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The Spoiler

Polls continuously show that RFK Jr inexplicably garners from 10 to 15% of the vote. We don’t really have a good idea whether he draws more from Trump or Biden but it’s a terrible risk to have him on the ballot. He’s crazy and he just doesn’t care.

Vanity Fair has a new profile of him and it’s actually disgusting. I don’t know if the crazy people who are saying they’ll vote for him will ever know about it but what it says might even make them think twice. Here’s just one little excerpt:

RFK Jr. posing alongside an unidentified woman with the barbecued remains of what appears to be a dog.

Last year Robert Kennedy Jr. texted a photograph to a friend. In the photo RFK Jr. was posing, alongside an unidentified woman, with the barbecued remains of what appears to be a dog. Kennedy told the person, who was traveling to Asia, that he might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that served dog on the menu, suggesting Kennedy had sampled dog. The photo was taken in 2010, according to the digital file’s metadata—the same year he was diagnosed with a dead tapeworm in his brain. (A veterinarian who examined the photograph says the carcass is a canine, pointing to the 13 pairs of ribs, which include the tell-tale “floating rib” found in dogs.)

The picture’s intent seems to have been comedic—Kennedy and his companion are pantomiming—but for the recipient it was disturbing evidence of Kennedy’s poor judgment and thoughtlessness, simultaneously mocking Korean culture, reveling in animal cruelty, and needlessly risking his reputation and that of his family.

When Kennedy was married to his second wife, Mary Richardson, he was known to text other damning images to friends as well—of nude women. Those friends assumed Kennedy himself had taken the pictures, but they didn’t know whether the subjects had consented to having their genitalia photographed, let alone shared with other people. When one friend lost his phone, he panicked that somebody might discover the images.

Theories about Kennedy’s reckless behaviors abound. Long before it was reported, members of the family knew about the brain worm, which in court testimonies Kennedy conjectured he’d picked up from food he ate in South Asia. He said the tapeworm consumed a portion of his brain and led to protracted “brain fog.” But more often his family points to Kennedy’s 14 years as a heroin user, which began when Kennedy was 15 and didn’t end until he was 29. Kennedy has made his history of addiction part of his campaign narrative, arguing that he is more equipped to fix America’s addiction problem. Critics in his family feel otherwise. One Kennedy has circulated a report from the National Institutes of Health on the impact of long-term heroin abuse, which surmises that the damage can alter the physiology of the brain, “creating long-term imbalances in neuronal and hormonal systems that are not easily reversed” and “which may affect decision-making abilities, the ability to regulate behavior, and responses to stressful situations.”

That’s just the tip of the lunatic iceberg. Perhaps the worst things he’s ever done was this:

With each public and private rejection, whether the retraction of his Rolling Stone article or his breakups with environmental groups, Kennedy dug in deeper and deeper. Increasingly his anti-vaccine work was taking precedent. In 2018 Kennedy involved himself in a largely forgotten vaccine controversy in the American Samoan islands. That year, two children died after receiving the MMR vaccine, sparking an island-wide furor. Though it was later revealed that two nurses made a critical error administering the vaccines, accidentally introducing expired muscle relaxants into the formula, Kennedy’s nonprofit took to social media to hype the deaths as evidence of vaccine dangers.

Under public pressure, the Samoan prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi halted MMR vaccines on the island. In June of 2019 Kennedy and Hines flew to Samoa, lending celebrity wattage to local anti-vaccine advocates, giving press interviews, and taking a private meeting with the PM.

Over the ensuing months, the island was hit by the largest measles outbreak in its history, infecting 5,707 citizens and killing 83 people, most of them children. The outbreak was so lethal, the prime minister declared a state of emergency and ordered mandatory vaccinations, eventually curtailing the spread. Later one of Kennedy’s biggest critics, a pediatrician and member of the FDA’s advisory committee on vaccines, Paul Offit, told PBS that “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had everything to do with that. And that shows you how disinformation can kill.”

In an interview with filmmaker Scott Kennedy (no relation), who made a documentary called Shot in the Arm, which will appear on PBS this fall, RFK Jr. becomes vividly agitated when confronted with the facts of the Samoa case, insisting that “I had nothing to do with people not vaccinating in Samoa, I never told anybody not to vaccinate.”

He had met with the prime minister to discuss implementing a medical system that would, in Kennedy’s own words, “measure health outcomes following the ‘natural experiment’ created by the national respite from vaccines.”

Robert F. Kennedy is a menace. Right now, both parties are circling, thinking he’s taking more votes from the other. But someone with big bucks should step in with a campaign to let those RFK voters know what this guy is really all about. Maybe that dog picture should be circulated everywhere.

The Numbers Start To Roll In

We’re starting to get the first real post-debate polling. Today CNN released its poll. It doesn’t show any change in voter intentions but 75% of people say they think the Dems would have a better chance with a different candidate.

In a matchup between the presumptive major-party nominees, voters nationwide favor former President Donald Trump over Biden by 6 points, 49% to 43%, identical to the results of CNN’s national poll on the presidential race in April, and consistent with the lead Trump has held in CNN polling back to last fall.

Not exactly good news, of course. But it’s not the free-fall many expected. (CNN’s poll has had Trump leading by much more than any of the others for months.)

However, there is this, which is intriguing:

The poll also finds Vice President Kamala Harris within striking distance of Trump in a hypothetical matchup: 47% of registered voters support Trump, 45% Harris, a result within the margin of error that suggests there is no clear leader under such a scenario. Harris’ slightly stronger showing against Trump rests at least in part on broader support from women (50% of female voters back Harris over Trump vs. 44% for Biden against Trump) and independents (43% Harris vs. 34% Biden).

I don’t know what to think. I think most Democrats would crawl over hot coals to vote for a sack of rotted garbage over Donald Trump. But we don’t matter in this weird system we have. It’s all about swing voters in swing states and Biden and Harris’ chances in the wake of the debate are still undetermined.

Keep calm and have a drink. We’ll know soon enough.

In Light Of Yesterday’s Declaration of Presidential Monarchy

He’s immune from the rule of law and he can pardon any soldier who follows his orders.

November is a Bidenary choice until it isn’t

What’s the plan, Stan?

A lot of savvy people don’t see how flighty and fickle (and disinspiring to voters) they appear with their post-debate insistence that Joe Biden step aside for another Democrat. They’re dressing up their panic as strategery. 

I’m with Rick Wilson on this. November is a Bidenary choice until it isn’t.

Steadfastness is a virtue Dems need more of. Much more. 

The other point I’d make in this is a lack of any global sense of the race from the Biden-panicked. Dobbs, Chevron, Trump v. U.S. might as well not exist. Someone I spoke with shrugged off Monday’s SCOTUS decision as “expected”! None of the commentary I’ve seen offers any perspective on how Trump himself may be bleeding support, on his electability. All some Democrats can see is Biden’s bad debate. One play is not the whole game.

The focus needs to be back on Trump’s perfidy, on his cognitive and legal impairments, and on the conservative thirst for a urinary unitary executive. There’s a conspiracy to end America. Thanks to the Supreme Court, we’re poised for dictatorship if Trump wins.

I was at the Raleigh Biden rally about 15 hours after last Thursday’s debate and Biden was ON. Hot, even. “Oh, but he was using a teleprompter,” several who weren’t there told me. Teleprompters inject stimulants now? 

Perhaps Thursday’s debacle was a bad reaction to cold medicine. (That happened to me at 16.) Perhaps it’s more, as Carl Bernstein told Anderson Cooper last night. (He’s been saving this for his next book?)

Whatever. By request:

Hillary was not a good campaigner. But despite the forest of Trump signs out in the countryside, I felt sure (well, pretty sure) and told people who asked that the country was not crazy enough to elect a buffoon like Trump. Then I spent part of Election Day 2016 greeting voters beside Talks To The Sky. That night, Trump happened. I abandoned any pretensions of predictive ability. 

Which is why I’m confounded by the certainty of the “Biden can’t win” chorus after the bad debate. There’s a lot of concern over whether he’s too old for the campaigning and for doing the job. I get that. Frankly, we’ve seen worse win. But Biden can’t?

So when I hear with surety that some unnamed, younger, other Democrat can win when there’s no plan, no funding, no campaign, and no candidate, I’m wondering if that’s the sort of wishful thinking that tripped me up in 2016. 

I don’t care at this point if Biden is up to the job. Trump-the-idiot wasn’t. This election isn’t about responsible governance at this point. What I care about is winning and keeping Trump out of office again. Biden beat Trump once and, until data suggests he’s toast, has a shot as incumbent of doing it again. Whether he’s in decline is not the point. This one’s for all the marbles. I need more than Another Democrat before I board the dump-Biden train this late in the process. Get me an alternate candidate and a plan and we’ll talk.  

BTW, Biden could be the official Democratic Party nominee in three weeks (as early as July 21), not a month later in August.

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The Trump Dictatorship

What are you prepared to do to stop it?

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday all but guaranteed this country has dictatorship in its future. If not under “your favorite president,” as Trump the imperial might say, then under another, smarter, more skilled autocrat. “[T]his ruling is a brazen and dangerous expansion of presidential power in ways that entrench a deep climate of impunity,” constitutional scholar Aziz Rana tells The Ink. But you knew that.

Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen report at Axios that if elected Trump will “immediately test the boundaries of presidential and governing power.” (What boundaries?)

Axios:

The big picture: Trump promises an unabashedly imperial presidency — one that would turn the Justice Department against critics, deport millions of people in the U.S. illegally, slap 10% tariffs on thousands of products, and fire perhaps tens of thousands of government staff deemed insufficiently loyal.

  • He’d stretch the powers of the presidency in ways not seen in our lifetime. He says this consistently and clearly — so it’s not conjecture.

You might like this or loathe this. But it’s coming, fast and furious, if he’s elected.

  • Thanks to Monday’s Supreme Court ruling, Trump could pursue his plans without fear of punishment or restraint.

What to watch: To hear Trump and his allies tell it, this is how early 2025 would unfold if he wins:

1. A re-elected Trump would quickly set up vast camps and deport millions of people in the U.S. illegally. He could invoke the Insurrection Act and use troops to lock down the southern border.

2. In Washington, Trump would move to fire potentially tens of thousands of civil servants using a controversial interpretation of law and procedure. He’d replace many of them with pre-vetted loyalists.

3. He’d centralize power over the Justice Department, historically an independent check on presidential power. He plans to nominate a trusted loyalist for attorney general, and has threatened to target and even imprison critics. He could demand the federal cases against him cease immediately.

4. Many of the Jan. 6 convicts could be pardoned — a promise Trump has made at campaign rallies, where he hails them as patriots, not criminals. Investigations of the Bidens would begin.

5. Trump says he’d slap 10% tariffs on most imported goods, igniting a possible trade war and risking short-term inflation. He argues this would give him leverage to create better trade terms to benefit consumers.

6. Conversation would intensify about when Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Sam Alito, 74, would retire.

  • Lists of potential successors are already drawn up.
  • President Biden said last month that “the next president is likely to have two new Supreme Court nominees.”
  • If Trump were to win and the two oldest justices retired, five of the nine justices would have been handpicked by Trump.

There’s more if you have the stomach for it.

This toxic, authoritarian movement, for all it’s flag-waving and pretensions to patriotism, is anything but American. And never was. It is a knife to the throat of this republic. There are people in this country who want a dictator and a one-party state. Some of them wear black robes and accept bribes. But the bribes are just a perk. They are true believers in something other than the Constitution they are tasked for life with interpreting.

Monday made it all that much more chilling.

But at the end of election night we still count votes, not age or ideology. Best you round up as many as you can before Trump 2.0 starts rounding you up.

Oh, and MAGA? Turn in your flags.

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In Case You Were Wondering

I think that says it all, don’t you think?

And he knows it.

Bannon Is In Jail

A tiny silver lining

Trump and his henchmen may all be convicted felons but what Steve Bannon says there is absolutely true. I’m sure he’ll be writing all that out in his Mein Trumpf manifesto from jail.

Here he is before surrendering this morning:

We All Laughed When Nixon Said “When The President Does It It’s Not Illegal”

Who’s laughing now?

Ian Milhiser’s write-up of Trump v US :

Trump v. United States is an astonishing opinion. It holds that presidents have broad immunity from criminal prosecution — essentially, a license to commit crimes — so long as they use the official powers of their office to do so.

Broadly speaking, Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion reaches three conclusions. The first is that when the president takes any action under the authority given to him by the Constitution itself, his authority is “conclusive and preclusive” and thus he cannot be prosecuted. Thus, for example, a president could not be prosecuted for pardoning someone, because the Constitution explicitly gives the chief executive the “Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.”

One question that has loomed over this case for months is whether presidential immunity is so broad that the president could order the military to assassinate a political rival. While this case was before a lower court, one judge asked if Trump could be prosecuted if he’d ordered “SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival” and Trump’s lawyer answered that he could not unless Trump had previously been successfully impeached and convicted for doing so.

Roberts’s opinion in Trump, however, seems to go even further than Trump’s lawyer did. The Constitution, after all, states that the president “shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” So, if presidential authority is “conclusive and preclusive” when presidents exercise their constitutionally granted powers, the Court appears to have ruled that yes, Trump could order the military to assassinate one of his political opponents. And nothing can be done to him for it.

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writes in dissent, “from this day forward, Presidents of tomorrow will be free to exercise the Commander-in-Chief powers, the foreign-affairs powers, and all the vast law enforcement powers enshrined in Article II however they please — including in ways that Congress has deemed criminal and that have potentially grave consequences for the rights and liberties of Americans.”

Roberts’s second conclusion is that presidents also enjoy “at least a presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for a President’s acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility.” Thus, if a president’s action even touches on his official authority (the “outer perimeter” of that authority), then the president enjoys a strong presumption of immunity from prosecution.

This second form of immunity applies when the president uses authority that is not specifically mentioned in the Constitution, and it is quite broad — most likely extending even to mere conversations between the president and one of his subordinates.

The Court also says that this second form of immunity is exceptionally strong. As Roberts writes, “the President must therefore be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no ‘dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.’

Much of Roberts’s opinion, moreover, details just how broad this immunity will be in practice. Roberts claims, for example, that Trump is immune from prosecution for conversations between himself and high-ranking Justice Department officials, where he allegedly urged them to pressure states to “replace their legitimate electors” with fraudulent members of the Electoral College who would vote to install Trump for a second term.

Roberts writes that “the Executive Branch has ‘exclusive authority and absolute discretion’ to decide which crimes to investigate and prosecute,” and thus Trump’s conversations with Justice Department officials fall within his “conclusive and preclusive authority.” Following that logic, Trump could not have been charged with a crime if he had ordered the Justice Department to arrest every Democrat who holds elective office.

Elsewhere in his opinion, moreover, Roberts suggests that any conversion between Trump and one of his advisers or subordinates could not be the basis for a prosecution. In explaining why Trump’s attempts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to “fraudulently alter the election results” likely cannot be prosecuted, for example, Roberts points to the fact that the vice president frequently serves “as one of the President’s closest advisers.”

Finally, Roberts does concede that the president may be prosecuted for “unofficial” acts. So, for example, if Trump had personally attempted to shoot and kill then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in the lead-up to the 2020 election, rather than ordering a subordinate to do so, then Trump could probably be prosecuted for murder.

But even this caveat to Roberts’s sweeping immunity decision is not very strong. Roberts writes that “in dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” And Roberts even limits the ability of prosecutors to pursue a president who accepts a bribe in return for committing an official act, such as pardoning a criminal who pays off the president. In Roberts’s words, a prosecutor may not “admit testimony or private records of the President or his advisers probing the official act itself.”

That means that, while the president can be prosecuted for an “unofficial” act, the prosecutors may not prove that he committed this crime using

That. Is. Terrifying.

We are on the verge of electing an already convicted criminal who has also been found liable for rape and defamation to this office. If there is a better argument for voting for Biden or anyone else I don’t know what it is. Trump is a corrupt criminal already. Now they’ve given him carte blanche to break any laws he wants.

The Debate Debacle Dilemma

If there’s one bright spot in the very dark weekend just passed it’s that we didn’t have to hear much from Donald Trump and his henchmen. He was very unhappy about that and whined on his Truth Social platform that nobody was giving him the credit he deserved:

Mostly he’s just been yelling at the clouds while his people have been keeping a low profile. It’s been years since we’ve had such a respite and it almost makes the hell of this Biden debate debacle bearable. Almost. It’s been a very rough few days and from the looks of it it’s not going to let up any time soon.

We’re still awaiting the poll results to see if voters have decided to vote for Trump in light of Biden’s miserable debate performance last Thursday. We’ve seen some numbers that show more people think he shouldn’t run for president again than said that last month but the number was always pretty high. (A majority say the same thing about Trump although fewer than say it about Biden.) But we haven’t yet seen the effects of the debate on voter preferences. Those will start coming in over the next few days and we’ll get a much better sense of just how serious the damage is among actual voters.

Among political pundits and analysts it has been catastrophic. While there are those who say that Biden should stay the course and, so far, the Democratic establishment is backing the president, the vast majority of liberal writers, talking heads and newspaper editorial boards have decided that Biden must go. It’s easy to just dismiss those voices and say they don’t reflect the needs and desires of the American people but it would be a huge mistake to underestimate how hard it will be for Biden to have to fight both Trump and a media establishment that is convinced that he should withdraw from the race. As Biden would say, it’s a big f-ing deal.

Part of this is driven by the fact that many members of the press apparently believe that they were lied to by the White House about Biden’s fitness and are personally offended by that. Throughout many of the op-eds and analyses of the situation is a clear sense of self-righteous anger running through them that they were not let in on the secret. It’s not an uncommon reaction. I recall that the media had a similar solipsistic view of President Bill Clinton’s refusal to admit to them that he had had an affair with a White House employee. In that case the public had a much more nuanced opinion of the scandal and the beltway media’s objections didn’t carry much weight. Clinton not only survived, he had a high approval rating and kept it throughout the rest of his term.

Of course, Bill Clinton wasn’t running for re-election. His Vice President Al Gore was and he paid the price with the media which treated him woefully during that election, largely as a result of the burning resentment they felt toward Clinton. You’re all familiar with how that went. And you know how the lingering effects of that relationship dogged Hillary Clinton over the next 16 years as she pursued her own political career.

Here’s an example of how the new media narrative is shaping up, from media reporter Brian Stelter who says it’s now a referendum on Biden and there’s no more reason to bother covering Trump’s lies since his base and the GOP’s elites don’t care.

So, even if the public decides that Biden’s performance wasn’t a deal breaker and his numbers have remained close to Trump’s despite the voters’ clear concerns about him, he’ll have an even tougher uphill climb that he already had with that media narrative. It’s not illogical or untoward even for people who think Biden should stick it out to be genuinely concerned about that since the stakes are so high.

While that may be the prevailing consensus among the media, what should happen next is not so clear. There are people demanding an open convention in which there would be a floor fight and delegates rather than voters would decide who the candidate should be. I maintain, as I did right after the debate, that as entertaining as it might be, it would likely be a disaster. The Democratic Party is not known for its discipline and cohesion on a good day. The last thing they need is a knock down drag out internecine fight before the whole country just two months before the election.

In my view that leaves only one option. If Biden decides that in good faith he can’t continue, the only answer is for him to formally pass the torch to his Vice President, the person 81 million people voted for four years ago to replace him if he could not longer be president through illness or death. {Let’s face it, as the oldest president in history we were all very aware of that possibility.} If that’s more or less happened now there’s no reason to look anywhere but the person who has been on the ticket from the beginning for that very purpose. That’s why we have Vice Presidents.

Yes, it’s meant for a president’s term not a campaign but the principle is the same, particularly under these conditions. It’s just too late for a full blown nomination battle. If this happens the party should strive for a seamless transition that’s seen as a continuation of the Biden administration and the Biden campaign that’s already been laid out. There’s no time to completely re-tool.

And there are important technical reasons for that as well. As legal historian Mary Beth Williams pointed out on twitter, the campaign war chest assembled by the Biden Harris campaign cannot be easily transferred to any other candidate. (You’d have to get the permission of every original donor.) She writes:

The B-H campaign fund can donate to candidates, but is subject to the same limits as individual contributors.

Any or all of the war chest can be transferred to federal, state, and/or local political parties, but then the limits on party donations to candidates are in effect. It can also be transferred to a super-PAC, but no coordination with campaigns is allowed.

The DNC could run the general election campaign, but my experience on three “coordinated campaigns” (Gore, Kerry, and Obama ’08,) leaves me very cold on that option.

It took B-H four years to build that war chest, and no candidate could come close to raising that amount in four months. Plus, all the media time is already purchased, the campaign offices are contracted, staff hired, etc.

The only two candidates with full, easy access to all that money and infrastructure are Biden or Harris.

Harris is being a loyal soldier and has been out there forcefully backing Biden. And if he decides to stay in, the campaign should make sure that she stays front and center going forward because all eyes will be on her like never before. Whether anyone wants to admit it, the prospect of a Vice President having to step in, one way or another, has never been so acute.

The next couple of weeks are going to be agonizing for everyone, not the least of whom is Joe Biden himself. James Fallows put it well in a tweet on Sunday: be wary of anyone who says this is an easy call.

Salon

They Are Not Conservative

The Supremes are now officially a rogue, radical court

David Kurtz at TPM says it well:

The most consequential decision yet from the six-justice Roberts supermajority was sandwiched between President Biden’s debate pratfall Thursday night and this morning’s Supreme Court decision on former President Trump’s immunity from criminal prosecution. So before it gets wiped clean from the front pages, I want to just take a moment before the immunity decision comes down to re-cast the current court.

The Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overrule Chevron will have vast consequences, many of then unseen or hard to detect, but one of the things we were discussing internally Friday as we assessed the Supreme Court’s term and its four years with a 6-3 conservative supermajority is how the defining characteristic isn’t conservatism at all but the accrual of power to the judiciary at the expense of the executive and legislative branches.

Rather than taking a conservative view of the role of the courts – a modest, humble, restrained posture that is wary of its own power and applies it carefully – the Roberts supermajority has taken a radical course where the judiciary is increasingly the final arbiter not just on the law but on the facts, the interpretation of those facts, the application of those facts in given situations, and the technical, scientific, and professional implications of those facts in the real world.

There’s nothing conservative about it, and you only have to look to conservatives’ exact same complaints about the Warren and especially the Burger courts to see the obvious. We’ve taken to calling the court “right wing” rather than conservative because it’s a more precise description (though it’s still a pretty blunt term). Rather than being driven by a guiding conservative judicial philosophy, however odious it might have been, the current Supreme Court is most consistent when it comes to consolidating power for itself.

It’s one decision after another, wiping out precedent, common sense and centuries of understanding about the meaning of the constitution. They are taking a wrecking ball to the rule of law and our government’s ability to function as a 21st century society.

If you wonder just how far this immunity really stretches:

Roberts: “And some Presidential conduct — for example, speaking to and on behalf of the American people — certainly can qualify as official even when not obviously connected to a particular constitutional or statutory provision.”

So when Trump tells his mob to march to the capitol and fight like hell or they won’t have a country anymore, it’s part of his official duty because he’s speaking “to and on behalf” of the American people? I’m guessing he means yes.