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Appealing To The GenZ Boys

Published by digby on September 5, 2024

This is kind of depressing but it’s important. Dan Pfeiffer took a look at the gender gap and it’s a large as ever. But the younger men of Gen Z are far more likely to vote for Trump this year than they were in 2020. And it’s a problem. If the current numbers hold, Trump will win the election:

In the NBC News Stay Tuned poll of Gen Z:

Now, in a Harris-Trump race, the gender gap among Gen Z voters is significant. Young women said they’re going to vote for Harris for president by 30 points. Young men also said they favor Harris — but by only 4 points over Trump.

The sample of men under 30 is too small to get a real picture of why. In focus groups of young men who previously supported Democrats but are open to voting for Trump in 2024 many cite dissatisfaction with the economy, tremendous cynicism with politics, distrust of institutions, and a sense of being left behind or undervalued by our current culture.

Young men are Trump’s top target in this race. That’s why his convention featured a wife beating MMA fighter introducing him and he entered the stage to the tune of “it’s a man’s world.”

Trump’s campaign advisers explicitly target young men — of all races. Specifically, the Trump campaign curated a group that Axios somewhat cringely deemed the “Bro Vote” — politically disaffected young men who spend a lot of time online.

Trump’s media strategy overindexes on outlets and influencers who have great sway with this group. In recent weeks, Trump appeared on podcasts with MAGA-friendly comedian Theo Von, former Navy Seal Shawn Ryan, and Lex Fridman — a favorite of Elon Musk. Each of these podcasts have large, mostly male audiences especially on YouTube; and the clips continually go viral on TikTok.

Trump also courted influencers like Jake and Logan Paul, Adin Ross, and the Nelk Boys. It’s possible — perhaps even likely — that you have never heard of these people (I wish I hadn’t) and depending on your TikTok algorithm, you may have never seen a single clip from these interviews. This strategy is also why Trump’s first TikTok was a video of him doing a “walk on” at a UFC match.

All of these interviews get one one millionth of the scrutiny of Kamala Harris’s much anticipated CNN interview even though they are arguably much more impactful, seen more people and certainly seen by more of the persuadable voters who don’t watch cable news (the median age of a CNN viewer is 67). Few political reporters covering Trump watch these interviews or write them up. Trump’s appearance on Shawn Ryan’s podcast has nearly three million views. His interview with Vonn has 13 million views. Less than seven million people watch the CNN interview.

This massive oversight betrays a naive, anachronistic understanding of the media diets of the voters who will decide this election.

The problem?

Biden won voters under 30 by 24 points. According to the NBC News poll, Harris is up only 16 points with this cohort.

Pfeiffer suggests that Democratic men go on some of these shows and mix it up a bit, at least giving this cohort some sense of the Democrats’ understanding of their worldview. These people are steeped in misogyny and violence and whether or not Harris wins this election, it’s bad for the country.

But I have to wonder if anyone can compete with this garbage, which is so grotesque that it literally made me want to vomit. It’s the entire subtxt of this election, started by Donald Trump himself who pushes the “Willie Brown” story every chance he gets. These pigs just made it explicit:

That isn’t just some cultural trope that we aren’t supposed to take literally. That’s about a specific woman who is running for president and Trump and his campaign, in a dozen different ways, are saying that she’s not just a childless cat lady who wants to destroy the country, what she really is, is a dumb whore. This is more explicit than Trump and his boys but not by much.

You can read a whole story about this in the NY Times from a while back (gift link) They don’t seem too concerned about it.

The “Sane-Washing” Is Getting Worse

Published by digby on September 5, 2024

Mike Barnicle had a viral clip on Morning Joe today about the media refusing to report on Trump as he really is:

Greg Sargent went deeper on this subject today, referencing Barnicle and pointing out that we are simply not seeing the kind of coverage of Trump’s obvious unfitness that we saw about Joe Biden just a couple of months ago. It’s not that nobody ever says anything about this. But it’s almost in passing, as if it’s not the central story of the campaign. We have a man who is manifestly incapable of being president and we know it. And it’s much worse than it was in 2016 because nobody was sure at the time whether it was an act. It’s not an act.

The media failure this time is completely inexcusable.

Sargent writes:

 I’ve taken 10 prominent headlines on stand-alone stories that ran about Biden’s age before he dropped out. I’ve rewritten them (links to the originals are included) around Trump’s mental unfitness. Reading these, you can see how journalists might spend much more time talking to associates of Trump who privately witness his unbalanced behavior, or questioning Trump himself directly about his mental lapses, or analyzing polls showing that majorities see Trump’s pathological lying as concerning in a president, or looking at specific rants as symptomatic of Trump’s much larger infirmities:

Are these headlines really stretches, based on all we’ve seen? I submit that they are not. Note that all of these treat signs of the subject’s questionable mental fitness for the presidency—and the politics surrounding them—as themselves being the real news. How often do you see headlines like this? Why don’t we see more of them?

They are not stretches. Look at this:

Now look at how the NY Times wrote up this atrocity of an economic speech this morning.

Yes, Trump did recycle his old moldy economic tropes from 2016. But that’s not the point. He rambled like a lunatic, lied, stumbled and digressed and when they asked him questions it was clear he had no fucking idea what he was talking about.

This man is not a novice anymore. He is a former president who sounds like a junior high school kid who didn’t do the homework. He’s still completely clueless about policy and is so psychologically damaged (or intellectually lazy) that he hasn’t the capacity to learn anything.

There’s a story here that these people are determined not to tell. And I’m just stymied as to why. It’s the story of their lifetime.

Update: Oh dear God

Here’s the transcript of Trump’s daft comment on child care:

Here’s how the NY Times reported it:

Does that accurately reflect what he said?

A Member Of The US Senate

Published by digby on September 5, 2024

We wonder how it can be that Donald Trump is running even with Kamala Harris even after all we know about him and his demented performance on the stump?

There are tens of millions of people who are just like him. Like Senator Ron Johnson who is a multi-millionaire.

This still disorients me even after all this time. I thought it was just a fringe.

Put Elon In Charge

Published by digby on September 5, 2024

Musk’s new “commission” looks like a go

He plans to cut taxes and regulations to make life easier for his vastly wealthy friends to raze the government to the ground:

Donald Trump plans to outline a suite of economic proposals in a speech here Thursday, including introducing a government efficiency commission recommended by Elon Musk, taking an even more aggressive swipe at regulations than during his first White House term and pledging to rescind certain unspent funds appropriated during the Biden administration.

The commission would conduct “a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government” and make “recommendations for drastic reform,” the Republican former president plans to say in an appearance before the Economic Club of New York. The goal would be to identify ways to eliminate fraud and improper payments, according to portions of the speech viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

An “audit” and “performance review” by the guy who just destroyed twitter for his personal entertainment.

Whatever. It’s a joke designed to appeal to tech bros and Wall St greedheads to give him more money. But it’s right up there with the “immigration task force” he convened in 2017 to prove that he actually won the popular vote in a landslide for embarrassing wastes of time.

Update:

yikes…

Republicans Make Rubble Bounce

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 5, 2024

They’re banning what’s already banned

Credit:NASA/JPL

As closely as I monitor these things, this one slipped by me (Center for Media and Democracy):

Eight states will vote to amend their state constitutions in November to ban noncitizens from voting in elections. If these amendments pass in Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin, it will bring the total number of states with constitutions specifying only citizens are allowed to vote to 20.

The little known dark money group Americans for Citizens Voting (ACV) is backing and tracking the effort. Since 2018, voters in six states have added the amendment to their state constitutions.

ACV has its eyes locked on another 11 states in 2025: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, according to its website.

ACV has enlisted the help of the pay-to-play American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to move a model state constitution amendment in these states and others to ban noncitizens from voting in elections.

It is already illegal for green card holders or undocumented immigrants to vote in federal and state elections in all states, but ALEC’s “Citizen Only Voting Amendment” would extend the voting prohibition to elections at all levels of government.

This is despite the fact that evidence of noncitizen voting is scarce. “Every legitimate study ever done on the question shows that voting by noncitizens in state and federal elections is vanishingly rare,” the Brennan Center reported. As the nonpartisan law and policy institute points out, even the Charles Koch-founded and funded Cato Institute determined that “noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.”

Progressive advocacy groups place abortion rights amendments on state ballots to both restore women’s bodily autonomy and incentivize turnout. So I supposed it’s not surprising that conservative dark money groups goose their xenophobic base with amendments to outlaw non-citizen voting that’s already outlawed.

Axios reported on North Carolina’s proposed amendment in July:

Between the lines: Already, only citizens are allowed to vote in North Carolina, and whether or not a majority of voters approve the amendment in November won’t change that.

Still, the GOP framing of the border crisis has hit home with Republicans and Democrats alike and could give them a leg up at the ballot box this year.

Meanwhile, former President Trump has claimed that waves of illegal immigrants are voting in our elections, though there’s no evidence to support that.

But absence of evidence for your conspiracy theory is not evidence of absence, amirite?

Liz Cheney, Patriot

Published by Tom Sullivan on September 5, 2024

Precious few, but not no principled conservatives

Only a fool would predict a new Donald Trump scandal will finally collapse his support. The Trump shock troops who cover their lawns and trucks and boats and bodies in loud professions of their MAGA faith are too far gone.

Trump has spent his life flouting the law using his daddy’s money, his own notoriety, and a bevy of attorneys to keep himself out of the hoosegow. It’s the habit of a lifetime of crime. Laws that apply to ordinary people are but annoying flies Trump swats away. He believes his shit doesn’t stink (contrary to reports) despite attracting swarms of prosecutorial flies.

If anything does end Trump, it won’t be a bullet or another criminal indictment or an investigation into his illegally accepting $10 million in 2016 from an account tied to the Egyptian General Intelligence Service. It might be a personal insult to ordinary Americans. Like the families of fallen soldiers he’s already described as losers and suckers. Only this time, he did not issue the insult on foreign soil but at Arlington National Cemetery.

Perhaps Trump’s exploitation of the nation’s war dead last month to film a campaign commercial was the last straw. And he may still evade accountability for that. A sane candidate would let the matter drop. Not Trump. He’s too entitled for that.

On Wednesday at Duke University, former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, already a prominent Trump opponent, endorsed Trump’s Democratic opponent for president, Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Duke Chronical reports:

Former Congresswoman Liz Cheney revealed she will vote for Vice President Kamala Harris at a Wednesday Duke event titled “Defending Democracy.”

Peter Feaver, professor of political science and director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy, who moderated the event, asked Cheney if she wanted to “make news” by endorsing a presidential candidate.

Cheney had previously not weighed in on which candidate she would be supporting in the 2024 presidential election.

“Because we are here in North Carolina, I think it is crucially important for people to recognize … that Trump poses something that should prevent people from voting for him, but I don’t believe we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names — particularly in swing states,” she said. “And as a conservative, and someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”

Her comments elicited a standing ovation from the audience.

The Associated Press:

The daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney has been perhaps Trump’s highest-profile Republican critic. She joins other Republicans like her former Jan. 6 committee member, former Rep. Adam Kinzinger and former Rep. Denver Riggleman, as backers of Harris. More than 200 alumni of the Bush administration and former Republican presidential campaigns of the late Sen. John McCain and Sen. Mitt Romney also announced their endorsement of Harris last week.

Asked for comment, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung responded: “Who is Liz Cheney and what does she do?”

Dripping with contempt, that comment from Cheung, Dear Readers, is Trumpism in a nutshell. With all the attendant misogyny.

The Harris campaign responded (ABC News):

“The Vice President is proud to have earned Congresswoman Cheney’s vote. She is a patriot who loves this country and puts our democracy and our Constitution first,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote. “As she noted in her powerful remarks, this election is a choice between the fundamental threat Donald Trump poses to our democracy and a leader who will stand up for our freedoms and the rule of law in Vice President Harris.”

Jimmy McCain, son of the late Republican Senator John McCain, also endorsed Harris following Trump’s Arlington commercial shoot. The BBC reports that three generations of McCain family members are buried at Arlington:

He added: “The point of Arlington Cemetery is to go and show respect for the men and women who have given their lives to this country. When you make it political, you take away the respect of the people who are there.”

Mr McCain, who was previously an independent, said he has changed his voter registration to Democrat and plans to vote for Ms Harris for president in November.

Trump’s Arlington Cemetery incident may not have finally tipped the scale for Cheney, but surely played a role. Let it not be said that there are no principled conservatives left. Precious few, but not none.

I wish this wasn’t an evergreen post

Published by Dennis Hartley on September 4, 2024

You know it’s the first day of school in America when…

I’ve run out of words on this subject, so I am reposting this (again).

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on February 14, 2023)

Tell me why: A therapeutic mixtape

In a 2016 piece about the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, I wrote:

But there is something about [Orlando] that screams “Last call for sane discourse and positive action!” on multiple fronts. This incident is akin to a perfect Hollywood pitch, writ large by fate and circumstance; incorporating nearly every sociopolitical causality that has been quantified and/or debated over by criminologists, psychologists, legal analysts, legislators, anti-gun activists, pro-gun activists, left-wingers, right-wingers, centrists, clerics, journalists and pundits in the wake of every such incident since Charles Whitman perched atop the clock tower at the University of Texas and picked off nearly 50 victims (14 dead and 32 wounded) over a 90-minute period. That incident occurred in 1966; 50 years ago this August. Not an auspicious golden anniversary for our country. 50 years of this madness. And it’s still not the appropriate time to discuss? What…too soon?

All I can say is, if this “worst mass shooting in U.S. history” (which is saying a lot) isn’t the perfect catalyst for prompting meaningful public dialogue and positive action steps once and for all regarding homophobia, Islamophobia, domestic violence, the proliferation of hate crimes, legal assault weapons, universal background checks, mental health care (did I leave anything out?), then WTF will it take?

Well, that didn’t take:

Morning dawned Tuesday on East Lansing to a rattled Michigan State University campus hours after a mass shooting left three dead and five others critically injured.

An alert was sent at 8:31 p.m. Monday, telling students to “run, hide, fight” with a report of shots fired at Berkey Hall and at the MSU Union.

Two people were killed at Berkey Hall, said university Interim Deputy Police Chief Chris Rozman. The gunman then moved to the MSU Union, where another was killed.

Students were told to shelter in place as authorities searched for the gunman. The 43-year-old suspect was Anthony McRae, Rozman said at a news conference Tuesday. McRae was found off campus early Tuesday before he could be arrested; he had died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. […]

McRae was not affiliated with the university, and authorities didn’t know early Tuesday why he came to MSU.

“We have absolutely no idea what the motive was,” Rozman said.

“Absolutely no idea” indeed. As in, I have absolutely no idea why our legislators cannot seem to take even one tiny infinitesimal step forward on enacting sensible gun reform.

OK…I have some idea:

And today, Michigan’s governor (as any decent and compassionate leader reflexively does) has donned the mantle of Consoler-in-Chief:

It appears the governor and I are of like mind:

Saddest of all, the MSU shootings occurred on the eve of a grim anniversary:

You remember Parkland, right? In my review of the 2020 documentary After Parkland, I wrote:

So where are we at today, in the two years since a gunman opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle at Stoneman Douglas High, killing 17 people and wounding 17 others in just 6 minutes? According to a 2019 AP story, a report issued in February of last year by a student journalism project “…concluded that  1,149 children and teenagers died from a shooting in the year since the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,” citing that the stats cover “school shootings, domestic violence cases, drug homicides and by stray bullets”. Mind you, nearly another year has passed since that report was released. […]

The most powerful moments [in After Parkland] are in the beginning, which contains a collage of real-time cell phone audio of the Parkland incident. The chilling sounds of automatic gunfire and students screaming in pain and terror brought to mind Martin Luther King’s quote ”Wait has always meant never ”. If every lawmaker was locked in chambers and forced to listen to that audio on a continuous loop until they passed sensible gun reform, perhaps they would all finally reach their breaking point.

You know what “they” say-we all have a breaking point. When it comes to this particular topic, I have to say, I think that I may have finally reached mine. I’ve written about this so many times, in the wake of so many horrible mass shootings, that I’ve lost count. I’m out of words. There are no Scrabble tiles left in the bag, and I’m stuck with a “Q” and a “Z”. Game over. Oh waiter-check, please. The end. Finis. I have no mouth, and I must scream.

Something else “they” say…music soothes the savage beast. Not that this 10-song playlist that I have assembled will necessarily assuage the grief, provide the answers that we seek, or shed any new light on the subject-but sometimes, when words fail, music speaks.

As the late great Harry Chapin tells his audience in the clip I’ve included below: “Here’s a song that I could probably talk about for two weeks. But I’m not going to burden you, and hopefully the story and the words will tell it the way it should be.” What Harry said.

“Family Snapshot” – Peter Gabriel

“Friend of Mine” – Jonathan & Stephen Cohen (Columbine survivors)

“Guns Guns Guns” – The Guess Who

“I Don’t Like Mondays” – The Boomtown Rats

“Jeremy” – Pearl Jam

“Melt the Guns” – XTC

“Psycho Killer” – The Talking Heads

“Saturday Night Special” – Lynyrd Skynyrd

“Sniper” – Harry Chapin

“Ticking” – Elton John

More reviews at Den of Cinema

—Dennis Hartley

Oh My Dear God

Published by digby on September 4, 2024

I think he’s finally broken:

Has there ever been anyone with less self-awareness on this planet?

Clarence’s Mouthpiece

Published by digby on September 4, 2024

Is there any doubt that Ginni is speaking for her husband here?

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, privately heaped praise on a major religious-rights group for fighting efforts to reform the nation’s highest court — efforts sparked, in large part, by her husband’s ethical lapses.

Thomas expressed her appreciation in an email sent to Kelly Shackelford, an influential litigator whose clients have won cases at the Supreme Court. Shackelford runs the First Liberty Institute, a $25 million-a-year organization that describes itself as “the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty for all Americans.”

Shackelford read Thomas’ email aloud on a July 31 private call with his group’s top donors.

Thomas wrote that First Liberty’s opposition to court-reform proposals gave a boost to certain judges. According to Shackelford, Thomas wrote in all caps: “YOU GUYS HAVE FILLED THE SAILS OF MANY JUDGES. CAN I JUST TELL YOU, THANK YOU SO, SO, SO MUCH.”

Shackelford said he saw Thomas’ support as evidence that judges, who “can’t go out into the political sphere and fight,” were thankful for First Liberty’s work to block Supreme Court reform. “It’s neat that, you know, those of you on the call are a part of protecting the future of our court, and they really appreciate it,” he said.

These many “judges” she speaks of must be the corrupt wingnuts on the Supreme Court since all other judges already have to adhere to an ethics code. Only her husband and his cronies aren’t subject to one.

It’s interesting that a religious liberty organization is weighing in on this. I guess Jesus was in favor of judicial corruption.

You’d think that Ginni would keep a low profile since she’s been exposed as a right wing provocateur and coup plotter. Then again, why? Nothing will ever come of it. She’s teflon and so is her husband. They do what they want. It’s yet another sad illustration of the fact that our system requires people of integrity to run it and if they fail, it requires people of integrity to police it. It’s not working out.

This Frontline feature on Clarence and Ginni is worth watching if you haven’t seen it:

Get Ready For The New Conspiracy

Published by digby on September 4, 2024

Sigh. Trump’s assassination attempt was an inside job:

Just hours after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, high-profile allies of the ex-president began promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and blaming President Joe Biden and Democrats, without evidence, for causing the horrific attack. Trump and his surrogates have continued nonstop ever since with this coordinated messaging, which security experts have told me could provoke retaliatory violence from pro-Trump extremists. In late August, backers of Project 2025 joined the effort pushing this dangerous propaganda.

On Aug. 29, podcast host Monica Crowley interviewed Trump and proposed without evidence that he may have been targeted for murder from within the Biden administration.

“The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks,” said Crowley, a former Trump administration spokesperson and a credited contributor on the Project 2025 policy tome detailing a hard-right agenda for a second Trump presidency. “Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious—maybe even inside job?”

“Well, it’s strange,” Trump replied. Then he speculated about the deceased gunman’s father hiring “the most expensive lawyer” and suggested a partisan conspiracy involving former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. Weissmann quickly denounced Trump’s comments as false on social media. A spokesperson for Elias Law Group told me that no one from the firm has had any involvement in any aspect of the case.

Trump further claimed in the podcast interview, first reported by Media Matters for America, that the FBI had failed to gather evidence from the gunman’s cellphone. That’s untrue: FBI Director Christopher Wray and other FBI officials have spoken publicly about the bureau’s extensive investigation into the gunman’s background and activity, including his various digital communications.

Trump and Crowley then riffed about the JFK assassination, with Crowley reiterating the baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Trump: “You were shot five or six weeks ago, and the imperial media, the regime, they’ve all buried it. They don’t want anybody talking about it, which also lends credence to this idea that this is very suspicious and could have been an inside job.”

“Yeah, true,” Trump interjected. “They don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Tells you bad things,” Trump said, starting to draw a connection with the broader conspiracy theory at the core of his campaign.

This will be an article of faith before the election. There’s no way Trump can accept that it was just some young would-be mass shooter Republican kid. It has to be a conspiracy.