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When Will They Put Kamala In The Barrel?

Published by digby on July 31, 2024

So when is the media going to turn on Harris? I don’t know but I’d guess it’s going to happen pretty soon. It’s inevitable for all the reasons Brian Beutler spelled out in his excellent piece today in Off Message:

As happily as it ended for liberals, the early weeks of July were their darkest since November 2016, illuminating only how various elites will respond if Donald Trump wins the election. 

What we saw was disturbing: When it appeared that Trump would win the election all but unopposed, we did not see officeholders take steps to batten down the hatches of the political system, or media figures apply extra scrutiny to the presumptive president. (In 2016, media elites explained away their insipid obsession with Hillary Clinton’s emails by citing her poll numbers—she would likely be president, after all, and thus merited a thorough scrubbing.)

Instead, we witnessed what the scholar Timothy Snyder has famously described as “obeying in advance.”

Some of these gestures were truly ominous. Trump threatened to imprison Mark Zuckerberg if elected, and the Facebook founder responded by lifting post-January 6 restrictions on his accounts. When Trump was injured in an assassination attempt, he refused to allow the medical professionals who treated him to brief the media or release his physician notes, but reporters and law enforcement officials didn’t respond by applying their usual rigorous standards, and instead, fearful of antagonizing him, just swallowed his self-serving version of events whole. 

But a lot of it looked more like fawning than cowering. Reporters swooned over pictures of Trump bleeding from the ear. For the umpteenth time, they fell like a ward of amnesiacs for his team’s deceptive insistence that Trump would “set a new tone” with his convention speech. Large newspapers went to press celebrating the supposedly chastened Trump before he’d finished delivering his angry, meandering remarks. 

Media figures more recently raced to offer a generous interpretation of his pledge to Christian conservatives that they will no longer have to vote after this election. And through it all, they’ve shrugged at the games Trump has played with his campaign promises: selling policy to billionaires, even if it entails reversing his own positions, and lying about the Republican agenda.

Now they tell us, in so many words, that they’re sick and tired of the good Kamala Harris vibes, announcing implicitly that they intend to cover her more adversarially in the near future… It’s hard to know until we see it, but one approach would be for reporters to over-police Harris for policy consistency across a span of many years, while continuing to yawn at the thorough corruption of the Trump agenda. 

He goes on to lay out all the ways they’ve already given Trump a pass as they are wont to do and it’s depressingly spot on. The reaction to the assassination attempt was the most vivid example. His flagrant flip-flopping on issues as he corruptly bribes various constituencies has garnered almost no reporting. The man actually told oil executives that if they give him a billion dollars he’s lift all regulations on their industry. Crickets.

Meanwhile, Harris is going to be held to account for any slight variation in her policies from the 2020 primary campaign today and will be hounded as an unprincipled hypocrite for changing her mind. (You know how women are …)

Beutler concludes:

But here’s the critical difference between Harris and Trump: However Harris defines her issue positions in the year 2024, you can take them to the bank. Obviously circumstances can change in ways that require rethinking policy. But if she says no Medicare for all, she’s not going to win the election and spring a single-payer health-insurance plan on Congress when she takes office. However she evolved, the claim that she evolved will be credible. 

In Trump’s case, the same claim is not credible. His well-established record of dishonesty is central to the true story of his agenda. If anything, the press owes Harris a greater spirit of generosity: She’s not only more honest than Trump, she’s also taking up the baton unexpectedly from the administration she served for four years—why wouldn’t her new agenda reflect a commitment to finishing what she and Joe Biden started together? 

But experience should prepare us for the opposite. If campaign journalists have taught us anything it’s they’re perfectly capable of turning reality on its head and making Trump’s opponents suffer for his sins. They can make Hillary Clinton an avatar of corruption in a race against a court-sanctioned fraudster; they can make Harris an avatar of inconsistency against a guy who trades policy for cash.

Yep. My only hope is that there is so little time left and the Republicans seem to be so flat-footed that they can’t mount a full-blown “women are so flighty they don’t know what they really believe in” theme out of it. But I won’t be surprised to see it.

Veepstakes In The Endgame?

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 31, 2024

Is it over Tuesday?

Sure, I was disappointed to hear that North Carolina Roy Cooper withdrew from the competition to be Kamala Harris’s vice president. But I get his reasoning:

Cooper, the former chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, has been close to Harris since they were both state attorneys general. His potential selection was seen as a possible asset in shifting North Carolina — the Democrats’ only significant opportunity to expand on their 2020 map — into Harris’ hands.

Under the state constitution, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who is the GOP’s nominee to replace the term-limited Cooper, becomes acting governor and can assume the Democrat’s powers when he travels out of state.

For those following along at home, that’s Mark “some folks need killing” Robinson. Simone Biles is a “weak little gymnast” Mark Robinson. “Doesn’t pay his taxes and is under investigation” for fraud Mark Robinson.

Cooper, according to two of the people, has expressed concern about what Robinson might do if he were to leave the state extensively for campaign travel. Cooper’s legal team, as well as some outside experts, do not believe Robinson would actually assume the powers that accompany being governor, such as issuing executive orders. But the governor was concerned enough, one of the people familiar with the matter said, that Robinson would try to take action that could prompt litigation and spur distractions in North Carolina, one of the most critical political states nationwide both for the presidency and in its gubernatorial race.

I get it. Besides, Cooper could just top off his career by ousting Sen. Thom Tillis (R) from the Senate in 2026. I’d take that as a consolation prize. So now what?

Politico reports: “Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to announce her running mate by Tuesday, when she will hold her first rally with her pick in Philadelphia.”

Naturally, this sets off speculation that she will pick Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. Will Bunch opines on why that would be a bad idea. Fracking, vouchers, Gaza, and a sexual harassment claim, etc.

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America’s Future Is At Stake

Published by Tom Sullivan on July 31, 2024

What kind do you want?

Except in History class. We’re actually gonna teach it.

A power (and water) outage last night after a long afternoon of canvassing (plus a visit from the neighborhood black bear) has me catching up this morning. I haven’t had time to watch the Kamala Harris rally in Atlanta from last night now that power’s restored. Just sayin’.

Apparently, Harris had the kind of to-the-rafters crowd Donald Trump lies about drawing.

Rev. Warnock did some preaching. Those years of Republican voter fraud allegations about “them” stealing your vote? Warnock reminds Georgians that a “Florida Man” occupying the Oval Office actually tried to steal theirs in 2020. It’s on tape. And he’s been indicted.

VP Kamala Harris received a “modest” welcome at the Georgia State University Convocation Center.

Harris laid out the stakes.

Really? What kind of future do you want? Those are the stakes.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Vice President Kamala Harris drew her largest crowd yet as her party’s nominee during a boisterous rally in Atlanta where she contrasted her prosecutorial background with Donald Trump’s criminal record, quoted a hip-hop star and vowed to recapture Georgia.

The event put her nascent campaign’s surge of enthusiasm on display, as thousands packed a downtown arena for an only-in-Atlanta mix of fiery political stump speeches and a high-energy hip-hop performance.

It was the biggest Democratic rally of the campaign cycle to date, according to Harris campaign officials, drawing thousands of supporters from metro Atlanta and beyond who cheered performances by Megan Thee Stallion and Quavo.

The crowd roared in approval as Harris promised the “path to the White House runs right through this state” and outlined her past roles as a San Francisco district attorney and top law enforcement official for California.

”In these roles, I took on perpetrators of all kinds,” she said, nodding to Trump’s felony conviction on New York charges involving hush money payments to a porn star. “So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump’s type.”

Here’s the speech I haven’t watched yet.

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This Is Trump’s America

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

This is old and it shows that there were always people who didn’t buy into the white supremacy and authoritarianism that characterized much of the America Trump and his followers think was so great. Those better people managed to beat them back and they can do it again.

I Don’t Know What This Means But It Means Something

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

Is America ready for Pete or is this just a moment in liberal-land?

He is a seriously talented politician and I know I’d love to see him out there on the campaign trail with Harris. He’s obviously smart enough to be president. (I mean, look at what the GOP has been putting on offer…) Is it time?

Politico reports that he’s on the list:

Suddenly, Pete Buttigieg is everywhere.

The Transportation secretary is blitzing the airwaves with his Midwest-nice takedowns of Donald Trump and JD Vance. Members of Congress are talking him up. Buttigieg’s digital alumni network is circulating clips of appearances and touting his complementary skills to Kamala Harris. He did a canvassing kickoff for Harris in Traverse City, Michigan, on Saturday morning. And an ally in his home state of Indiana — saying they were acting independently of Buttigieg— has compiled a dossier evaluating Harris’ options and concluding: “Simply put, the vibes are high right now.”

The Pete for Veep trial balloon is approaching mid-flight. His allies view it as a clear signal that Buttigieg wants the job.

“He’s open to it,” a person familiar with his thinking said.

But Harris confidants and allies remain skeptical about his chances, according to interviews with a half-dozen of them, all granted anonymity to speak freely. They anticipate she’ll be ruthlessly pragmatic about her selection, viewing other contenders from outside the Beltway as better positioned to deliver key states and constituencies.

Of Buttigieg, one said, “I just don’t see it.”

And even those around Buttigieg readily concede they view him as a longshot. He and Harris are both products of the Biden administration — not exactly screaming change — and Buttigieg carries some of the same baggage as Harris from their time in the administration. He has been at the center of travel disruptions in his job as transportation secretary, including mass delays at airports, even as he has ushered in protections for airline passengers and leveled historic fines against carriers. And then there is the matter of diversity, with some Democrats fearful a ticket with a woman and a gay man may be unpalatable to some swing voters — too much change, too fast.

He’s so good at it that it’s tempting to think he can overcome all those objections. And maybe he can. But even if they decide to pull one of the other great contenders off the bench, he’s got a great future. And he certainly seems to be popular.

Gird Yourselves

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

The election isn’t going to go smoothly

Trump has been telling everyone who will listen that he doesn’t need a get out the vote program because he will personally get his people out. He told the RNC and his campaign that they need to concentrate on stopping the “cheating” (by which he means Democrats voting.) The strategy is to suppress the vote wherever possible and contest the vote no matter how close the election is if he loses. There is no Democratic margin of victory that he will declare legitimate. (After all, even when he won in 2016 he said that he actually won the popular vote which he lost by 2 million votes.)

Rolling Stone took a look at how some of the red dominated swing states have set up a system to deny the election results if Trump doesn’t win and it’s sobering:

WHEN ELECTION NIGHT comes in November, it will be up to thousands of local election officials to certify election results in their counties. Among those election officials are scores of Donald Trump supporters who believe his lies and conspiracies about stolen elections — and will be in prime position to act on those beliefs to try to aid his campaign in November.

In the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, Rolling Stone and American Doom identified at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials who have questioned the validity of elections or delayed or refused to certify results. At least 22 of these county election officials have refused or delayed certification in recent years.

Certification of election results is what legal experts consider a “ministerial task,” and one required by state and local law. But as Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have taken hold, Republicans nationwide have decided that certification provides them an opportunity to hear fraud allegations — and refuse to officially count their local votes. Republicans have refused to certify election results at least 25 times since Trump lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. 

“I think we are going to see mass refusals to certify the election” in November, says Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. “Everything we are seeing about this election is that the other side is more organized, more ruthless, and more prepared.”

The article goes on to lay out the details. This is a huge threat and with the Supreme Court having shown its cards in the immunity case I don’t think we can necessarily count on the judiciary to be fair this time.

The Democrats have to win. And then they have to be prepared to defend the win. Elias is not sure they totally understand the danger.

You Want Weird? Buckle Up.

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

Journalist Gil Duran has been following this new movement of tech billionaires who are heavily influencing right wing politics in America. They are way more out there than I realized. I just went down the rabbit hole to read these articles and frankly I’m a bit unnerved. You might want to pour yourself a strong drink before you do it:

I’ve spent this year writing for the @newrepublic about how a group of Silicon Valley billionaires has gone WEIRD. Now their weirdness is mating up with Trump’s MAGA weirdness in the 2024 election.

Here’s a few things to understand about these guys. 

#1: They despise democracy. These Trump-loving billionaires believe democracy is bad. They want to create their own corporate dictatorships called Network States. They are actively trying to build these weird little dictator cities all over the world.

The People of Solano County Versus the Next Tech-Billionaire Dystopia
If these Silicon Valley plutocrats have their way, a swath of Solano County will be transformed into their own nation-state.

#2. They want control over existing governments. In addition to building weirdo colonies, they’re also trying to capture existing governments. In San Francisco, a group of these tech zillionaires is trying to win control of City Hall …(and now the USA!)

The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right-Wing San Francisco
A rogue’s gallery of big tech edgelords and their reactionary hangers-on have a plan to remake the city by the bay in their own weirdo image.

3. They want to punish Democrats in weird ways. One of their main influencers has suggested that tech bros should form a “gray tribe,” purge Democrats from San Francisco and build statues to remind people of how bad Democrats supposedly are…

The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of “Blues”
If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not OK.

4. JD Vance is ONE OF THEM. Vance was literally put on Trump’s ticket by the same group of people – Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen – who are behind all of the weirdness I’ve been writing about.

Where J.D. Vance Gets His Weird, Terrifying Techno-Authoritarian Ideas
Yes, Peter Thiel was the senator’s benefactor. But they’re both inspired by an obscure software developer who has some truly frightening thoughts about reordering society.

5. Most newspaper analyses suggest that these tech authoritarians guys just want lower taxes and friendly regulations, but that’s only part of the story. They have developed their own weird sci-fi influenced tech authoritarian IDEOLOGY.

It overlaps with MAGA in multiple ways. 

6. MAGA/Tech overlaps:
– Collapse. They believe in an impending societal collapse.
– Messiah complex. They believe they alone can save humanity. They “alone can fix it.”
– Supremacy. They share a believe in the supremacy of rich white (mostly straight) males over everyone else. 

7. MAGA/Tech overlaps cont’d:
– Anti-Empathy. They abhor empathy/care.
– Anti-Public. They detest the idea of the public and seek to privatize most functions of government.
– Anti-Worker. They believe employers are superior to employees. 

8. This is not an exhaustive list. But you can see here how many of the tech authoritarian goals align with MAGA. Antipathy toward taxes and regulations may be the root of their alliance, but there are many branches. But there are key ways in which tech diverges from MAGA… 

9. For example, tech authoritarians see technology as being above God (if they even believe God exists). As tech founders and investors, they see themselves as the top of the hierarchy — the masters of the universe. These beliefs have resulted in some strange sub-cults… 

10. The Network State is one sub-cult — the idea of replacing existing countries with tech-run countries. Transhumanism is another — a belief in merging with machines to obtain eternal life. That’s gonna sound pretty weird to fundamentalist Christians. . .
Lots of tech cults! 

The tech billionaires behind Trump already have money. Now they want power — to create their own countries, to change what it means to human, to control the fate of the world. Their interest is mainly *ideological,* not economic. Anyone saying otherwise has not done the reading. 

This story by @davetroy goes deep into the weird collection of ideas called TESCREAL. Many of these tech guys backing Trump have been working on this project for a long, long time.

The Wide Angle: Understanding TESCREAL — the Weird Ideologies Behind Silicon Valley’s Rightward Turn

Not all tech is bad! But a lot of people in Silicon Valley have been aware of this weirdness for a long time and have stayed quiet … or agree with parts of it. With Thiel/Musk/Vance putting it on the Trump ticket, it’s time to tune in. Because folks — it’s gonna get weirder. 

Nobody Likes JD

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

Especially the people who know him best

This guy is a smarmy loser and nobody can’ stand him:

On the heels of a CNN analysis that showed Vance was the least-liked non-incumbent vice-presidential nominee in at least 44 years, the network also revealed that the GOP lawmaker has a double-digit unfavorable rating with voters across the Midwest.

According to CNN, Vance had a 28% favorable rating and a 44% unfavorable rating — or a minus 16-point favorability rating — among voters surveyed in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin in July.

For Republicans banking on Vance to help boost the party across the Midwest, his standing is far below where he’ll need to be in order to win over swing voters in key states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

CNN data reporter Harry Enten during an appearance last week also pointed to data showing that Vance had a minus 5-point favorability rating after the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“The people who know him best, the region that knows him best, they like him even less than America likes him,” he told the network’s Erin Burnett.

I don’t think anyone knows Vance, least of all himself. He’s a shape-shifting weirdo who is unusually unlikable. Trump made a mistake. Whether he knows it or not, is another story. After all, he believes he is a god who is incapable of making a mistake — or losing. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t.

Bad Night On Fox

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

Good luck with that Donnie… The problem isn’t Fox. It’s you and your people, all of whom sound like batshit loons.

Project 2025 Is In The Can

Published by digby on July 30, 2024

Trump doesn’t have anything else

The Trump campaign issued a very weird statement yesterday disavowing the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025— again. As the campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita point out, they’ve been trying to get them to shut up for over a year:

President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way, Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.

The Trumpian threat at the end was a nice flourish but they do mean it. The professional campaign’s frustration with the group has been obvious ever since the Democrats jumped on the 900 page manifesto and made it into another Trump branded product. No matter how hard they tried they couldn’t get people to stop talking about it.

Trump has personally tried to distance himself from it calling “appalling” and “extreme” at different times and claiming he didn’t know anything about it,even though his own VP nominee JD Vance has extensive ties to the organization and has even written the foreword to Heritage President Kevin Roberts’ upcoming book Dawn’s Early Light, Taking Back Washington to Save America. And as has been thoroughly documented, most of the people associated with it are Trump alumni, such as his former HHS Secretary Ben Carson, Trade adviser Peter Navarro, White House Adviser Johnny McEntee and former Director of Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought. In fact, one report showed that 31 of 38 authors and editors of the 900 page tome had been on Trump’s team at one time or still are. This is not surprising since Trump and his MAGA movement have devoured what was once the conservative movement of which The Heritage Foundation was a founding institution. Conservatives are MAGA now or they are no longer relevant.

Wiles’ and LaCivita’s statement was issued on the news that Paul Dans, the person who was in charge of producing the “Mandate For Leadership” governance guide announced that he was leaving the project in August which was immediately interpreted to mean that the Trump people had engineered the ouster and had successfully gotten the Heritage Foundation to back away from it. But is that really the case?

The 900 page Mandate for Leadership is already written. In fact, it was largely finished over a year ago when we first started talking about it. It’s all over the internet. The producers of the document are MAGA movement operatives and it is a MAGA document whether Trump wants to claim it or not. Certainly, the Harris campaign is not going to let him off the hook:

Project 2025 is on the ballot because Donald Trump is on the ballot. This is his agenda, written by his allies, for Donald Trump to inflict on our country. Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real – in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding.

Trump is running around pandering to every constituency and donor group, promising anything and everything in order to get reelected. And most of what he’s promising is in Project 2025 except for the third rail issue of abortion which he fatuously insists he’s “solved” by having it go back to the states, claiming that’s what everyone on all sides always wanted. That is, of course, absurd. But pretty much everything else from policies on law enforcement, trade, deregulation. education, executive power, civil rights and immigration are all listed on his own Agenda 47 website with very little to distinguish them from the Project 2025 except for the level of detail. In other words, they see Project 2025 as a branding problem not a substance problem and the media needs to be much more careful to explain that.

The Mandate for Leadership guide is only part of Project 2025. The other component is the vast personnel database that a new Trump administration will use to staff the federal government once they implement “Schedule F”, an executive order that strips federal civil service protections from workers allowing them to fire thousands of federal workers and replace them with Trump loyalists. There is no doubt that this is a Trump initiative since they first wrote Schedule F during his administration. This database is as much a part of Project 2025 as the manifesto.

Trump has every intention of implementing its vision. It’s his vision too. And not only would it be terrifying and dangerous, it would also be dangerously incompetent. That wouldn’t be the first time. As I noted back in 2016, when it became news that since Trump had no experience at government he was relying on the Heritage Foundation during its transition, it has a very poor record when it came to staffing government. As the Washington Post reported over 20 years ago, they were instrumental in one of the most disastrous policies of the Bush administration:

They had been hired to perform a low-level task: collecting and organizing statistics, surveys and wish lists from the Iraqi ministries for a report that would be presented to potential donors at the end of the month. But as suicide bombs and rocket attacks became almost daily occurrences, more and more senior staffers defected. In short order, six of the new young hires found themselves managing the country’s $13 billion budget, making decisions affecting millions of Iraqis.

Viewed from the outside, their experience illustrates many of the problems that have beset the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), a paucity of experienced applicants, a high turnover rate, bureaucracy, partisanship and turf wars.

[…]

For months they wondered what they had in common, how their names had come to the attention of the Pentagon, until one day they figured it out: They had all posted their résumés at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank.

This epic debacle was documented in the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran which revealed that the Bush administration had decided they wanted ideological litmus tests for the people who were going to build the new Iraq government from the ground up. Among the criteria were questions like were they “pro-life” and did they believe in unfettered gun rights, none of which had the slightest relevance to the jobs at hand. You may recall that this starry-eyed experiment in nation building was an embarrassing failure.

It appears that if Trump wins in November they’re going to try it again, only this time they’re experimenting on their fellow Americans. And they still have clearly learned nothing from all their previous humiliating failures.

Salon