Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Looks like the bloom is off the DeSantis rose:

DeSantis pulled back a contentious plan this week to add golf courses and hotels at some Florida state parks. The governor acted after his administration’s “Great Outdoors Initiative” faced a withering blast of criticism from across the political spectrum, including from one-time GOP allies who may run for governor when he’s out of office.

Local school board candidates he backed underperformed in the Aug. 20 primary. He is feuding with the lone Jewish Republican in the Legislature after that lawmaker called out DeSantis for recently traveling to Ireland — which has recognized Palestine as a country.

And two initiatives on the November ballot on abortion access and recreational marijuana appear poised to pass despite the governor’s opposition.

[…]

“I don’t think the backlash about parks was about him being a lame duck,” said Jamie Miller, a veteran political consultant who once worked for the Republican Party of Florida. “But I also do think that when the governor was tone-deaf in the past, people would go along with it. And now they’re positioning themselves for their political futures and you won’t see them do that.”

[…]

The potential passage of the two amendments on abortion and marijuana could also affect the governor’s legacy. DeSantis has been very vocal about the two measures and his chief of staff is running two political committees aimed at defeating them. DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis will hold a donor retreat next week at a golf resort in north Georgia to raise money for their opposition to the initiatives.

[…]

The recent events stand in stark contrast to most of DeSantis’ first five years as governor, including when he achieved a nearly 20-point reelection victory in 2022. DeSantis became a conservative star due to his handling of Covid-19 where he reopened schools faster than other states and fought against mask and vaccine mandates. He also waded into policy including a much-publicized battle with Disney after the company objected to a state law over classroom instruction of gender and sexual identity.

In the lead-up to his presidential run, DeSantis had continuous cooperation with the Florida Legislature on a series of laws about guns and abortion and other conservative touchpoints that he touted on the campaign trail. Many Republicans who disagreed with the governor rarely challenged him, and those who did said they were punished for doing so.

As one of his critics said, “You’ve got to be nice to people on the way up because there is going to come a time when you are on the way down,” Sadly for Ron, he’s just not capable of it.

This arrogant jerk did a lot of damage in his “anti-woke” campaign to destroy the Florida education system, torture ex-felons, alienate the state’s largest employer and treat migrants like political prey. Let’s hope his career has gone the way of a previous Great Whitebread Hope, Scott Walker, and we will never have to hear from him again. When your presidential campaign crashes as badly as his did it’s very hard to come back.

Trump at Moms For Liberty on Friday, the group that just can’t stop losing elections:

“The transgender thing is incredible. Think of it. Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child and you know many of these childs [sic] fifteen years later say, ‘What the hell happened? Who did this to me?’ They say, ‘Who did this to me?’ It’s incredible.”

“But uh the transgender thing is an incredible thing… your kid goes to school & comes home a few days later with an operation the school decides what’s going to happen with your child & you many of these childs 15 years later say “what the hell happened who did this to me?”

🤦🏻‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/BNyNscBgUB

— Jennifer Jenkins Brevard (@JenkinsBrevard) August 31, 2024

What the ever loving fuck is he talking about?

We really need to start talking about the serious problem with our society. It’s one thing to have fringe freaks out there who say stuff like this. That’s always been true. Nothing you can do about that, it’s a free country. But never has one of them mesmerized almost half the country into voting for him for president. Something’s gone very wrong.

And here’s one reason why. Check out the headline from the LA Times:

No, that is not an adequate way of describing what Trump said. That headline should say “Trump says public schools are performing transgender surgeries on students.” That’s what he said. And it should be the top story in America. But it isn’t. In fact, if it’s mentioned it’s only in passing.

They have normalized this freak show and I don’t know what it’s going to take to restore society to a place where someone who says something this insane is no longer someone that almost half the country respects enough to put into the most important job in the world.

Simon Rosenberg on the “Trump underperforming the polls” thing:

[Y]ou often hear commentators talk about Trump overperforming public polling in 2016 and 2020 which means we need to be up by 3-4-5 points or more in the polls to win. That may have been true in 2016 and 2020, but it is core to our understanding here that everything in American politics changed with Dobbs, it was a before and after moment, and that:

Republicans have underperforming public polls in races of all kinds all across the country since Dobbs. We’ve been overperforming public polls not them.

Trump underperformed – not overperformed – public polls in his primary elections, sometimes by a big number

The fascists underperformed public polls in the recent European and French elections, and the right got blown out in the UK.

Every election is unique, not like any other. I think comparisons to 2016 and 2020 are unhelpful, for Trump 2024 is now an insurrectionist, a rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon, and the man who stripped the rights and freedoms away from the women of America. He is far more degraded, diminished and extreme. Just as I wrote in what became a very prescient 2021 essay, 3 Reasons Why 2022 Will Not Be 2010, I believe, deeply, that 2024 will not be 2020 or 2016. I think it is far more likely that Trump underperforms than overperforms public polling, and that we end up kicking his ass this November.

The common rebuttal is that Trump hasn’t been on the ballot since Dobbs so we don’t know if he’s still got those hidden voters or not. But Rosenberg brings up one data point that refutes that: the primaries. Trump did underperform rather substantially and did so long after his rivals had already flamed out or dropped out.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Trump is personally weaker now than he was in the previous two presidential elections. He doesn’t have the swagger or the energy he once had and his campaign has not been able to adapt to changing circumstances, largely because he just doesn’t have any resilience anymore. He’s old, he’s exposed as a criminal and facing very, very serious legal jeopardy and he really has no business being in the race at all.

And yet even under Rosenberg’s rosy scenario this race is much closer than it should be under those circumstances. I would not take anything for granted.

Wow. This is a new low, even for Trump.

“It Was a Setup,” “Could have been the parents” Trump tries to blame Gold Star families for the Arlington incident
pic.twitter.com/7eO9CZ3tag

— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) August 31, 2024

I can see why he said this was a horrible interview. He was asked about the Florida abortion ban and royally screwed himself with that answer. And now this. It’s amazing what a couple of straightforward questions can elicit. More people should try it.

Trump cannot change, nor will he

“Are we in La La Land?” asks Colbert I. King in the Washington Post.

“He’s on our side,” Donald Trump told a rally crowd on Friday as police hauled off a supporter for attempting to assault reporters.

Associated Press:

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. (AP) — A man at Donald Trump’s rally in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, stormed into the press area as the former president spoke Friday but was surrounded by police and sheriff’s deputies and was eventually subdued with a Taser.

The altercation came moments after Trump criticized major media outlets for what he said was unfavorable coverage and dismissed CNN as fawning for its interview Thursday with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.

The man made it over a bicycle rack ringing the media area, and began climbing the back side of a riser where television reporters and cameras were stationed, according to a video of the incident posted to social media by a reporter for CBS News. People near him tried to pull him off the riser and were quickly joined by police officers.

The crowd cheered as a pack of police led the man away, prompting Trump to declare, “Is there anywhere that’s more fun to be than a Trump rally?”

Yes, at Harris-Walz victory party, numbnuts.

🚨🇺🇸 MAN SUBDUED AT TRUMP RALLY AFTER STORMING PRESS AREA

During a Trump rally in Johnstown, PA, a man stormed the press area but was quickly subdued by police with a Taser. The incident followed Trump’s criticism of major media outlets.

Source: AP

pic.twitter.com/RVOHl1HolP

— World Media News (@WMEDIAPR) August 31, 2024

Clearly “on our side,” Trump said approvingly.

It’s a measure of the gangrenous rot Trump has spread across the country that even after the January 6 insurrection he fomented, after his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election, after the threats he’s inspired against election workers, after his repeated dishonoring of veterans, and after 34 felony convictions, Trump glibly keeps inspiring followers to violence and his cultish followers keep being inspired to act out on his behalf. It’s who he is. He will not change. He has no conscience. He never had a moral compass. Whether he has a soul is beyond my discernment.

King continues:

If I didn’t know better, I might conclude that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, in which rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election, was merely the act of exuberant “patriots” voicing their displeasure with Joe Biden’s victory — and that Donald Trump had nothing to do with it. What else to think, based on the media’s treatment of the twice-impeached former president and felon and his campaign to return to the White House?

Trump is being covered by the press as if Jan. 6 were old news.

A fifth grand jury indicted Trump this week in the stolen government documents case against Trump. Special counsel Jack Smith filed the charges even as a large fraction of addled people in this country seem torn between which party’s presidential ticket to choose in November. La La Land, indeed.

King goes on:

Imagine a president singling out his own vice president for the scorn of a bloodthirsty mob and sitting back as Secret Service agents scrambled to protect him and his family. Imagine a president receiving reports of members of Congress fleeing the Capitol for their lives and not immediately sending reinforcements to the Hill. Imagine a president leaving it to a D.C. mayor and her police force to rescue U.S. Capitol Police.

We don’t have to imagine it. We watched it. We’ve lived it. Trump’s voters don’t have to imagine it either. It’s what they voted for in 2016 and in 2020. It’s what people like the man arrested in Johnstown, and those convicted and jailed over Jan. 6, and those still awaiting trial and sentencing for it will vote for in 2024. All the while calling themselves American patriots.

We want our leaders to be inspiring. But this is not what we imagined getting.

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

And when to dismiss him as a boob

Kamala Harris is driving Donald Trump crazy by shrugging off his racist and misogynist attacks, Karen Tumulty believes:

The standout moment in Kamala Harris’s first interview as Democratic presidential nominee consisted of a mere seven words: “Same old tired playbook. Next question, please.”

That was her answer when CNN’s Dana Bash brought up Donald Trump’s recent outrageous suggestion that the vice president, who is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican parents, “happened to turn Black” as a matter of political expediency.

David Cohen, friend, cartoonist and drummer extraordinaire, crafted an even pithier rejoinder that would have elicited cheers and fist pumps from Democrats had Harris thought of it: “When did he decide to be orange?”

Harris and her team have generally refused to take the bait from Trump. “Why would we step in this man’s way?” said one campaign official.

Trump’s live and online rants have become even more outrageous and insane lately than those to which we are sadly accustomed. Running against a woman, a Black woman, and this Black woman have thrown him completely off his game. He’ll face the rest of his life in jail or in court if he loses this November. His flailing, however, disproves the old saw about a hanging in the morning focusing the mind.

As for Harris, Tumulty suggests:

Harris, not known as a particularly deft politician, is also walking a thin line. Although she declares herself proud of what the Biden-Harris administration has achieved, she is portraying herself as a candidate of change who will “turn the page on the last decade of what I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.”

We are back to Salena Zito’s formulation in The Atlantic eight years ago. When Trump says bonkers things, “the press takes him literally, but not seriously,” she wrote, while “his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.”

That thin line Harris must walk lies somewhere in between. She must brush off his crude attempts to “get her goat” with what he says (to borrow an ancient phrase). At the same time, she must take seriously what he does.

Trump’s antics this week at Arlington National Cemetery were clownish and boorish, but also illegal behavior to be taken seriously. Trump clearly thought with the cemetery visit he could repair the self-inflicted wounds his campaign recently incurred when he equated civilian Presidential Medal of Freedom winners with veterans who’d earned the Congressional Medal of Honor with their blood.

The Medal of Freedom is actually better, he quipped, because the latter goes to soldiers “either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.” When he gave it to his friend and donor, Miriam Adelson, she was still “a healthy, beautiful woman.”

The Arlington visit Trump thought might help repair his image with veterans simply made it worse (CNN):

The US Army issued a stark rebuke of former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign over the incident on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, saying in a statement on Thursday that participants in the ceremony “were made aware of federal laws” regarding political activity at the cemetery, and “abruptly pushed aside” an employee of the cemetery.

“Participants in the August 26th ceremony and the subsequent Section 60 visit were made aware of federal laws, Army regulations and DoD policies, which clearly prohibit political activities on cemetery grounds. An ANC employee who attempted to ensure adherence to these rules was abruptly pushed aside,” the Army spokesperson said in the statement on Thursday. Section 60 is an area in the cemetery largely reserved for the graves of those who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is Trump behavior to take seriously. It reinforces, writes Michael Tomasky, “the view—potentially deadly to him—that he has contempt for veterans and soldiers who died serving the country.”

It reveals, adds Greg Sargent, “a level of contempt for the law and public service that’s incompatible with democracy.”

Democrats should get to the bottom of the Arlington fiasco. At issue is the casual designation of public servants as the enemy, the blithe treatment of public procedures as thoroughly dispensable, and the contempt for the ideal of an independent military—all hitched to the passing whims and needs of Trump and his movement. They’re all incompatible with maintaining a healthy democratic public sphere, and the question once again is whether Trump will be allowed to get away with all of it.

Trump desperately want to be taken seriously. He just wants to dictate which of his behaviors and comments get treated that way and to claim victimhood when backlash comes down on his head.

Kamala Harris is beginning to get which is which.

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

In honor of childless cat ladies (and anyone who loves cats, childless or not), may I present the best cat feed on Instagram:

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Drennon Davis (@drennondavis)

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Drennon Davis (@drennondavis)

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Drennon Davis (@drennondavis)

Comedian Drennan Davis has made his cats, Frog, Toad, Newt and Doug famous. Once you take a deep dive into his Insta you won’t be able to get out easily. They’ve gotten me through more than a few depressing days.

What?

I honestly don’t know what to say about the NY Times anymore. It just gets worse and worse. There are obviously some great reporters there and they do some incredible work. But this kind of stuff is just killing their credibility.

America’s gaping shortage of affordable housing has rocketed to the top of voter worry lists and to the forefront of campaign promises, as both the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, and the Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump, promise to fix the problem if they are elected.

Their two visions of how to solve America’s affordable housing shortage have little in common, and Ms. Harris’s plan is far more detailed. But they do share one quality: Both have drawn skepticism from outside economists.

NY Times Pitchbot couldn’t have said it better.

In fact, only one of them is an actual policy while the other one is a xenophobic wet dream disguised as one. To even compare them is absurd,

Ms. Harris is promising a cocktail of tax cuts meant to spur home construction — which several economists said could help create supply. But she is also floating a $25,000 benefit to help first-time buyers break into the market, which many economists worry could boost demand too much, pushing home prices even higher. And both sets of policies would need to pass in Congress, which would influence their design and feasibility.

That sounds like a plan, which will have to be worked out through negotiation with all sides and depending on the majorities or lack thereof in congress it may or may not be realized. That’s called normal democratic governance. Fine.

So what does the other side have to offer to solve this problem?

Mr. Trump’s plan is garnering even more doubt. He pledges to deport undocumented immigrants, which could cut back temporarily on housing demand but would also most likely cut into the construction work force and eventually limit new housing supply. His other ideas include lowering interest rates, something that he has no direct control over and that is poised to happen anyway.

It’s “garnering even more doubt?” No kidding. It sounds like they are trying to sell their fascist round up as a way to confiscate people’s property. Golly, I wonder where they got that idea?

The deportation plan, if implemented, would wreck the US economy in general and the idea that anyone would take it seriously as a housing policy is beyond belief. What in the world are they thinking?

As for interest rates, Trump will just take credit for lowering them even though anyone who understands what the Fed is knows he would have nothing to do with it. Nonetheless, it’s part of his “plan” that we are asked to measure against Harris’ actual policy and judge to be no more lacking in substance.

Something very bad is happening at the paper of record. This isn’t about “taking sides” or reporting the fact. They are no longer reporting the truth.

Q: Trump is sharing QAnon statements and misogynistic memes. Do you support that?

Vance: That is how you lift people up pic.twitter.com/Va9j5hL4eU

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 30, 2024

Calling women whores is always good fun, everyone knows that. And when you’re trying to get every vote in a close election it’s especially entertaining — to the incel community anyway. (I do believe that despite his marital status he is a true incel at heart.)

Keep it up JD, the women are loving it.

Some more good news. Are people starting to hear it?

The Federal Reserve’s go-to inflation gauge held at 2.5% in July, Commerce Department data showed Friday. That’s better than anticipated and shows progress — but still underscores the bumpy process for inflation’s descent.

Friday’s report also reaffirmed that the backbone of the US economy — the consumer — is still holding strong, although their piggy banks are getting lighter.

Spending was up by 0.5%, or 0.4% when adjusted for inflation, landing above expectations for the month when car dealerships were back in gear after a massive software outage in June and when Amazon puts on its annual Prime Day sales event.

The Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, which the Fed uses for its 2% target rate, was 2.5% for the year ended in July, unchanged from June. On a monthly basis, prices increased 0.2% versus 0.1% the prior month.

The latest inflation reading, which served as further confirmation that the pace of price hikes is sustainably cooling, comes just weeks before the Fed is expected to start easing monetary policy and cutting interest rates.

“I thought the report was right down the strike zone,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told CNN in an interview Friday. “Bottom line, it indicates that inflation continues to moderate and is within spitting distance of the [Fed’s] target.”

The core PCE index, a closely watched measure of underlying inflation that strips out the more volatile components of food and energy, held steady as well by rising 0.2% for the month and 2.6% annually.

The biggest reason why inflation is not yet at 2% is housing services, particularly the implicit cost of homeownership, Zandi said. Rental and housing inflation has cooled substantially in the market but is measured with a lag in PCE and other inflation gauges, such as the Consumer Price Index.

For all intents and purposes, the Fed has achieved its inflation goals, Zandi said.

“We’re there, and it’s a bright green light for them to start easing interest rates,” he said.

It’s overdue. They need to pull the trigger.

*The quote in the headline is from Chris Hayes.