Mostly Monday Reads: Ye Olde Addlepated Donald

“Every time Trump opens his mouth, he lies.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Every day, it becomes more clear that DonOld is so old and addlepated that he is unsuited for anything but a front porch rocker in a place where he can’t harm himself or others.  This quote from a Laura Ingraham interview on July 29th pretty much sums up exactly how far his mental deterioration has advanced.  This is from The Hill and reported by Brett Samuels.  “Trump on Vance’s ‘childless’ comments: ‘He likes family.’”  Even the polygamist inventor of Mormonism, Joseph Smith, wasn’t up to this task.

Former President Trump on Monday offered cover for his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as Vance faces a firestorm over his past comments mocking “childless cat ladies.”

Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham that Vance has “tremendous support,” and argued he does particularly well among “people that like families.”

“He made a certain statement having to do with families. That doesn’t mean that people that aren’t a member of a big and beautiful family with 400 children around and everything else, it doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t have — he’s not against anything. But he loves family. It’s very important to him,” Trump said of Vance.

Okay, that’s weird.   Meanwhile, we are likely to find out Vice President Harris’ choice of a VEEP sometime tomorrow in a videotaped announcement. This is from Eugene Daniels writing for Politico. “Harris VP announcement coming Tuesday with likely video. Biden’s 2020 introduction of Harris is a likely model, campaign insiders say.”

Vice President Kamala Harris is bringing her crash search for a running mate to a close, with a final decision expected over the next 24 hours with a video announcement likely to follow sometime Tuesday, according to people familiar with the selection process.

While the precise nature of the rollout is not final, campaign insiders are pointing to President Joe Biden’s 2020 video introduction of Harris as a likely model. A media leak of the pick could upend those plans, they said.

The planned rollout will follow a closely watched final weekend of deliberations. A vetting team led by former Attorney General Eric Holder briefed Harris on the roughly half-dozen final candidates.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have also been reviewed by the Harris campaign vetting team.

Biden in 2020 formally introduced Harris in a two-minute video released five days before the Democratic National Convention that included video of the future president calling Harris to ask her to join the ticket. Media reports, however, broke the news the night before the video was released, which the Biden campaign acknowledged with online postings.

Harris is scheduled to make her first appearance with her new running mate at a Philadelphia rally Tuesday, kicking off a five-day barnstorming tour to seven battleground states.

All of this stands in sharp contrast to the Vance roll-out. But would you expect from a Geezer that confuses Nancy Pelosi with Nikki Haley? Or E. Jean Carrol with Marla Maples? How refreshing is it to have our daily moments of Black Girl Joy compared to the constant misogyny of DonOld the Addlepated?  Even the Australians don’t like seeing, hearing, or dealing with Trump’s Trauma. This is from The Guardian. “Trump and Vance’s misogyny and cynical identity politics mean Australians can’t ‘just chill’ about the US election. America remains the west’s most influential nation – which is why I fear for a world where Republican leaders could be in power. ”  This Op-Ed is written by Paul Daley.

The litany of Trump’s actual (and verbal) offences against women is notorious. This seems too often forgotten or overlooked by admirers the world over – especially among sections of the political class here in Australia – to the file marked “character’’ and made, therefore, somehow irrelevant.

But such character traits are as highly relevant globally, as Trump attacks the reproductive (and human) rights of American women and deploys vicious slurs against women who threaten – or call out – their misogyny. The latest to come to lightseems to be Vance’s weaponisation of parenthood, in 2021 labelling senior Democrats – including now presidential nominee Kamala Harris and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – “childless cat ladies’’.

Trump’s latest attack on Kamala Harris – saying she had “turned black’’, an unsustainably false challenge to her racial identity – makes him less worthy. Just as this will give succour to racists the world over, it also enables politicians, including here, who would weaponise racial identity for cynical gain.

While Trump and Vance, like all populists, are perilously short on constructive policy and plans and optimism for the future, their prescriptive visions for social design when it comes to families and how they reckon they should look are coming into very sharp – and alarming – focus.

If this is all starting to sound, well, somewhat dystopic, that’s because it is. The most alarming thing for me, a world away, about the re-emergence of Trump (twice impeached, 34 felony convictions) and the upwardly-managing Vance is the global licence they give others to ape, voice and enact their misogyny. If it’s good enough for the leader of the free world and his apprentice …

With Trump’s cozying up to despots and dictators and his own dictatorial fantasies (having denied the last election result then incited a 6 January lynch mob to attack the capitol in pursuit of his then vice-president, Mike Pence, who certified the legitimate election of Joe Biden), Trump is the embodiment of autocracy. The danger he poses potentially extends far and away beyond the US, and with a deputy like Vance (who would not stand up to him the way Pence did), Trump’s power would be unfettered. So, “responsible’’? No. Don’t just chill. Be vigilant.

Liz Dye writes, “It’s fine to laugh at JD Vance and his couch. Having fun with a viral joke is not the same as lying relentlessly.” This is from Public Notice.

Since Trump named him as his running mate, the media has unearthed an endless stream of videos of Vance saying deeply weird things. He inveighs against “childless cat ladies” like Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He suggests that parents should be entitled to cast votes for their minor children because if you’re childless “you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country” and “maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.” He says that childcare subsidies are “class war against normal people.” He responds to racist attacks on his wife, who is Indian, by protesting that he loves her and she’s a good mother.

Vance suggests that women should stay in violent marriages and writes actual elegies about his grandparents’ marriage, which was mired in abuse and alcohol and began when his grandmother was a pregnant 13-year-old child.

Even as he holds the exact same job that Harris had four years ago, he demands to know what Harris, a former senator, prosecutor, and state attorney general, has done with her life “other than collect a check.” He also supports ending birthright citizenship, which would delegitimize Harris (and also his own wife Usha Chilukuri Vance).

The choice is to laugh or cry or VOTE!  And I’m not even going to elucidate on RFK Jr and that poor dead bear.

But, the good news is the more DonOld and JD lean into extremism.  The worse it gets for them.  This Guardian article explains how Trump has been rilling up his White Christian Nationalist base. “Trump leans into religious extremism to energize rightwing evangelicals. Ex-president turning to Christian nationalists for support as Kamala Harris’s potential nomination poses hard challenge.”

Donald Trump, now facing a tougher challenge in the US election after Joe Biden stepped down in favor of Kamala Harris, is increasingly leaning into religious extremism aimed at energizing a key section of his support base: socially conservative Christians.

Fears that Trump would be an authoritarian leader if elected seemed to be realized last week, when he told a group of Christian supporters they “would not have to vote” in four years if he becomes president.

“My theory would be that since Harris has entered the race, Trump has recognized that he’s on shakier ground,” said Matthew D Taylor, author of The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy.

“If you watched the RNC and saw the discourse there, [Republicans] really were quite confident that they were going to kind of have a cakewalk to victory in November.

“I think there’s, there’s more anxiety there now. I think Trump is dialing up religious dog whistles, and sometimes just straight up whistles to really galvanize and submit that religion’s religious support.”

Since 2016, Trump has become an unlikely hero for Christian nationalists – a loose grouping of evangelical Christians who believe the US was founded as a Christian nation, and want to see Christianity feature prominently in American life and politics.

After a stumbling start – during his first run for president the thrice-married Trump struggled to name a single Bible verse, referred to the Eucharist as a “little cracker”, and put money in the communion plate during a church visit – the relationship was cemented when Trump-installed supreme court justices overturned Roe v Wade.

Writing at The New Republic, Greg Sargent explains that extremist policies are moving the voters towards Haris. “Surprise Poll Reveals a Key Trump Weakness Against Kamala Harris’ A new survey finds Harris substantially ahead of Trump among Latinos, a sign that she may be rebuilding the Democratic coalition—which is essential to defeating him.”

Now a new poll—apparently the first large-sample poll of Latinos since Harris became presumptive Democratic nominee—provides fresh grounds for that optimism. It finds that Harris holds a nearly 20-point lead over Donald Trump among Hispanics in the battleground states, a surprisingly large expansion of Biden’s ailing support among them—and that her candidacy has room to grow that lead, suggesting she may be putting back in play Sun Belt states that appeared lost under Biden.

Harris leads Trump by 55 percent to 37 percent in the head-to-head finding, which sampled 800 Latinos across Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and North Carolina. The survey—provided to The New Republic in advance of its release on Monday—was conducted July 23–26, well after Biden stepped aside on July 21.

The poll dovetails with other national polls finding similar advantages for Harris among Latino voters. But, significantly, the larger Latino sample size in the survey—commissioned by the voter engagement group Somos PAC and conducted by Latino pollster Gary Segura—provides a stronger basis for confidence that Harris’s lead among Hispanics is real.

“Harris enters as the nominee with a very strong lead among Latinos,” says Segura, whose firm BSP Research did the poll (Segura’s business partner, Matt Barreto, polls separately for the Harris campaign). “We focused only on the battlegrounds, with a large enough sample in them to arrive at a confident estimate of the two-party vote in the states that will actually decide the election—not in states where the outcome is already determined, like Texas and California.”

This is leaving Trump in a very confused place.   Alexander Bolton at The Hill writes this. “GOP senators say Trump caught ‘off guard’ by Harris’s strength.”

They see Trump’s awkward discussion about Harris’s racial heritage at the National Association of Black Journalists convention as a clear sign the Trump campaign hasn’t yet hammered out a workable strategy for the battle against Harris.

GOP lawmakers also view Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate as evidence that the former president didn’t expect Biden to drop out of the race. They worry Vance’s outspoken views on restricting abortion and his claim that “childless cat ladies” run the country play right into the message that Harris and Democrats will center their campaign on in the fall.

One Republican senator who spoke to Trump before he announced Vance as his running mate said the former president expressed skepticism that Biden would drop out of the race.

“I think they were caught off guard. I think they were surprised,” the senator said. “I think there was shock when the Democrats revived [their party] really quickly” and unified support behind Harris.

“I think she’s more formidable than Republicans give her credit for. It’s going to be a short election. That favors her. It’s going to be sprint. We’re used to these long elections; this one’s going to end up being short. That helps her,” the lawmaker said of Harris, who announced she had raised $310 million for her campaign in July.

The lawmaker said Trump’s selection of Vance as his running mate to combat Biden’s strength in Michigan and Pennsylvania, specifically, showed he expected the incumbent to be his opponent in the fall.

A second GOP senator in contact with Trump who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the campaign said the GOP nominee and his team weren’t ready for the entire Democratic Party to rally behind Harris within a few days of Biden dropping his reelection bid.

How about he’s just an addlepated, mean old man who’s a convicted felon, lies and cons his way to money,  and has policies that will lead everyone but white male Christians into a less free and equitable space in this country?  Doesn’t character mean anything anymore?  What is rather odd to me is that JD Vance appears to be stalking Harris and whoever becomes her running mate around the campaign trail. This is in Politico and is written by Alex Isenstadt. “JD Vance is touring the same states as Harris this week. The Republican vice presidential nominee is “bracketing” Harris as she introduces her runningmate.” I’m not particularly sure that contrast will go well for Vance, who is still weird. It reminds me of when Donald stalked Secretary Clinton around a stage.

JD Vance is planning to trail Kamala Harris to a series of battleground states over the coming week, a move that comes as the Republican vice presidential nominee is carving out a more defined role for himself on Donald Trump’s campaign.

Vance will take part in a three-day tour following Harris — or “bracketing” in political parlance — to four key states, according to a schedule shared first with POLITICO. His first stop on Tuesday will be in Philadelphia, the same day Harris will be there to introduce her newly minted vice presidential candidate.

The Ohio senator is expected to use the appearances to target Harris on immigration, crime and the economy – three areas where the Trump campaign plans to focus attacks on the vice president. Vance has been sketching out a role for himself as the campaign’s chief policy attack dog, looking to define Harris as out-of-the mainstream on a number of issues

Vance is also looking to take to the media circuit, including on less traditionally conservative-friendly outlets. He is expected to be an active participant on podcasts geared toward younger voters: Last week the 40-year-old Vance made an appearance on “Full Send,” a podcast that is particularly popular among young men.

I guess we’ll see who is out of touch with the values of America when all they can do is lie to hide the truth of their plans.

So, that’s it for me today.  I’m doing more phone banking on Wednesday.  It will be fun to see which state I get to call next. There are many more states in play than when I first started, which is the best news I can give you from my vantage point.

Hope you have a great week!  The best thing may be for you to turn off the TV after we get the VEEP candidate.  Then, start writing postcards for Kamala.  Action always beats passively watching the media trying to go for the clicks.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?