Your compromised freedoms are on the line in November
People who don’t believe in democracy don’t believe in America. Nor in its founding principles. Nor in its founding documents. No amount of red, white, and blue garb, no number of oversized flags, decaled monster trucks, and boat parades can conceal that fact. If January 6th was not stark proof enough, where have you been?
Vice President Kamala Harris is saying it without saying it.
The Democrats have finally reclaimed freedom, and they have finally found their joy, and, perhaps most importantly, they have finally reclaimed patriotism. pic.twitter.com/n9f1RB1omf
— The.Ink, from Anand Giridharadas (@AnandWrites) August 9, 2024
If Republicans expect to lead in the 21st century they might first try living in it.
Donald Trump’s view of the world stopped developing along with his emotional maturity before he was a teen.
When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Republicans claimed Sir Ronald of Reagan had slain the Evil Empire and won the Cold War. Decades into the 21st century, they are still fighting it, invoking communists and Marxists and socialists (Oh, my!) as a slur against every political foe, always “to the left of [Fox News liberal bogeyman here].” President Harry Truman declared in 1952 that socialism is “a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.” Scare tactics are still their go-to.
Over 70 years later, The Wall Street Journal this week inveighed against Minnesota under Gov. Tim Walz (D) for moving his state “sharply to the left.” Among Walz’s sins:
• Funding “the North Star Promise Program, which provides free college for students with a family income under $80,000,” including illegal immigrants.
• Creating a state system for paid family and medical leave, capped at a combined 20 weeks a year and funded by a 0.88% payroll tax.
• Mandating that public utilities generate 80% carbon-free electricity by 2030, ramping up to 100% by 2040. He’s a fervent believer in “climate action.”
• Subsidizing electric vehicles by “requiring EV charging infrastructure within or adjacent to new commercial and multi-family buildings,” as the Governor’s office bragged.
• Passing one of the nation’s most permissive abortion statutes that has essentially no limits and no age consideration for minors.
• Declaring Minnesota to be a “trans refuge,” with a law saying that the state will ignore a “court order for the removal of a child issued in another state because the child’s parent or guardian assisted the child in receiving gender-affirming care in this state.”
• Establishing automatic voter registration and letting Minnesotans sign up for a permanent absentee ballot option.
“Make America Minnesota Already,” Catherine Rampell recommends in The Washington Post:
Republicans have smeared Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz as an “extremist,” “communist” and “left-wing radical.” They warn of the “dangerously liberal” agenda that he’s implemented as governor of Minnesota and that he might soon inflict upon the entire country.
You know what? The country should be so lucky.
In general, Walz’s state agenda has been politically smart, fiscally sound and family-friendly — not to mention long overdue pretty much everywhere else in America.
What Republicans whine are costly expenses, Walz views as sound public investments … in people.
To the idea of universal free breakfasts and lunches for schoolchildren, Walz thinks like Charlton Heston’s Moses in the film. Republicans and the Wall Street Journal play the role of Egyptian slavemasters. “What? Feed the slaves?”
Moses: A city is built of brick, Pharoah. The strong make many, the starving make few. The dead make none.
“Making nutritious meals available to kids, without stigmatizing the poorest among them, is a valuable public investment,” Rampell writes. “A recent meta-analysis of past studies on universal school meals found positive associations with children’s diet quality, food security and academic performance.”
Rampell continues:
Other policies that [Walz] pushed also look like good stewardship of public funds — in addition to being, you know, compassionate.
For instance, Minnesota is developing a program to ensure that kids on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are continuously insured from birth to age 6, rather than periodically kicking them out of the program if their family’s income fluctuates slightly.
This is no small mercy. The paperwork required for reapplication is burdensome. It often results in eligible kids losing access to needed medical coverage because of administrative errors, even when their family’s income doesn’t change. Similar programs have been associated with improvements in kids’ health.
Minnesota’s version looks like a pretty good bargain for taxpayers, too. Research suggests that historical Medicaid expansions for kids offer high returns on investment. These policies often “pay for themselves,” says MIT economics professor Nathaniel Hendren, because of “improved later-life health of those children (which reduces future Medicaid spending) and increased later-life earnings (which increases tax revenue).”
Democrats get the idea. You get the idea. But not slavemasters. Not Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), who she signed a law expanding child labor.
A recent survey conducted by Morning Consult found that 82 percent of registered voters support paid family and medical leave. Among the supporters: 76 percent of Republicans. I supposed that means three-quarters of Republican voters must be “communists” like Walz, too.
When you’ve lost 76% of Republicans, Republicans, you’ve lost. Welcome to the 21st century. It looks like Minnesota.
Says the man just found to be liable for half a billion dollars for committing massive business fraud:
Trump on the Federal Reserve:
"I feel the president should have at least say [on rates] in there … I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman" pic.twitter.com/Ff7PTdn9A3
Fox's Cavuto: "You might have heard the former president refer to whats going on right now as a hurdle towards depression, well if that's the case the markets having a funny way of showing it … the S&P 500 putting in its best single day performance we've seen in a couple years" pic.twitter.com/kiQ0tFQ1G3
That “Kamala Crash” thing didn’t pan out for Trump. But that won’t stop him from telling his cult that it’s happening anyway. Fox News pointing out the reality is undoubtedly driving him crazy.
After being praised by Trump, Georgia’s un-elected, administrative State Election Board changed the state’s election certification rules. Georgia House Democratic Whip, @SamForGeorgia warned the rule change could delay the state’s 2024 election results.
The 3 GA Board of Election members who voted to change these rules were praised by Trump during his Saturday rally in Atlanta, he specifically thanked them by name. Many of these members were appointed to the State Election Board recently.
.@TheLeadCNN: Their mention by Trump [election board members] has raised concerns among critics that they may be working directly with the Trump campaign…pic.twitter.com/MCbbLXvM3A
Two rules approved by the State Election Board in a possibly illegal meeting last week appear to have been suggested by the Georgia Republican Party.
Documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon sent the text of the rules to board member Rick Jeffares several days before the meeting. McKoon also shared talking points summarizing why the rules should be adopted.
Jeffares and two other Republican board members later approved one of the rules McKoon suggested and approved a scaled-back version of the other.
On Wednesday, two of the Republican board members defended their actions. They said the meeting was legal and — though they were appointed to the board by Republicans — they are not doing the party’s bidding.
Sure.
.@JakeTapper's intro to this important segment juxtaposes the new rules changes (supported by Trump) to Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. This intro is spot-on in terms of the dangers these MAGA rules changes pose to Georgia's 2024 election. pic.twitter.com/qkdRGLM0ae
They are planning to de-certify a Harris win. It’s obvious. And I’m not sure they won’t be able to get away with it. This plan will be in effect anywhere where they can install their henchmen in election offices.
🚨 LISTEN UP 🚨:
The reason the @GOP and Trump don’t seem to be concerned about winning the election is terrifyingly simple: they don’t think they’re going to need to because they have dozens of election-deniers in place across the swing states planning not to certify results. pic.twitter.com/Hih6e1WCzr
— Andrew—Author of America Rises On Substack (@AmoneyResists) August 5, 2024
— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) August 8, 2024
This is so ridiculous. But considering that they smeared Silver Star winner John Kerry, POW John McCain and Gold Star parents, not to mention calling members of the military a bunch of suckers and losers, it’s clear that nobody’s off limits. It should just be expected that Trump and his MAGA cult will denigrate anyone’s service.
Here’s Vance smearing General Barry McCaffrey:
By the ways, McCaffrey had two children and two grandchildren in the military too. But whatever. JD Vance has no limits. But let’s not kid ourselves. This “tradition” started before Trump. His campaign manager Chris LaCivita came to fame with the swiftboat smear. They’ve been going down this road a long time.
President Nixon shocks the country & the world in a lengthy address at 9pm est when he announces his resignation, effective the next day, days after telling aides he will fight it out despite a devastating SCOTUS decision against him. This comes… pic.twitter.com/rSLtgPAccG
Okay, I’m just now getting to Ezra Klein’s podcast with Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. Listen to this guy. He’s sound. I’ll finish after this posts.
Meantime, Walz’s opponent for vice president, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, continues to have his woes:
Several polls have indicated that Vance has overwhelmingly underperformed among American voters, making him the least popular nonincumbent veep candidate since 1980. Vance’s popularity has sunk by 8.8 percentage points since his vice presidential candidacy was announced at the Republican National Convention, according to a polling average aggregated by FiveThirtyEight.
One poll conducted by Public Policy Polling on July 31 found that 47 percent of polled Americans found Vance to be unfavorable, while just 30 percent considered him favorable. An ABC News-Ipsos poll conducted between July 20 and July 27 found that Vance’s favorability had dropped by nine points, and an AP-NORC poll conducted between July 15 and July 29 saw Vance’s favorably drop by eight points.
<sad trombone>
Okay, don’t get cocky. Get busy. I ran out between posts this morning to hang Democratic lit on a dozen doors in a narrow, compact, cul de sac community I could not get into the other day for the kids and parked cars. (I’m running my own, unsanctioned political operation. Long story.)
Ebullient. Is that the right word? Since President Biden passed his party’s baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, the mood among Democratic Party faithful has turned a sharp corner. The energy at rallies for the Harris campaign, now complete with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate, is the stuff of former president Donald Trump’s reality-challenged boasts. And a nightmare for an old con man desperate for the presidential shield to shield him from jail time.
(Trump made bank off his glowering mugshot. Wonder what his glower will look like after a prison haircut?)
Ed Kilgore reviews a few post Biden polls for the New York Magazine Intelligencer. Trump’s nightmare is headed into night terror territory. The Harris polling bounce is now a trend:
According to the FiveThirtyEight national polling averages, Harris is leading Trump by 1.9 percent (45.3 to 43.4 percent), with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 5.3 percent. When Biden dropped out, he was trailing in the same averages by 3.2 percent. In a contest as static as the 2024 presidential race had been, that’s a big swing.,
The trend lines in national polls are equally telling. YouGov-Economist tested Harris against Trump back on July 16, showing Trump leading by 5 percent (44 to 39 percent). Then, on July 23, after Biden’s withdrawal, the same pollster had Trump leading Harris by 3 percent (44 to 41 percent). On July 30 and again on August 6 YouGov-Economist showed Harris leading Trump by 2 percent (46 to 44 percent on the earlier date and 45 to 43 percent later). Similarly, RMG Research had Trump leading Harris by two points (48 to 46 percent) on July 23, with Harris leading Trump by five points (47 to 42 percent) on July 31. Morning Consult’s tracking poll showed Trump leading Harris by two points ( 47 – 45 percent) on July 22 but then Harris leading Trump by four points (48 – 44 percent) on August 4. A CBS poll of likely voters conducted by YouGov shows a three-point Trump lead (51 to 48 percent) on July 18 turning into a one-point Harris lead (50 to 49 percent) on August 2.,
Polls comparing the Harris-Trump matchup to the earlier Biden-Trump matchup mostly show the same pro-Democratic trend. On July 16, Reuters-Ipsos showed Trump ahead of Biden by two points (43 percent to 41 percent). On July 23, the same poll gave Harris a two-point lead (44 percent to 42 percent). On July 2, the New York Times–Siena showed Trump leading Biden by six points (49 percent to 43 percent). On July 24, that pollster showed Trump leading Harris by one point (48 percent to 47 percent). Similarly, on July 2, The Wall Street Journal had Trump leading Biden by six points (48 to 42 percent) and Harris by just two points (49 to 47 percent) on July 25. Both Times-Siena and WSJ showed Harris ahead by a point when non-major-party candidates were included. Most recently, Survey USA showed Harris leading Trump by three points (48 – 45 percent) among likely voters as of August 5; the same pollster showed Trump leading Biden by two points (45 – 43 percent) back on June 28.
Shrinkage
Walz kicked off the use of “weird” to deflate Republicans’ image. “Shrink him, shrink the message,” Walz elaborated last week on the Pod Save America podcast. And hoo-boy, is Trump feeling his shrinkage in the polls.
Republicans were sure of victory at their convention last month. That confidence has evaporated. Predictably, Trump complains the world is unfair (Washington Post):
“It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too,” Trump told an ally in a phone call last weekend.
Trump’s campaign has struggled to recover both from the vigor of his opponent’s campaign and the fallout from his choice of a running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, who was not and is not ready for prime time.
While Trump has repeatedly said Republican Party officials only needed to focus on election integrity, he has begun hearing from outside allies that he does not have a significant ground game in key battleground states. He has grown annoyed with some of the media focus on his campaign staff, suggesting to others that his advisers get too much credit. Some advisers have urged him to spend more on digital advertising, saying he is being pummeled online.
His “bonkers” decision to ditch the Republican National Committee’s field plan and to outsource his ground operations to Turning Point Action and other PACs could turn his national campaign into another Trump Taj Mahal.
By the way, Kilgore wasn’t done:
Most recently, and perhaps impressively, Bloomberg–Morning Consult has released a new batch of seven battleground-state polls taken from July 24–28. Overall, they showed Harris leading Trump by one percent (48 to 47 percent), as compared to a two-point Trump lead over Biden in early July. The individual state gains by Harris were also striking: She led by 2 percent (49 to 47 percent) in Arizona, a real problem state for Biden; by 2 percent (47 to 45 percent) in Nevada; by 2 percent (49 to 47 percent) in Wisconsin; and by an astonishing 11 percent (53 to 42 percent) in Michigan. Harris was tied with Trump in Georgia at 47 percent, and she trailed him by 2 percent (46 to 48 percent) in North Carolina and by 4 percent (46 to 50 percent) in Pennsylvania.,
A July 29-August 2 survey from Split Ticket-Data for Progress of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin showed Harris leading Trump by a point (48 to 47 percent) among likely voters across the three states, after trailing him by five points (45 to 50 percent) in a July 18-23 poll.,
Three battleground states have enough post-Biden-Harris-switch polling now for FiveThirtyEight to compile averages, and all of them show very close races. In Georgia, Trump leads by 0.7 percent (45.8 to 45.1 percent), but Harris leads in Michigan by 1.7 percent (44.7 to 43.1 percent) and most surprisingly, in Pennsylvania by 0.8 percent (45.4 to 44.6 percent).
Kilgore likely penned his post before Marquette Law School released its survey showing Harris opening up an eight-point lead over Trump:
The survey, conducted by Marquette Law School between July 24 and August 1, shows that when third party candidates are included, Harris leads among likely voters on 50 percent to Trump’s 42 percent. Harris has improved the Democrats‘ position since May, when Trump was leading on 44 percent to Joe Biden‘s 41 percent.
Brian Beutler says moderates should stop worrying that the Real Americans are going to run for the hills:
The implicit premise, familiar to every Democrat in politics, is that Republicans will declare all progressive ideas “socialism” whether their contents or proponents are socialist or not. One school of liberal thought holds that Democrats should thus downplay these kinds of ideas—avoid bad-faith GOP backlash and seize the center through the absence of controversy.
Another holds that Democrats can defeat Republicans in a contest to define the issues. As a liberal politician, you can run away from the idea of universal school lunch, because Republicans will call it socialism, or you can run toward it, while persuading people that it isn’t socialism, it’s neighborliness. If you opt for the latter, you can go a step further by noting that stripping free lunch from hungry children, or making school lunch programs a source of stigma for the children of poor parents, are ideas that only animate people of troubling character. Free school lunch won’t take us down the road to serfdom, but hating free school lunch is pretty weird.
Walz has provided Democrats a replicable template for the latter approach. None of his competitors can say the same. It’s why Harris was right to pluck him out of obscurity and why moderates should rest easy that the two of them have a solid theory of victory.
I think Brian’s theory of the case is correct. This re-framing of the issues is long overdue as is the idea that “freedom” means low taxes and abortion bans and that “democracy” means not allowing people to vote or have their votes count. Walz’s personality and record argue that making these arguments from the perspective of “neighborliness” has some power to persuade people who haven’t completely fallen down the wingnut/MAGA rabbit hole.
Providing tampons for high school students is something the Trump people seem to think is very weird. I think most people probably think it’s weird not to.
Former President Trump’s campaign and supporters are going after Vice President Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), dubbing him “Tampon Tim” in reference to a bill he signed last year requiring schools to provide free menstrual products in all public school bathrooms.
The Minnesota law, which went into effect Jan. 1, mandates menstrual products — including pads, tampons and other items — “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district.”
State Republican lawmakers pushed back on the legislation at the time, but ultimately failed to amend the bill to apply only for girls’ bathrooms.
[…]
The primary super PAC supporting Trump called Walz a “weird radical liberal,” as part of a new campaign ad against the governor.
“What could be weirder than signing a bill requiring schools to stock tampons in boys’ bathrooms?” the Make America Great Again Inc. account wrote Tuesday on the social platform X. “Or weirder than signing legislation allowing minors to receive sex change operations?”
[…]
Conservative podcaster Liz Wheeler reposted an edited photo of Walz’s face on a tampon box Tuesday, with the words “Tampon Tim,” writing on X, “He put tampons in men’s bathroom. What a creep.”
Stephen Miller, a former adviser to the former president, also weighed in on the choice of Walz, writing Tuesday on X, “She actually chose Tampon Tim.”
Having Stephen Miller weigh in on the “weird thing” might not be the best idea in the world.
They’re going to lean in on the culture war. Ok. I think most Americans are less interested in this than they think but I guess we’ll see.
