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.
Trump’s +6 edge on immigration is much smaller than usual; this has been the GOP’s strongest issue. Trump +3 on the economy is also lower than usual. Trump dominates among “strong leader” voters. But Harris crushes him among voters who want “honest and trustworthy.” pic.twitter.com/v3yMdZnPvl
Overall, Harris has built a 51%-48% lead over Trump, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. That’s a four-point improvement for Harris, who became the Democratic choice when Biden bowed out. Harris maintains a three-point lead (48%-45%) when third-party choices are included.
Harris leads by 13 points with women (55%-42%), but is losing men by nine points (54%-45%).
Fueling her rise are Black voters, white women with college degrees and women who identify as political independents. She is doing 20 to 30 points better with them than when she first got in, leading to improvement in the suburbs and with white voters overall.
On the issues, the negative views of the economy are not sticking to Harris the way they did Biden. Trump is still more trusted on the economy, but only by 3 points over Harris (51%-48%), compared to 9 points over Biden (54%-45%) in June.
Harris is also seeing improvement on how she would handle immigration, though Trump is still more trusted on that topic by 6 points (52%-46%). Harris’ best issue is handling abortion rights. She has a 15-point advantage on that.
Harris has also improved with white voters overall. Harris has gone from 40% with white voters overall to 46% in this survey, which is closer to where Biden was, and that’s very high for a Democrat. In fact, no Democrat has scored that high with white voters in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Biden got 41% in 2020, Barack Obama in 2008 won 43%.
It’s all good, from Shapiro to Harris to Walz. If you didn’t have a chance to watch, I highly recommend it.
Amanda Marcotte went to both the JD Vance rally and the Harris Walz rally and they couldn’t be more different:
He’s so weird! He’s so weird!” the crowd chanted in a sing-song, taunting voice that echoed across Temple University’s packed basketball stadium Tuesday evening. Gov. Josh Shapiro, D-Penn., was the first person to mention Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to the crowd that had packed the overflowing Philadelphia rally for Vice President Kamala Harris, as she introduced her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn. The spontaneous chant cracked Shapiro up, causing him to pause momentarily before laying back into the authoritarian threat posed by Donald Trump’s “weird” and beardy running mate.
The chanters didn’t know the half of it. Hours earlier, I had been at a South Philly venue where Vance spoke briefly to about 200 supporters and a group of bored journalists. Vance’s event was small, mean, and yes, weird, featuring the unjustified sarcasm of the candidate and a desperate feeling reminiscent of the mood at a strip mall shot bar at 2 AM on “ladies’ night.”
Meanwhile, the Harris/Walz rally felt like a rousing speech by Coach Eric Taylor of “Friday Night Lights” combined with the front row at Coachella. The cheers were so loud that I regretted not bringing my earplugs. The mood was jubilant, even though folks had to wait hours in the heat and humidity to even get into the place. The campaign claimed over 12,000 people showed up, which is not an exaggeration. Even as Harris and Walz gave the final speeches of the evening, the line to get into the overflow room — just to watch the event on TV — went on for multiple city blocks.
[…]
Vance’s speech, on the other hand, wasn’t just underwhelming but a little uncanny. Despite using room dividers to shrink the space, the campaign could not hide that the crowd felt like a medium-sized wedding, albeit a pathetic one where no one cares for the couple. Vance, perhaps recognizing charisma isn’t his strong suit, spoke briefly before bringing up a series of local citizens ready to blame Mexicans for their familial tragedies of drug addiction. He spoke for a couple more minutes, before taking the reporters’ questions about cat ladies.
Even in his short speech, it seemed Vance — like the Trump campaign overall — is still struggling to accept that they are running against Harris and not President Joe Biden. It felt like the speechwriter had typed Ctrl-F “Biden” and replaced every instance with “Harris,” whether it made sense or not. Vance accused Harris of hiding from the press with a “basement campaign.” Never mind that Harris is now the young and spry candidate who can keep up with an aggressive schedule, while Trump is the tired old man who can barely campaign between naps.
He is barely campaignimg:
By the way, Harris Walz raised over 40 million dollars through Act Blue yesterday. It’s the sixth highest day in its history. Something’s happening.
Stephen Miller: "Tim Walz's job is to be the Jack Kevorkian for America. His job is to be the assisted suicide doctor – to lean over charmingly by the bedside of America and to give it a fatal injection" pic.twitter.com/AzMXxPcph1
WHEN 23-YEAR-OLD GAMER ADIN ROSS presented Donald Trump with a Rolex watch in a first-of-its-kind livestreamed interview on the platform Kick Monday, a tiny subset of the internet descended into blows over whether it was a campaign finance violation or not.
The rest of the approximately 600,000 people watching thought it was hilarious and cool.
And that, unfortunately, is a major problem for Democrats—the majority of whom were likely oblivious to the whole episode.
Ross, who boasts 1.3 million followers, is part of a cohort of young hyperonline men who promote an unapologetically MAGA aesthetic and culture. He is a sycophant of the legendary king of the manosphere, Andrew Tate, known equally for his overt misogyny and the charges he faces for rape and human trafficking.
These clowns are heirs to Gamergate, dubbed the “Barstool Sports generation” by Harvard youth pollster John Della Volpe. They’ve “moved from online outrage about female game designers to mobilizing politically for the first time when they saw a kindred spirit in Trump during his 2016 run,” writes Ilyse Hogue.
Trump and his allies are trying to mobilize these sad, young men (600,000 plus) to vote this November.
Hogue warns:
This coordinated effort is geared to do one thing: rewire social permissions so young men can feel good about voting for a convicted felon and a man found liable for sexual abuse. And so far, it seems to be working. Trump is winning this demographic according to most polls.
This rightward drift of young men is part of a global trend that has powered elections in recent years from Argentina to France. Uninterrupted, this dynamic will not only influence the outcome of the presidential race in November—especially in key states that skew young like Arizona—but will also realign politics as we know it for a generation to come. And yet, despite liberal voices raising the alarm, Democrats have failed even to really acknowledge the problem, much less put real resources into combating it.
Let’s have a look at “the alarm” Hogue references:
American men are facing multiple problems, and aren’t getting many answers. Popular culture focuses on Elon Musk, Davos CEOs, and the other men flourishing at the top of society’s heap. But that’s not where the majority of men exist. Nearly two-thirds of white men over 25 do not have a college degree—a figure that rises to 78% for Black men and 82% for Hispanic men. These men face daunting odds.
Men with only a high school diploma earned $1,017 a week in 1979, according to AIBM President Richard Reeves’ calculations—now they earn $881. More than one in ten men in their prime aren’t working at all—three times the percentage in 1969, and a much higher percentage than their European counterparts.
It’s not just about money, but about status and life satisfaction. Women are out-graduating men from high school and vastly out-competing them in college where almost 1.5 women graduate for every man. These women aren’t so interested in men who are less educated and earn poorly, so men without college degrees are marrying less. Over 1.5 million men aged 20 to 24 aren’t in school, training, or work, and these men are having a lot less sex than past generations and their more productive peers.
Unsurprisingly, young men without college degrees report that they have the least optimism and purpose in life among all the groups of men surveyed by Equimundo. Many have lost a reliable way to earn a living. They also claim to have the least social support, and are uncertain how to have basic relationships—with friends, let alone romantic partners. They feel their low status acutely, but because popular culture aggregates their lives with the men at the nosebleed top, they are told by much of the left that they are privileged and should take a back seat.
Hokay, that’s maybe why Trump gets 600,000 on an online event hosted by a misogynist. Their attitudes may be revolting, but those numbers are nothing to sniff at. And as my Army veteran friend observed, these are just the types to take up arms when told by their overlords. Best to keep that from happening.
While the Harris campaign is attracting more males to the Democratic cause, “it’s time to explicitly talk to young men,” Hogue suggests, even if that means “tipping some sacred cows,” like the aversion to a certain style of masculinity.
If inclusion means inclusion and big tent means big tent. If we mean to represent everyone.
Not holding my breath, but Gov. Tim Walz is working on it.
The spouse the other day blurted out (re: the MAGA cult), “What are they so angry about? What about their lives in this country is so terrible?”
It’s a fair question.
These MAGA people’s lives look pretty un-terrible. What does a rig like that truck at the top cost? How oppressed are you if you can afford to own and operate vehicles like that (and these below), accessorized as they are?
Trump boat parade, Charleston harbor, Aug. 3, 2020.
“Fully 83% of the arrestees resided in areas with an average annual per capita income between $20K and $50K,” reports one study of January 6 arrestees.
Just a guess, but the boat parade and truck parade people are not likely to have family incomes as low as $50k. Nor the Texas women who chartered a private jet to attend the Stop the Steal rally on January 6, 2021.
Miles-long MAGA parade snakes through through Montauk on Long Island (October 2020). Many vehicles including this one had their license plates taped over.
They aren’t that worried about the price of gas.
You can call them many things, but just don’t call these adults weird.
Wondering what the Trucker Convoy is protesting? We talked to a woman and she explained EVERYTHING. pic.twitter.com/PrQSPnNrDh
The clip below speaks for itself, as does the former celebrity.
MAGA Weird actor Clip 4 is Roseanne. At Kari Lake’s fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, she shot this PSA telling students to drop out of college because they were filled with devil worshippers who drink babies’ blood. pic.twitter.com/2AW6nxr7Ri
None of these people worry about jobs or the cost to travel the country like Deadheads to multiple Trump rallies.
What these weird people are angry about is not the economy or LED light bulbs or electric cars or the price of gas or immigration. What these weird people are pissed off about is their feeling of no longer being firmly in control of the country. Their country. To which they are entitled. By virtue of their birth and skin color. So long as lessers know their places and stay in them, they are good. Sharing power, as democracy demands, is unacceptable. It’s why these All-Americans reject it.
These weirdest of the weird are easy to poke fun at. But one caution.
An old friend who carried an M60 in the 82nd Airborne once reflected on what happens when the shooting starts. There are plenty of less well-heeled, less-educated, misinformed people in this country who will line up to be cannon fodder for the rich when asked, and march into massed gunfire when ordered. That’s how the first Civil War worked. It could happen again.
This piece in Axios suggests that the Harris campaign sees some opportunities beyond the big upper midwest as their route to victory. Whether that’s real or just a feint, it’s probably a good sign that they’re able to spend money and deploy resources even if it’s just to force the Republicans to do the same:
Georgia, Arizona and North Carolina — which had looked to be trending toward former President Trump — are suddenly crackling battlegrounds online, on the airwaves and on the ground.
Pennsylvania is still the most important state where both campaigns are going all-in. But the Harris campaign is fielding an army of enthused volunteers and piles of cash as it eyes a broader field of play.In the past two weeks, the Harris campaign has added 370,000 new volunteers — including 15,500 in Georgia, 21,000 in Arizona, and 10,500 in North Carolina — three states with diverse or changing electorate.
In Georgia,100,000 votes are up for grabs, former Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) told Axios in an interview. “Kamala Harris puts all of those votes back in play,” Duncan said. “The Number 1 excuse that I heard [about Biden] was: ‘My gosh, he’s just so old. I just can’t imagine him governing for four years.’ She takes that risk of physical and mental failure off the table.”
In Arizona,the campaign has trotted out border mayors who have endorsed Harris. And Republican Mayor John Giles of Mesa has also endorsed her.
In North Carolina,whichhas voted for a Democratic president just twice in the past 50 years, Harris has an uphill battle.But her momentumhas forced the Trump campaign to spend on ads in North Carolina for the first time.
[…]
Vice President Harris and her soon-to-be-announced running mate will launch a five-day, seven-city tour of battleground states, starting in Philadelphia. From there, the new ticket heads to Eau Claire, Wis.; Detroit; Durham, N.C.; Savannah, Ga.; Phoenix; and Las Vegas.
A campaign previewsays that besides rallies at venues ranging from arenas to college campuses, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the pair will meet with voters in smaller settings, including union halls, family-owned restaurants and campaign field offices. They’ll be joined by union members, faith leaders, local officials and more.
I’m fairly sure they’re going all out in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania because they assure the 270. They won’t take their eyes off that ball like they did in 2016. But if Harris can open up one or two of these other states it gives them some breathing room especially if there ends up being trouble with some of the white mid-western suburbs.
All those volunteers and all that money makes a big difference here. Let’s hope it keeps coming.
