Fallows is a great writer and a professional speechwriter. His examination of Trump’s dumpster fire of a speech and the media’s reaction to it is well worth your while. Every journalist and opinion writer needs to read it .

The piece begins like this:

This post has one central point. It is that the press should give “fair and balanced” attention to what each of the major candidates is revealing about temperament, competence, and cognition, especially in their public performances.

Right now we have these opposing, imbalanced narrative cycles:

—For Joe Biden, every flub, freeze, slurred word, or physical-or-verbal misstep adds to the case against him. There’s an ever-mounting dossier, which can only grow in cumulative importance. “In another difficult moment for the President….” “Coming after his disastrous debate appearance…”

—For Donald Trump, every flub, fantasy, non-sequitur, “Sir” story, or revelation of profound ignorance dulls and blunts the case against him. “That’s just Trump.” “Are you new here? Never heard a MAGA rally speech before?” “It’s what the crowd is waiting for.” “Oh, here comes the ‘shark’ again!” There’s an ever-thickening layer of habituation, normalization, jadedness, just plain tedium. The first five times Trump tells the Hannibal Lecter story, reporters notice and write about it. The next hundred times, they’re checking their phones.

Last night a member of the Washington Post editorial board actually put it just this bluntly. Mehdi Hasan, formerly of MSNBC and now of Zeteo, asked Shadi Hamid, of the Post, about the many ludicrous and damaging claims in Trump’s convention speech, which Hamid had waved off as “just normal Trump.” Hamid chuckled and answered, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that Trump is Trump, and it’s a low bar, and that’s what we’ve got to work with.” To which Hasan replied, “Some of us are trying to raise the bar.” You can see it here.

I’m sure that on reflection Shadi Hamid would have made the point more carefully. But his instant reaction distilled the “it’s just Trump!” framing that has prevailed through the 2024 campaign.

The obvious and unequal result: The public registers more and more about Biden’s “fitness” based on his appearances, less and less about Trump’s.

Then he goes into the speech and it’s devastating. A short excerpt:

First, it was not a ‘speech.’

Eight years ago, I stood near the front of the crowd at the Republican Convention in Cleveland, listening to Donald Trump give his first acceptance speech. I thought it was dark, dystopian, and narcissistic. But it was a speech. It had a beginning, a middle section, and a conclusion. It had a theme. (That theme, unfortunately, was “everything is broken, and I alone can fix it.”) It appeared to have been “written,” and Trump appeared mainly to be saying what was set out in the text. The crowd roared when Trump gave the big, planned applause lines.

Thursday night’s speech started out that way. It had some “writerly” early segments—which you can always identify in Trump’s speeches by the way his voice and rhythm change. When he’s sounding out words from “planned” text on a teleprompter, the energy goes out of his voice, and his tone is that of a schoolboy struggling through an unfamiliar primer. Sometimes he gives a little aside of meta-commentary appreciation for a nice line he’s just read: “You know, that’s so true.”

The written part of this speech contained a “bring us together” line that died on Trump’s lips even as he said it: “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.” And his opening description of the shooting had an unmistakable “he is risen!” framing. For example, with emphasis added:

Many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was. When I rose [!], surrounded by Secret Service, the crowd was confused because they thought I was dead. And there was great, great sorrow. I could see that on their faces as I looked out.

They didn’t know I was looking out; they thought it was over.

But I could see it and I wanted to do something to let them know I was OK. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, “Fight, fight, fight.”

You don’t have be a Christian to recognize the Easter-weekend iconography.

Ugh. And then he kissed a helmet.

Fallows says that if he had gone on in this vein it would have marked a new direction for Trump. But it did not. After the first 30 minutes of his “prepared speech” he went into his usual litany of grievances, hate and gibberish.

To return to the theme of age and its toll on candidates: this was different from 2016. Then, Trump held the crowd throughout. Now, he came across as the guy in a bar you couldn’t get away from. Has age affected Joe Biden? Yes. And Donald Trump too.

Read the whole thing. He makes many very cogent points that should have been taken by the media on the day after and certainly by now. Unfortunately, they have learned nothing from previous mistakes in coverage. So, we have Biden the ancient loser and Trump the “changed man.”

If you want to see all the highlights, you can see them at @atrupar on twitter. If you just want to read through a succinct recap, here’s a handy one from @artcandee:

Trump is not being cared for by a licensed physician but rather by his former “gentleman of the stool.” (Ronny “Johnson” is no longer a licensed physician.)

Here is a letter that rivals his former Dr. Feelgood who distributed a dictated statement from Trump himself:

He is not a real Dr and It appears he wasn’t one even when he was licensed. He was a pill pusher. It’s a shocking fact that he was ever the White House doctor.

We have not heard from any legitimate doctor about Trump’s “wound.” Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neuro-surgeon, has said that we need to know if there was any neurological damage which could have happened if that was, in fact, a bullet wound. It appears they have no intention of doing that. And it also appears that the press has no intention of pushing for “transparency” on the issue.

I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that they have held Joe Biden to a very different standard. The Parkinson’s “debate” is recent. Remember this one?

Same old, same old with the media.meanwhile, here’s how the Trumpers are dealing with this:

After days of hand wringing and peal-clutching over “bringing down the temperature” this is what the right is running with: “the Democrats tried to kill Trump.” And the media is sitting around gossiping about which TV starts we should choose to pick Biden’s replacement. (I’m not kidding.) They’re in a state of febrile excitement and even if Biden drops out it’s not going to change. better get used to it.

A stopped clock

Not a big Bill Maher fan, but this week’s show had some moments. Digby noted a big one. Here are some others.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

But not if the beatings continue

One may find polls to support about any position out there. A set of polls that consistently tilt one way are those reporting that conservatives are happier than liberals. These findings date back years.

Contra that, Rachel Bitecofer cites data from the World Happiness Report—a partnership between Gallup, the Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre and the United Nations—that suggests people who live in red states are, by and large, less happy than those who live in bluer states. European countries, you have heard, report greater hapoiness than the U.S., however. This too is a consistent result. Indeed, “the U.S. fell eight spots to number 23 in the global rankings between 2023 and 2024,” dropping out of the top 20 for the first time in the survey’s history.

But not so fast. Polling of individiuals still more consistently shows that conservatives report being happier than liberals.

Real Clear Science from August 2022:

Social psychologist Jaime Napier, Program Head of Psychology at NYU-Abu Dhabi has conducted research suggesting that views about inequality play a role.

“One of the biggest correlates with happiness in our surveys was the belief of a meritocracy, which is the belief that anybody who works hard can make it,” she told PBS. “That was the biggest predictor of happiness. That was also one of the biggest predictors of political ideology. So, the conservatives were much higher on these meritocratic beliefs than liberals were.”

To paraphrase, conservatives are less concerned with equality of outcomes and more with equality of opportunity. While American liberals are depressed by inequalities in society, conservatives are okay with them provided that everyone has roughly the same opportunities to succeed. The latter is a more rosy and empowering view than the deterministic former.

Two other studies explored a more surprising contributor: neuroticism, typically defined as “a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings.” Surveyed conservatives consistently score lower in neuroticism than surveyed liberals.

There are other studies that show the same thing.

All that is prelude to an observation made last week by David Frum that reduces liberal less-happiness to a single line, one that reflects why efforts at selling a progressive policy agenda fail to persuade voters.

Considering the sideshow put on in Milwaukee last week by the Republican National Committee, Frum assured readers of The Atlantic, “This crew is as beatable as any reactionary minority faction ever was beatable.”

Frum notes, however, that when Bill Clinton gave his SOTU address in 1996, he led with his economic accomplishments “within the very first minute of his speech.” Nearly 30 years later, Joe Biden buried his lede 15 minutes deep into his 2024 SOTU.

Frum believes it reflects the left’s less-happiness (emphasis mine):

This Clinton-Biden disparity reveals something bigger than a difference in presidential style. The Democratic Party has profoundly changed since the 1990s. Today, tremendous power within the party has been amassed by groups and factions that speak for grievances. Good news is contrary to their principles and their purpose. Nobody can be happy if anybody is unhappy. They seem to believe that the way to reelect an administration is to detail all the things still wrong after four years of holding office. Here’s the advice Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut was offering Biden on the eve of his disastrous first debate with Donald Trump: “You should spend 80 percent of the time telling the story of how the drug companies screwed people, and 20 percent of the time explaining the solution. We do the opposite.”

Last year, The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman remarked upon the Biden administration’s “fear of being seen as out of touch—or their fear of being scolded by participants in an elite debate that is invisible to most of the electorate.” That latter observation was exactly correct. Above all else, the Biden administration feared scolding by progressive interest groups. Those groups gain clout within the Democratic universe by accusing and disparaging. They imagine that the same techniques might work for an incumbent Democratic president with a record to defend, seeking to persuade swing voters. They don’t, and they won’t.

Not being a buzzkill sells better, Barack Obama observed. I’ve referred to “glass-half-empty progressives” whose first reflex is to complain about what the “establishment,” the neoliberals, the centrists, etc., did not deliver, that nothing is better than half a loaf. (Nobody can be happy if anybody is unhappy.) We all know them. Some of us are them. We tend do be liberal with sticks and conservative with carrots where it comes to our political allies. This is not the time.

Frum offers a big “Biden must go” caveat:

Democrats seem to be convinced by the hope that the way to inflict the beating is to change leadership. But the biggest defect of the present Democratic leadership was imposed by the Democratic followership: the reluctance to accept the fact that four years of non-Trump leadership have accomplished an enormous amount that is worth defending.

With a predator’s cunning, Trump has always understood that the first step to winning the confidence of others is to project confidence in oneself. Trump has used that understanding for his own crooked and criminal purposes. But the same understanding can be put to good use by better people.

Believe! Or lose.

Lead with the good stuff. Please. Declare victory and don’t stop.

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.