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.
Mostly Monday Reads: Party Time!
Posted: August 19, 2024 Filed under: 2024 DNC | Tags: @repeat1968, and unemployment benefits, DNC, Harris/Walz policy priorities 2024, John Buss, One Last Time, President Biden, RNC, tips, Trump Travails and Tribulations, Trump undoing Reagan Taxes on Social Security 3 Comments
“Come on, Mr. President. Just do it!” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The DNC begins today in Chicago. It’s a busy schedule of what’s ahead for the future, but tonight’s focus will be on President Joe Biden’s long record of public service. Here’s the line-up of events and speakers.
This is from Axios. “DNC lineup: Who’s speaking and what to expect.”
The Democratic National Convention will open in Chicago on Monday, with President Biden speaking in prime time as he passes the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Driving the news: Convention organizers released night-by-night themes and speaker details on Sunday morning. One speaker who’s not on the official agenda but Axios has confirmed will take the stage on Tuesday: former First Lady Michelle Obama.
- Monday, “For the People”: Biden and Dr. Jill Biden speak, along with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a welcome from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.
- Tuesday, “A Bold Vision for America’s Future”: Former President Obama plus second gentleman Doug Emhoff, with a welcome from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
- Wednesday, “A Fight for Our Freedoms”: Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz delivers his acceptance speech, preceded by former President Clinton, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (per CNN).
- Thursday, “For Our Future”: Harris accepts the convention’s nomination for president.
Other speakers include Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
- Former President Carter’s grandson, Jason Carter, is expected to speak on behalf of his grandfather, who has said he hopes to stay alive long enough to vote for Harris.
Sneak peek: The stairs at the delegate entrance will say “History Is In Your Hands” — a quote from Biden’s Oval Office address on July 24.
- As delegates arrive on Monday ahead of Biden’s speech, digital signage in the United Center will say: “History is in your hands” and “Spread the faith.”
Robert Reich sums up what I feel about Biden’s four years. I was beginning my career as an economist when Ronald Reagan took over. I was working in a highly regulated banking industry about to be turned loose. Eventually, my first home had a fixed rate of 16.7%, which my employment turned into 12%. That’s just one of the nightmare stories I have to tell students.
I attended schools that produced ‘freshwater’ economists, which is a term that basically describes us as not coming from either coast, likely public university educated, and by no means radical. During that time, I lived through two recessions that took out my nascent savings and investment portfolio. I realized that the radical policy was not coming from the Democratic Party.
By the time I found out about the Iran-Contra affair, I was ready to vote for Bill Clinton. I didn’t lose much in the “Great Recession” because I knew another Republican meant another economic roller-coaster ride. The last Reagan recession took out most of my parents’ retirement savings, but they didn’t want to discuss why. If you know how to use derivatives, and that’s where hedge fund managers come in, you can make money in any economy. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been very accessible to regular folks until recently.
My oldest Kansas City Cousin and her husband graduated from Ivy League Schools, Princeton and Vassar. One time, when I was in high school, they drove to buy a car from Dad’s Ford Dealership in Iowa. My dad gave them the usual family price. I was their flower girl at their wedding and spent much of my young life with my Kansas City family. I adored them.
Her lawyer husband told me that the only way to grow an economy was to give massive tax cuts to the wealthy to start businesses, which would create jobs. I can’t remember exactly what started that conversation. Although, I must have said something outside of the orthodox Republican Policy Bible at the time. It sounded logical but seemed too good to be true when I started thinking about it. I’ve never gotten the chance to tell him that it doesn’t work, will never work, and actually works worse than anyone ever thought now that I’ve got my doctorate in Financial Economics, worked at the Fed, and taught and researched economics and finance since 1980. I now have the chops and the proof of why all that does is create chaos in the overall economy and siphon public funds to people who don’t need any more wealth.
I’m not sure why people fondly remember the Reagan years, but they were not economic good times. Also, I found out the Republicans will run up huge deficits as long as the rich or defense contractors get the results of whatever happened to create them. Trickle-down economics is even more of a failure with all the incentives now of not taxing capital gains and giving tax breaks for basically stock market gambling. The rich do not put their gains into actual industry anymore. They keep rolling it into the stock market, and then they’re great consumers of things like gigantic German Yachts and all kinds of goodies that mess up our trade balance. I voted for Bill Clinton because his policy came from economists and worked. Reagan was the one who put taxes on tips, unemployment, and Social Security. He had to make huge tax increases to compensate for the huge deficit with the 1981 tax cuts. So, from 1982 to 1993, there were huge tax cuts, including some from “Read My Lips” by HW Bush. Weirdly, undoing the taxes on tips and Social Security that Trump is high on is basically removing Reagan’s economic legacy.
But enough of that rant … on to the Reich commentary.
Tonight’s opening of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago will be an opportunity for the Democratic Party and the nation to take stock of Joe Biden’s term of office and thank him for his service.
He still has five months to go as president, of course, but the baton has been passed.
Biden’s singular achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that reigned since Reagan and return to one that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980 — and is far superior to the one that has prevailed since.
Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government.” It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.
The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Reagan’s presidency: markets are human creations. The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.
Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They stopped the looting of America. They also gave Americans a modicum of economic security. During World War II, they put almost every American to work.
Subsequent Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.
America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration developed satellite communications, container ships, and the internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA, and infectious diseases.
Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. Labor unions thrived. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized. Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders.
But then America took a giant U-turn. The OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of it by raising interest rates so high that the economy fell into deep recession.
All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism. From 1981 onward, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that markets functioned well only if the government got out of the way.
The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from the common good to economic growth, even though Americans already well-off gained most from that growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit reduction — all of which helped the monied interests make even more money.
If you notice the last two Republican administrations with the emphasis on the last one, there were very few real economists who advised the President. Trump only had one with the creds but was considered insane by his peers because he fitted his papers to a political take rather than data analysis and the usual scientific method.
No matter what party you’re in, and I know Bernanke, Mankiw, Greenspan, and Krugman feel this way, the facts are the facts. Concentrating fiscal policy on Main Street and the middle and working classes is the best use of tax dollars to keep the engine of economic growth steadily growing. Biden’s stewardship of the economy has proved this. He also provided input on the Obama administration’s cleanup of the huge mess called “The Great Recession,” which was completely on the back of bad policy and lack of oversight regarding the financial economy. I am a Financial Economist. We know enough to know that these things should not happen if it wasn’t the habit of Pols to go after Dark Money and then vote to install bad policy into law. It’s also disheartening to see it on the Supreme Court, where Dark Money has completely corrupted at least two Judges.
And the crazy thing is we’re back to being called Communists again which, like capitalism, is a Marxist theoretical abstract that cannot work, has never worked, and has never actually been implemented anywhere. We live in mixed market economies, and their characteristics determine what kind of oversight they require. You cannot compare a market where there are only two providers, like airplane manufacturing and Boeing and Airbus, with the market for apples. There have never been any economies where the government owns all the production factors. The Soviet Style system was called a command economy. Even the Chinese have given up on the planned command economy and the Cubans have many markets based on private ownership. It’s not just the major ones. I can’t believe we’re back to red-baiting.
The most interesting trivia I have for you today is that Donald J. Harris, Kamala’s father, is a bona fide Emeritus Economics Professor at Stanford. His research is primarily in developing economies. He published a book in 1978, “Capital Accumulation and Income Distribution,” which relies heavily on the new statistical methods that were developing at the time and takes the field from political philosophy to using scientific methods and data to see what works! That’s my kind of pragmatism. You wonder what kind of talk the Harris family had at the dinner table.
So, while this shindig in Chicago gets going, watch the week for Trump’s further insane adventures for attention. Unfortunately, he usually succeeds at getting press attention even when it’s not newsworthy or basically a rant of a senile old man stuck in the 1980s. People need to know how bad it was 4 years ago with COVID-19 unassailed by policy and treated with denial. We are the strongest economy in the world with the strongest growth. Economists were prepared to see China become the number one economy shortly, but it’s not because of this administration’s policy. Inflation is back within normal parameters. That’s not to say there are not people who still aren’t seeing the benefits. But Kamala’s policy announcement last Friday was full of suggestions to get everyone back on track. The answer to folks left behind is not in the Project 2025 Playbook. (See BB’s post on Saturday for coverage of the Harris/Walz economic priorities in her Caturday Post.)
David R Lurie, who is writing for Public Notice, writes, “Trump’s carny act isn’t working anymore. His Folgers Coffee™ Conference showed a candidate in decline. I’m sure the DNC productions will have much better production chops, pithy content, and actual policy presentation.
Last Thursday, Donald Trump held a “press conference” outside a building in his Bedminster country club in New Jersey, done up with many American flags so as to vaguely resemble the White House.
Trump rambled on astride a tableau of groceries, ranging from brightly toned condiments and a Wheaties™ box (bearing the image of Billie Jean King) to tubs of Folgers Coffee™ (caff and decaf) and packages of sausage and bacon that lay roasting in the midsummer heat.
Trump’s team also assembled a chorus, apparently composed of club visitors, that cheered and jeered during the “news conference” when needed.
Simply put, it was quite a weird scene.
The event was all the more bizarre because Trump hardly referred to (or even acknowledged) the cornucopia of processed food arrayed around him during his typically lengthy and meandering rant before the assembled press corps.
Presumably, the food had been intended to serve as a prop for a “policy” discussion of inflation. Trump, however, spent most of his time in front of the cameras deriding Kamala Harris’s intelligence and appearance, and insisting that he’s “entitled” to “personally attack” her, because, as Trump explained, she unfairly labeled him “weird.”
To borrow an old ad meme, where’s the beef? Well, it was sitting on the table at that presser, rotting in the sun. That’s quite a metaphor for what’s happening with the DonOld/JD show. JD’s rallies look like the Time Out Room for bad behavior. And no one can take 90 minutes of Trump’s senile ramblings on sharks, batteries, and how much better he looks than Harris.
The topic that I’m looking forward to hearing about at the DNC is the presentation on how Trump proposes an existential threat to democracy. Will we see a lot of Project 2025? How do they make it not look like a school assembly event? This is from CNN. “Democrats to highlight threat to democracy they say Trump poses, giving speaking roles to January 6 committee lawmakers.”
Democrats gathered in Chicago this week for their national convention will highlight the threat to democracy that they say former President Donald Trump poses, giving prominent speaking roles to lawmakers, as well as to a Capitol Police officer injured during the January 6, 2021, riots.
An official with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign told CNN that among those speakers are Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, who both served on the House select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection. That committee ultimately recommended in its 2022 report that Trump be barred from holding office again.
Retired St. Aquilino Gonell, one of the Capitol Police officers injured during the January 6 attack, will also address the convention. Since responding to the attack on the US Capitol over three years ago, Gonell has become a public face of the insurrection’s toll and a vocal critic of Trump and the Republicans who continue to defend him.
“Donald Trump’s failure to denounce the violence on January 6, 2021 is a betrayal to every officer who put their life on the line that day — and to every veteran who risked everything to defend our country,” Gonell, who is supporting Harris, said in a statement provided to CNN. “You cannot say you back the police or the Constitution if you’re offering pardons to criminals who tried to destroy our democracy, hurt our leaders and attack law enforcement.”
Former Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who also served on the January 6 committee, is scheduled to address the convention Thursday, CNN previously reported. Kinzinger, who is now a CNN political commentator, was one of 10 House Republicans to vote for Trump’s impeachment for “incitement of an insurrection” in relation to his role during the attack on the Capitol.
The so-called Tennessee Three — state Reps. Justin Jones, Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson — are also expected to speak at the convention. Jones and Pearson were expelled from the Tennessee House last year after the three lawmakers led a gun control protest on the chamber floor. They have since won reelection.
Also scheduled to speak during the week, according to the campaign official, are Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who served in the state Legislature in 2021 when Democrats sought to block restrictive voting legislation in the state, and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who serves as pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. served.
Before dropping out of the 2024 race, President Joe Biden made the argument that Trump posed a threat to democracy a driving feature of his candidacy.
“Anita Dunn says Joe Biden’s speech is about looking forward, not back. “This is not a time for legacy,” the longtime Biden aide said on CNN.” This analysis can be found at Politico. It’s written by Irrie Sentner.
Anita Dunn is looking to the future — and says President Joe Biden is, too.
The former senior Biden adviser, who left the White House last month to work with the Future Forward super PAC supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, said on CNN today that Biden in his speech will make a “resounding argument for why Kamala Harris should be elected president in 2024.” She joked that he is now Harris’ “volunteer in chief.”
Tonight’s speech will cap off a half-century political career for the president. But, Dunn said, it won’t be about looking back.
“This is not a time for legacy,” Dunn said. “This is a time for arguing why Kamala Harris is the best candidate.”
Biden will be speaking to a party that pushed him to drop his reelection bid — and endorsing a candidate the party has since rallied around. Those intraparty tensions are still playing out at the DNC.
Well, it’s bound to be much better than whatever the Republicans put on. I remember turning off Pat Buchanan’s racist rant in his Culture Wars speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention and was glad I didn’t attend in person. The state convention was weird enough and overrun with what we now call White Christian Nationalists. Because even though I was running as a Republican at the time, it was another one of those things that made me vote for Clinton. I could tell then that there was no saving the Republican Party. I was an Independent for a long time.
So, I’m certain there will be a lot going on that won’t include all that anger and bigotry of the other! Stay tuned! You may exit the Rabbit Hole now!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
One of my other cousins performed at the White House as Martha Jefferson in 1776 when Nixon was President in 1970 as part of the Broadway Cast. She fell asleep on a settee to the chagrin of some tourists who probably thought they’d seen a ghost. Her mother was a descendant of Hamilton. Ever so often, a glimpse at the founding fathers singing is fun. So, it seems appropriate that we watch Obama and Biden watching “One Last Time.” I’m waiting to see if this show song is played at the DNC for the President.
Finally Friday Reads: The Decline and Fall of the DonOld Empire
Posted: August 16, 2024 Filed under: Kamala Harris 2024 | Tags: 2024 presidential Campaign, @repeat1968, Dotard DonOld, Harris/Walz policy priorities 2024, John Buss, WTF is Trump Talking about? 3 Comments
“For those wondering, since the press isn’t reporting what happened after the fly left Donold’s face.” John Buss @repeat1968
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
Sorry for being a bit late. I had to be retrained on the same things again this year and then ensure the paperwork got into the right places. I’ve been at this for two days. I must get caught up with the world outside compliance with Higher Ed. Regulations.
Whenever the Former Guy emerges from his hidey hole in Mara Lardo, his lies, bizarro stories, and slurring worsen his travails. I still refuse to watch this stuff on the Boob Tube, but I’m sure up to reading about it. There’s just something about his demeanor and voice that I cannot take. So far, he’s attacking veterans, decided that illegal immigrants have taken more than 100% of the jobs that have been created, and then there is this. “Trump Warns That if Kamala Harris Wins, ‘Everybody Gets Health Care. Donald Trump repeatedly lies about single-payer health care — an idea he and Harris both previously supported but no longer do’” That headline is in Rolling Stone. CNN also has an explanation but without the ironic headline. “Kamala Harris’ complicated history with Medicare for All becomes a Trump campaign attack line.” Harris actually dropped her support for Medicare for All when Biden pulled ahead because of his stance for just improving ObamaCare instead.
But Harris has not addressed the question herself, touting the Biden administration’s record while trying avoid any relitigation of the years-old fight, and putting out word now only through campaign aides. Now, Trump is reviving the debate as he seeks to paint Harris as both a radical liberal and a flip flopper.
“Kamala Harris’ spokespeople are once again alleging she has flip flopped on her positions – this time saying she no longer supports socialist Medicare for All,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday, calling on Harris “to explain why she is running from every liberal policy she has ever supported.”
The Trump camp’s focus on Medicare for All is emerging as the centerpiece of a wider strategy to use Harris’ 2020 primary positions against her now, less than 90 days before the general election. Harris dropped out of the Democratic primary before the first votes werecast, but her campaign that year frequently jousted with Sanders and reporters trying to pin down her position on the plan, which would eliminate private insurance plans and replace them with a government-funded and operated single-payer system.
That debate quieted when Biden consolidated the party on his way to winning the nomination and, eventually, the presidency with Harris as his running mate. Trump – who repeatedly attempted to repeal ACA, also known as Obamacare, without success and to significant electoral backlash – has never spelled out a clear plan of his own.
“She wants to outlaw private health insurance,” Trump said in late July at the conservative Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach. “A lot of people have private health insurance. They want to keep it that way. It’s phenomenal.”
Harris responded the next day at a fundraiser in Massachusetts, raising Trump’s 2017 campaign to end Obamacare.
“He intends to end the Affordable Care Act and take us back to a time when insurance companies had the power to deny people with preexisting conditions,” Harris said. “You guys remember what that was? It was real. Children with asthma. Breast cancer survivors. Grandparents with diabetes.”
The Harris campaign, in response to CNN, pointed to the record high number of Americans now enrolled in Obamacare and other initiatives, including moves to lower prescription drug prices.
“Vice President Harris believes real leadership means bringing all sides together to build consensus. It is that approach that made it possible for the Biden-Harris administration to achieve bipartisan breakthroughs on everything from infrastructure to gun violence prevention,” campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said. “As President, she will take that same pragmatic approach, focusing on common-sense solutions for the sake of progress.”
The Affordable Healthcare Act still continues to be popular. It may need some upgrading, but there’s no reason to invent an entirely new public option. You would think he’d move on after John McCain sunk the last attempt to get rid of it. But since he still hasn’t found a way to do his usual dirty tricks on Vice President Harris, I suppose he is just throwing anything at the wall, including ketchup. But the Harris/Walz tickets aren’t the only ones that are getting his bile and vile treatment. He’s after Vets again, which brings McCain back to mind.
This is from Politico. Cadet Bonespurs strikes again. “Trump veteran comments spark controversy — again. The former president has a history of making controversial comments about veterans, receiving backlash during both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.” Here’s the quote first.
“But [the] civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead,” former President Donald Trump said Thursday.
Irie Sentner writes this analysis.
Former President Donald Trump is facing backlash over his comments about veterans. Again.
Trump said Thursday that the country’s top civilian honor was “much better” than its top military honor, because the service members who receive the latter are “in very bad shape” or “dead” — the latest in a yearslong pattern of inflammatory comments the former president has made about veterans as barbs over military service are being traded by both campaigns during a heated election.
Speaking at an event on antisemitism at his Bedminster, New Jersey, estate, Trump was discussing Miriam Adelson and her late husband Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire pro-Israel GOP megadonors who set a donation record in 2020 by spending over $170 million. Trump bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Miriam Adelson in 2018 for her history of contributions to U.S. national interests and “world peace.”
“That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor,” Trump said Thursday. “But [the] civilian version, it’s actually much better because everyone [who] gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”
Trump has a history of making controversial comments about veterans, receiving backlash for them during both his 2016 and 2020 campaigns. But now, both parties’ vice presidential candidates are veterans — and as the GOP attacks the service record of the Democratic vice presidential hopeful, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Trump’s comments Thursday gave Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign ammunition for a counterattack.
“Donald Trump knows nothing about service to anyone or anything but himself,” Harris campaign senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said Friday in a statement. “For him to insult Medal of Honor recipients, just as he has previously attacked Gold Star families, mocked prisoners of war, and referred to those who lost their lives in service to our country as ‘suckers’ and ‘losers,’ should remind all Americans that we owe it to our service members, our country, and our future to make sure Donald Trump is never our nation’s commander in chief again.”
“Blinded by light”, John Buss, @repeat1968
As I said, I totally missed this “press conference,” so I’m relying on sources like the AP. “FACT FOCUS: Trump blends falsehoods and exaggerations at rambling NJ press conference.”
Inflation did not take the toll Trump claimed. Growth surged under Biden
TRUMP: “As a result of Kamala’s inflation, price hikes have cost the typical household a total of $28,000. … When I left office, I left Kamala and crooked Joe Biden a surging economy and no inflation. The mortgage rate was around 2%. Gasoline had reached $1.87 a gallon. … Harris and Biden blew it all up.”
THE FACTS: Trump made numerous economic claims that were either exaggerated or misleading. Prices did surge during the Biden-Harris administration, though $28,000 is far higher than independent estimates. Moody’s Analytics calculated last year that price increases over the previous two years were costing the typical U.S. household $709 a month. That would equal $8,500 a year.
Here’s the more facts on that from CBS News.
Inflation continued to retreat in July, aided by easing price pressures for consumer staples like food and energy and physical goods like new and used cars.
The consumer price index, a key inflation gauge, rose 2.9% in July from a year ago, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Wednesday. That figure is down from 3% in June and the lowest reading since March 2021.
The CPI gauges how fast prices are changing across the U.S. economy. It measures everything from fruits and vegetables to haircuts, concert tickets and household appliances.
Bruce Plante Cartoon: Trump and the Cashier
Trump set up a little grocery store at this “presser” where he told whopper after whopper. I love this headline from Vanity Fair. “Does Anyone Know What Donald Trump Is Talking About Anymore? Hannibal Lecter? Cheerios? “Bird cemeteries?” The former president is tying himself in a knot of discursive tangents and in-jokes that only makes sense to an increasingly small sect of the American public.”
Donald Trump has never been what you’d call eloquent. An orator, he is not. And yet, the former president seems to be getting even more incoherent by the day, as his latest “press conference” underscored Thursday.
Speaking to reporters at his Bedminster country club in New Jersey, Trump stood before a display of groceries—coffee, cereal, milk—for what was billed as a presser on the economy, one of those “issues” his allies and advisers wish he’d spend more time talking about. What everyone got instead was a series of rants on subjects ranging from his anger at Kamala Harris calling him and JD Vance “weird” to the “bird cemeteries” under windmills to his math-defying contention that “beyond…100 percent” of job creation under Joe Biden in the past year has “gone to migrants.”
“It’s a much higher number than that,” Trump said, “but the government has not caught up with that yet.”
“I haven’t seen Cheerios in a long time,” he remarked at another point, saying he wanted to “take some of them back to [his] cottage and have a lot of fun.”
What, exactly, does that mean, you might ask? Well, what does any of this mean? Trump isn’t just inarticulate, trying in vain to express his thoughts and emotions with a vocabulary that seems limited to “beautiful,” “perfect,” and maybe thirty other words. He’s now riffing on riffs, becoming so self-referential and so discursive that you need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back to the original thought. Take Trump’s latest addition to his repertoire about Hannibal Lecter, the fictional cannibal of page and screen portrayed by Anthony Hopkins: “He’d love to have you for dinner,” the former president said during a rant on immigration during his Republican National Convention speech last month. “That’s insane asylums. They’re emptying out their insane asylums.”
The media is absolutely laughing at him. “Trump’s Magical History Tour. Under siege and self-sabotaging at his New Jersey golf club, Donald Trump is reaching for old familiar faces and enablers to imbue his flailing 2024 campaign with some 2016 magic: Corey Lewandowski, Tim Murtaugh, maybe Kellyanne. Who’s next, Roger Stone? Oh wait…” This is from Puck and Tara Palmer.
I woke up Thursday morning to a storm of text messages saying that it was really happening, and then, within an hour, Trump’s team had leaked the news to Politico. The two had been talking for a while, and Lewandowski traveled with the team on the night of the debate. But from what I hear, Trump was alone in making the call to hire Lewandowski, who has been consulting for the R.N.C. since April. “People in Trumpworld try to stop things and they can’t,” said a former aide. “Sometimes when the ship has left the port, it’s left the port.”
Sheepishly, perhaps, the news of Lewandowski’s reinstatement was bundled with a handful of other, lesser-known new hires: Taylor Budowich, Alex Pfeiffer, Alex Bruesewitz, and Tim Murtaugh—all “veterans of prior Trump campaigns” with “unmatched experience,” per a campaign statement. Spokesperson Steven Cheung told me Lewandowski’s title will be “senior advisor,” and that Wiles and LaCivita will remain as co-campaign managers. (Trump himself referred to Lewandowski during a press conference on Thursday afternoon as a “personal envoy or something.”)
All around Bedminster, where Trump has relocated to escape the South Florida heat, there is a pervasive anxiety that the candidate is trying to recreate the chaos that surrounded his winning 2016 campaign. No one thinks Lewandowski and LaCivita can cohabitate for long, leading some people close to Trump to speculate that he’s trying to push LaCivita out, just as he installed Anthony Scaramucci to fire Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus. “Susie is a survivor; she’s not going anywhere. But then you have LaCivita and Corey Lewandowski, two alpha men,” said a source close to Lewandowski. “It’s like Trump just wants them to kill each other and for one to win so he doesn’t have to actually fire anyone.”
One obvious vulnerability facing LaCivita is his astronomical fee. As Trump stews over his fading poll numbers and whether a once easily winnable election is slipping away, there has been growing chatter in some corners of Mar-a-Lago about the $50,000 that LaCivita’s firm, Advanced Strategies, collects from the campaign and R.N.C. each month, which is included in the nearly $1.7 million he’s invoiced the campaign so far this year for various services like placed media, political strategy consulting, and video production, up from the $1.65 million he billed last year. (Sure, it’s not Jeff Roe money, but it has some tongues wagging.) “I have never told anyone I will be conducting a forensic audit of the campaign, nor have I alluded to, or have any understanding of, how much money Chris LaCivita may or may not have billed this campaign,” Lewandowski told me.
I’m still enjoying the interviews with people who once worked for him. Have you noticed he’s suddenly coming apart whenever someone mentions he’s coming up on his sentencing deadline in New York? “Scaramucci: Trump Is ‘Coming to Grips’ With Losing the Election, Trump’s former White House communications director says it’s going to be “rough” until Election Day.” This is from The Daily Beast. This article is by Dan Ladden-Hall.
Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump’s one-time White House communications director, thinks his former boss is “coming to grips” with the possibility that he’ll lose the election and is consequently “growing darker.”
“Will be a rough 81 days,” Scaramucci added in an X post Thursday, referring to the time left until Election Day in November. His comment came as Trump spoke at an hour-long press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, in which the Republican nominee explicitly rejected pleas from others in his party to stop personally attacking Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I’m very angry at her that she weaponized the justice system against me and other people,” Trump said at the press conference. “Very angry at her. I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her, I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president.”
Trump has become increasingly irate in private as Harris has surpassed him in various polls, according to an Axios report over the weekend. The former president has also reportedly referred to Harris as a “b—h” behind closed doors while growing frustrated by sustained news coverage of her.
Scaramucci was briefly Trump’s White House comms chief in 2017, losing the job after just 10 days over a foul-mouthed tirade against then-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus and strategist Steve Bannon. Scaramucci has since become an outspoken critic of his former boss, describing Trump in a Daily Beast op-ed in May as a “true narcissist” whose “ego-driven and childlike behavior” he’d witnessed up close.
No matter how befuddled or far into advanced dotage he’s become, it’s important to remember the people behind him. “Watch Undercover Video: Project 2025 Co-Author Lays Out “Radical Agenda” for Next Trump Term.” This is from Democracy Now. You may also read the Transcript at that link.
As Donald Trump tries to distance his campaign from Project 2025, those behind the right-wing policy blueprint to remake the U.S. government continue to brag in private about their close ties to the Republican presidential nominee and how they intend to push a radical right-wing agenda in a second Trump administration. In July, Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought met with two people he believed to be relatives of a wealthy conservative donor interested in funding the effort. In fact, he was meeting with two reporters with the U.K.-based Centre for Climate Reporting as part of an undercover sting captured on video. Over the course of two hours, Vought described Trump’s disavowal of Project 2025 as mere theater and laid out plans for mass deportations, restricting abortion, gutting independent government bureaucracies, using the military against racial justice protesters and more. The secret plans are “designed to ensure that this kind of radical agenda that the conservative movement has in the U.S. can be implemented from day one,” says Lawrence Carter, founder and director of the Centre for Climate Reporting and one of the reporters who spoke with Vought. “They want to make sure that the mistakes from the first Trump administration, as they see them, where not much got done, are avoided this time around.”
AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with a new undercover video that shows the co-author of Project 2025 bragging about his ties to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump — even as Trump is trying to distance himself from the right-wing blueprint for his potential second term.
The video features Russell Vought, who was director of the Trump White House Office of Management and Budget. It shows Vought meeting in a five-star Washington, D.C., hotel with two men he thought were relatives of a wealthy conservative donor. But Vought was actually talking to two undercover reporters with the Centre for Climate Reporting, an independent British news outlet. They were secretly recording him.
Here’s some happier reading. “Vice President Harris Lays Out Agenda to Lower Costs for American Families.” You may read actual policy goals and solutions there. It’s good to be back when you can see what’s on the table.
Today, Vice President Kamala Harris is announcing several proposals for her first 100 days in office to bring down costs for American families. The steps announced today will cut taxes for the middle class, reduce grocery costs, take on price gouging, lower the costs of owning and renting a home, continue to bring down the costs of prescription drugs, and relieve medical debt for millions of Americans. These bold actions will address some of the sharpest pain points American families are confronting and bolster their financial security.
These proposals are just one part of the Vice President’s economic plan, which also includes protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare; bringing together labor, small businesses, and major corporations to invest in America, create jobs, and deliver for Americans; lowering costs of education, child care, and long-term care; empowering workers and their right to come together to bargain for higher wages; creating a stable business environment with consistent and transparent rules; encouraging innovative technologies while protecting consumers; and so much more. Vice President Harris has made clear that building up the middle class will be a defining goal of her presidency. She will deliver for Americans who are demanding a new way forward towards a future that lifts up all Americans so that they can not just get by, but get ahead.
I’m sitting here in my little Kathouse, wondering how anyone could deny climate change as we are deep into the third intense heat wave of the summer and know that August has been the worst month for the last few years. It’s really important that we don’t go back. I was talking to one of my gay neighbors today, saying that he wasn’t going back, and watching the news felt good for a change. I said I’d already be back if I still had working ovaries and a uterus. I don’t want my girls and the granddaughters to stay where Trump and that dreadful group of throwbacks on SCOTUS put them. Our governor just signed a law that basically ensures that you will be arrested and your phone will be taken from you if you try to film police officers. We have to get the correct laws into place to ensure all the book banning, the religious interference with education, and the voter suppression stop. Join in where you can to stop this.
So, I had to skip calling this week, but I will be at it again next week. Do what you can to turn out the vote for Kamala.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
For some reason, I’m singing this song a lot these days. Have a peaceful and wonderful weekend!
Mostly Monday Reads: Size Matters
Posted: August 12, 2024 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Biden Harris 2024, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights | Tags: ground game, On the Ground Politics, Presidential Election 2024, What, What's Vance's Drag Queen name? 7 Comments
“The desperation is real. The next fake elector coup is coming.” John Buss, @repeat1968
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
It was inevitable that the incredible crowds that the Harris/Walz appearances have been attracting would eventually impact Donald’s psyche. One of the first signs was the amount of disinformation being packaged by right-wing sites and news. The KKKult is falling for it. I even had to fact-check someone myself. I’ve never seen a group of more gullible people in my life. They’re even rehashing some of the crap they tried to pass in 2020. We’ve also seen poorly photoshopped pictures of crowds in Trump’s appearance, where the same obvious guys appear in four different stadium sections. We’ve now advanced to AI conspiracies.
Marcy at emptywheel has a delightful account of this current bout of fake crowds. It’s filled with pictures and videos of the size issue. “In Which Ian Miles Cheong Understands Trump’s Campaign Better than NYT. The second I saw video of Vice President Harris rolling up to a hangar at Detroit’s airport on Air Force Two, then alighting with Tim Walz in front of cheering crowds, I knew it would break Donald Trump’s brain.” Indeed.
This is the kind of spectacle Donald Trump excels at creating.
This is the kind of spectacle on which Trump has built slavering loyalty from millions of MAGAts who see power in such spectacle.
And a Black woman created it.
Or rather, a Black woman and her campaign team, a campaign team which has already demonstrated they know exactly how to trigger Donald Trump, created it.
And sure enough, it did melt his brain.
Yesterday, he adopted the hysterical claims of some of his followers, posting that Vice President Harris was cheating because (he falsely claimed) she had used AI to sub in a crowd of people who weren’t there.
After these many years of dealing with this emotionally disturbed man with his plethora of Personality Disorders, we know his defense is projection. I know you are, but what am I! Donald has crowd-size envy, so it has to be resolved by calling it fake photos, fake videos, and fake reporting! Marcy brings the tape and photos to show how deluded he is. So deluded that even social media right-wing troll Malaysian Ian Miles Cheong. This guy jumps for red meat but can’t even with the entire AI crowd thing. Marcie continues with this. Wait for it. She mercilessly goes straight from the well-known troll to WAPO and NYT.
And Cheong is not the only right wing troll complaining that Trump is hurting the movement, their movement, with his unhinged response to Vice President Harris’ rally. At a time when some prominent right wing trolls are showing RFK-curiosity, they’re also questioning the campaign, in significant part because of Trump’s public meltdown over this arrival.
And that’s where things start to get weird.
Both WaPo and NYT reported overnight on Trump’s unhinged claim.
But they’re both missing a bit of what’s going on, and they’re missing it, in my opinion, because they’re still seeing this race from Trump’s perspective.
In a piece on Saturday, WaPo claimed that Democrats were obsessing over crowd size in their own right, citing Tim Walz’ boast about crowd size in a Friday rally in Phoenix, even while (in the penultimate paragraph) quoting a Harris spox mocking Trump for the meltdowns he has in response.
Read more for details. It’s true. We’ve all had fun with Trump waving his hands to a nonexistent crowd at airports and in front of Trump Tower. Watching Trump meltdown over his dwindling crowd size has been epic fun. This is from Brett Bachman from The Daily Beast. “Dem Rep: Trump’s Latest Conspiracy Is Evidence He’s in ‘Dementia Land.’
Rep. Ted Lieu had some harsh words for Donald Trump Sunday after the former president falsely suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris had somehow digitally altered photos of her rally at a Detroit-area airport over the weekend. “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump posted on Truth Social Sunday. “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” Lieu attacked the conspiracy theory during an appearance on MSNBC, saying that Trump was “really going bonkers off the edge into dementia land.” Lieu added: “He’s now fantasizing that all these rallies are not real and that somehow, Air Force Two is not real and that the rally she had in Michigan was not real. I think the American people realize that Donald Trump is not suited for office in any way whatsoever.”
So, yeah, they’re going for the paid actor thing yet again. Why not? In fact, it seems they’ve just doctored some of the stuff they used in 2020, as I said. But, here’s world-class troll Ian Miles Cheong at least copping to them not being AI. Michael Tomasky writes this for The New Republic. “Grab the Popcorn. Donald Trump Is Freaked Out in Ways He Never Imagined Were Possible. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting under his skin, and it’s a beautiful sight to behold.”
The Harris-Walz campaign proved two important things last week. First, it proved that sometimes all you really have to do is answer attacks—the mere fact of answering them deflates their momentum. Second, it proved that Democrats have finally learned something from brazen Republican presidential campaigns over the years: Convert your perceived weakness into strength and their perceived strength into weakness.
The campaign did both of these things effectively last week. And it drove Donald Trump, and Republicans generally, nuts. Democrats aren’t supposed to do that! It’s like Cinderella saying she’s not doing the dishes. But Democrats are saying it, and it’s effing awesome.
…
Republicans have understood this for years. Seeing a Democratic presidential campaign finally get this is exhilarating to me personally but, more important, potentially game-changing.
And Donald Trump is freaked out in ways he never imagined were possible. He has faced a lot of opponents—from 1980s New York Mayor Ed Koch to all his many creditors to the 16 dwarves he ran against in 2016 to a Clinton campaign that thought the race was over to prosecutors he has known for years how to slow down, especially with corrupt hack judges having his back. But Trump has never had an opponent that made him go: “Oh fuck, these people mean business.”
Now he does. And that it’s a Black woman who means this business makes it so great, so much better. The New York Times reported over the weekend that he is so shell-shocked by the turnabout in this race that he’s doubling down on racism and “stop the steal” delusions. He is in full-blown meltdown mode, in other words.
All the pressure is on Trump now. Can he come back? Can he respond? Can he prove, contra George Conway’s brilliant ads, that he is not a pathetic psychopath? Can he make up these polling gaps, like his sudden four-point deficit in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan?
In 2016, we had a Trump who expected and even wanted to lose, who had no investment in winning. In 2020, we had a Trump with a deep investment in winning, and who expected to win. In 2024, we had a Trump—while he was running against Joe Biden—who fully expected to win.
But now we have a new Trump. He really isn’t sure. We’ve never seen this animal on the loose. Hide the wives and children. The Democrats are hitting him where it hurts. And it’s about damn time.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson believes that “Vice President Kamala Harris’s choice of Minnesota governor Tim Walz to be her running mate seems to cement the emergence of a new Democratic Party.” Her analysis was posted yesterday in her SubStack Letters from an American.
While Biden worked hard to make his administration reflect the demographics of the nation, tapping more women than men as advisors and nominating more Black women and racial minorities to federal judicial positions than any previous president, it was Vice President Kamala Harris who emphasized the right of all Americans to be treated equally before the law.
She was the first member of the administration to travel to Tennessee in support of the Tennessee Three after the Republican-dominated state legislature expelled two Black Democratic lawmakers for protesting in favor of gun safety legislation and failed by a single vote to expel their white colleague. She has highlighted the vital work historically Black colleges and universities have done for their students and for the United States. And she has criss-crossed the country to support women’s rights, especially the right to reproductive healthcare, in the two years since the Supreme Court, packed with religious extremists by Trump, overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
To the forming Democratic coalition, Harris brought an emphasis on equal rights before the law that drew from the civil rights movements that stretched throughout our history and flowered after 1950. Harris has told the story of how her parents, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, who hailed from India, and Donald J. Harris, from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley and bonded over a shared interest in civil rights. “My parents marched and shouted in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s,” Harris wrote in 2020. “It’s because of them and the folks who also took to the streets to fight for justice that I am where I am.”
To these traditionally Democratic mindsets, Governor Walz brings something quite different: midwestern Progressivism. Walz is a leader in the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which formed after World War II, but the reform impulse in the Midwest reaches all the way back to the years immediately after the Civil War and in its origins is associated with the Republican, rather than the Democratic, Party. While Biden’s approach to government focuses on economic justice and Harris’s focuses on individual rights, Walz’s focuses on the government’s responsibility to protect communities from extremists. That stance sweeps in economic fairness and individual rights but extends beyond them to recall an older vision of the nature of government itself.
Philip Bump of the Washington Post believes Donald’s most recent behavior is ominous. “‘AI’ crowds and unskewed polls: Trump prepares to reject another loss. The former president’s recent rejection of obvious realities indicates that he is not planning to treat a negative 2024 outcome as legitimate.” As I mentioned on Friday, shenanigans are afoot.
The first person who I noticed spreading the idea that images of Vice President Kamala Harris’s rally in Michigan had been manipulated was conservative moviemaker Dinesh D’Souza.
On Saturday evening, D’Souza posted a photo on social media of Harris exiting her airplane with a crowd of supporters looking on. Two reflections from the airplane were circled in red, illustrating that, despite the crowd, no one was visible in the reflection.
“Does this look like a real picture to you?” D’Souza asked. Within hours, similar questions were everywhere on social media — and by Sunday had popped up in former president Donald Trump’s feed at Truth Social.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” Trump wrote. “She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane.”
That D’Souza was at the leading edge of this argument is not surprising. It was D’Souza, you may recall, who produced a feature-length movie arguing without evidence that the 2020 election had been stolen by “mules” who collected and submitted ballots on behalf of Joe Biden. Then, as now, D’Souza’s claims were rooted in a trivial misrepresentation of digital information.
There was a crowd in Michigan to meet Harris, as shown below in a photograph taken by a Washington Post photographer. You can also see why the reflection from the plane didn’t show the crowd; it was angled away from the speaking platform.
No AI. No whistleblowing maintenance worker, ginned up from the ether to make the claim of dishonesty seem more credible. And no “cheating” by Harris.
Why would Trump and his allies spread a false claim about attendance at a rally that was covered on C-SPAN? In part because many elements of Trump’s base have embraced rejections of basic reality (like the existence of “mules”) for years. In part, it’s confirmation bias, with partisans being more likely to accept false information as true when it supports their preexisting beliefs. But in part, it’s because Trump and his allies are already eagerly raising questions about the reliability of measures of Harris’s support — and by extension, the reliability of the results in November.
Bump makes a strong case that the Trump campaign will reject the election results and chaos will follow. The response will be in Biden’s court. Recent Polls show that “Democratic attacks on JD Vance are working.” This is from Semafor and reported by Kadia Goba.
New polling shared exclusively with Semafor shows Democrats’ attacks on JD Vance’s views on abortion, divorce and “childless cat ladies” are sticking with voters.
A pair of surveys by Blueprint, the centrist Democratic pollster backed by Reid Hoffman, one taken July 21 – July 22, two days after Vance was announced as Donald Trump’s running mate, and then again two weeks later on August 4, showed Vance’s net favorability falling from -7 to -11 with fewer voters unsure either way. That’s similar to other public polling, which has also shown Vance making a poor first impression since joining the Republican ticket.
The main shift in how respondents viewed Vance: He’s become more and more identified with his particular brand of conservatism and less with his famed biography as an author, veteran, and politician. Presented with a list of options to describe Vance in August, the most common answers were “conservative,” “anti-woman,” and “weird,” while more positive options like “young,” “smart,” and “businessman” declined from July. The percentage calling him “extreme” shot up 13 points.
So, it appears to be the crazy season, even if it isn’t even Labor Day yet. However, constant craziness just naturally comes with anything DonOld does.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Come to my FaceBook page and play the game of Name this Drag Queen, or do it here! We gotcha Couchy Tomato!
Finally Friday Reads: The Republican Plans to Deny your Vote
Posted: August 9, 2024 Filed under: 2024 presidential Campaign, Voter Suppression drive by Donald | Tags: Citizen's United, Georgia voter suppression, Keep Our Democracy, Michigan Voter Suppression, Trump's Stealing the Vote 5 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
“The Mar a Lago Presser was one for the ages. Donald found his way out of his basement to assure the masses he was sharp as ever as he didn’t even nod off once.” John Buss. Repeat 1968
Today, I’m sharing the incredible number of actions being taken to ensure your vote does not count. One of the incredible recent patterns in national Presidential Elections is that Republican candidates cannot get the majority of the vote. This is why a few swing states get all the attention.
My undergraduate degree was your basic liberal arts degree with a Major in History and minors in Political Science and Economics. All three areas are essential to know what it means to be an American, to vote, and to recognize that a lot of our history, governance, and wealth distribution was built on protecting slavery, stealing land and lives from our Indigenous, and ensuring that entitled White Men are in charge. Some may be technically illegal now, but their impact and the dynamics remain.
I want to share some of the past to understand the immense wealth and effort put into play by billionaires Elton Musk, Harlin Crowe, and Paul Weyrick, which concentrates on political power by getting what they want through strategies that don’t include getting votes. This includes wining and dining the two most despicable Associate Justices sitting on the Supreme Court.
The Presidency is determined by a few states that move the Electoral Vote in one direction. I’ve written about this a lot. There are a lot of movements that would either reform or eliminate the Electoral College, which is a vestige of Slave owners making sure the primarily rural, unpopulated states could not be forced to free their slaves. It played a key role in the Adams/Jefferson election. This is a brief history of its impact from the Brennen Center. It was originally published in The Atlantic in 2020. The analysis of its historical importance is provided by
Right from the get-go, the Electoral College has produced no shortage of lessons about the impact of racial entitlement in selecting the president. History buffs and Hamilton fans are aware that in its first major failure, the Electoral College produced a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his putative running mate, Aaron Burr. What’s less known about the election of 1800 is the way the Electoral College succeeded, which is to say that it operated as one might have expected, based on its embrace of the three-fifths compromise. The South’s baked-in advantages—the bonus electoral votes it received for maintaining slaves, all while not allowing those slaves to vote—made the difference in the election outcome. It gave the slaveholder Jefferson an edge over his opponent, the incumbent president and abolitionist John Adams. To quote Yale Law’s Akhil Reed Amar, the third president “metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.” That election continued an almost uninterrupted trend of southern slaveholders and their doughfaced sympathizers winning the White House that lasted until Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860.
In 1803, the Twelfth Amendment modified the Electoral College to prevent another Jefferson-Burr–type debacle. Six decades later, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, thus ridding the South of its windfall electors. Nevertheless, the shoddy system continued to cleave the American democratic ideal along racial lines. In the 1876 presidential election, the Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but some electoral votes were in dispute, including those in—wait for it—Florida. An ad hoc commission of lawmakers and Supreme Court justices was empaneled to resolve the matter. Ultimately, they awarded the contested electoral votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote. As a part of the agreement, known as the Compromise of 1877, the federal government removed the troops that were stationed in the South after the Civil War to maintain order and protect black voters.
That compromise was basically the one that ended the reconstruction. We all remember the crowning of Dubya Bush by the Supreme Court in 2000. All of these current movements are firmly rooted in what was called the Reagan Revolution. He was the first of modern Republican presidents unsuitable for the job. Reagan, however, won the popular vote.
The last republican President to win the popular vote was George W. Bush in 2004. He undoubtedly got a boost from his misguided war. The Electoral College has created some complex history and, at times, threatened our concept of being a democratic Republic. Okay, enough of history. 50 years ago, Nixon quit the job of the Presidency after his re-election effort was riddled with criminal activities. He was at least a crook capable of governing.
Let’s look at the goal of manipulating the election results put into play by right-wing Republicans who recognize that those swing states have to stay in their column for them to maintain power. I will rely heavily on information from Democracy Docket, although I will supplement it with current media coverage. Marc Elias is a lawyer who has fought in court to stop all voter suppression actions since 2020. You may have seen him on news programs.
Marc Elias is the Firm Chair of Elias Law Group, a mission-driven firm committed to helping Democrats win, citizens vote, and progressives make change. Marc is a nationally recognized authority and expert in campaign finance, voting rights, redistricting law, and litigation.
As a litigator, Marc has handled hundreds of cases involving politics, voting rights, and redistricting. He has successfully argued and won four cases in the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as dozens of cases in state supreme courts and U.S. courts of appeal.
He has represented the Democratic Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees, several presidential campaigns, as well as dozens of U.S. senators, governors, representatives, campaigns, and other Democratic and progressive organizations.
When Trump contested the outcome of the 2020 election, Marc met every futile challenge at the courthouse, notching over 60 legal victories against the former president and his allies during the post-election period, alone. He has also successfully represented several House and Senate candidates in post-election litigation, recounts and challenges. In 2024, Marc was named to Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s top 200 lawyers.
Marc is also the founder of Democracy Docket, the leading digital news platform dedicated to information, analysis and opinion about voting rights and elections in the courts.
Marc is an alumnus of Hamilton College, Duke Law School and Duke Graduate School. He is a proud owner of a Portuguese Water Dog named Bode.
Okay, here we go. This is from Public Notice and written by Lisa Needham. The dateline is today. “Elon Musk tries to dismantle the foundations of US democracy’ From blatant election interference to ending the NLRB, he’s doing all kinds of damage.”
Let’s start with the NLRB.
It’s no surprise that Musk is no friend to labor. He doesn’t believe in unions, saying that they create “a lords and peasants sort of thing,” whatever that means. When workers at his Fremont, California, plant began an organizing campaign, he tweeted that they would lose their stock options if they joined the union. This sort of threat is extremely illegal, and the NLRB sided with the workers who brought multiple unfair labor practices charges against Tesla.
Tesla also prohibited workers from wearing t-shirts with union insignias, even though the right to wear pro-union clothing at work has been a legally protected activity for several decades. Then, of course, there’s the class-action lawsuit in California state court, where almost 6,000 Black workers at the Fremont factory recently got the right to sue Tesla for ignoring massive racism at that plant. How massive? Nooses at the workstations of Black workers massive.
Of course, why follow the law when the lower federal courts are now stuffed with anti-worker Federalist Society denizens and the Supreme Court just gutted the regulatory state? After the NLRB filed a formal complaint against SpaceX over its firing of several employees who wrote an internal letter critical of Musk, SpaceX made sure to find a friendly Trump-appointed judge in Texas, Alan Albright, to entertain its theory that the NLRB itself is unconstitutional.
In late July, Albright issued an injunction blocking the NLRB from proceeding against SpaceX, saying that it is likely the company would prevail in showing that the NLRB, which was created by Congress nearly 90 years ago, impermissibly infringes on the president’s power. Members of the NLRB board and the Administrative Law Judges (ALJ) cannot be removed by the president. That insulation from removal, of course, is critical, as otherwise the NLRB would basically cease to exist every time a Republican president takes power.
“Some Twitter humor as Elmo hides likes on his platform.” @repeat1968, John Buss
You can read more about that one at the link. There is also this at the same link.
America PAC purports to help people register to vote. If you live in a state that isn’t a swing state, that’s what the PAC’s website does — sends you over to your state’s voter registration page. But if you live somewhere in play this November, the America PAC website asks you for detailed personal information, including things utterly unrelated to voter eligibility, like your cellphone number.
After all that is entered, the PAC doesn’t register you at all. It doesn’t even send the user to their state registration website. It just displays a “thank you” page.
So, swing state voters may think they’re registering, but they’re not. Instead, they’ve handed over their data to a PAC that is coordinating with the Trump campaign. While PACs are generally not allowed to work directly with campaigns, America PAC is a door-to-door canvassing group, and those, inexplicably, can work hand in hand with a candidate. However, pretending to register people to vote is probably a bridge too far.
The Michigan Secretary of State’s office is in the early stages of an investigation of the PAC. So is the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, as in North Carolina, it’s an actual crime to say you’re submitting someone’s voter registration form and then not do so, which is pretty close to what Musk’s PAC is doing.
The problem here is the relative toothlessness and extreme slowness of American jurisprudence when it comes to election violations.
Here we are, 90ish days before the election, and the investigations are just starting. Sweet Lady Liberty, help us! Here’s a Max Boot editorial on the Washington Post. It’s from March of this year. I like this because Boot reminds us that Musk is a defense contractor and rakes in billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers.”Musk is a MAGA megaphone and a federal contractor. That’s a problem.” And he’s writing a biography on Ronald Reagan which is the last thing we need to read. But he’s also the broken clock on this one.
Like a lot of other people, I don’t use my X account much anymore. I prefer to post on Threads, because X (formerly Twitter) has become such a cesspool of hate speech and conspiracy-mongering. The problem became especially acute following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel when the platform was flooded with antisemitic and anti-Muslim misinformation. It’s like watching a once-nice neighborhood go to seed, with well-maintained houses turning into ramshackle drug dens.
What galls me is that, as a taxpayer, I wind up subsidizing X’s megalomaniacal and capricious owner, Elon Musk. His privately held company SpaceX is a major contractor — to the tune of many billions of dollars — for the Defense Department, NASA and the U.S. intelligence community. He is also chief executive of Tesla, which benefits from generous government subsidies and tax credits to the electric-vehicle industry.
Musk needs to decide whether he wants to be the next Donald Trump Jr. (i.e., a major MAGA influencer) or the next James D. Taiclet (the little-known CEO of Lockheed Martin, the country’s largest defense contractor). Currently, Musk is trying to do both, and that’s not sustainable. He is presiding over a fire hose of falsehoods on X about familiar right-wing targets, from undocumented immigrants to “the woke mind virus” to President Biden … while reaping billions from Biden’s administration!
Now, we move to the complex legal landscape of voter suppression. First, I just want to list all the legal litigation that’s going on in Marc Elias’ work load. Five headline lines here, all in different states but all crucial to the election.
A new rule in Georgia could allow some local election boards to refuse to certify results, raising concerns ahead of November’s election in the crucial swing state.
It’s the latest partisan flashpoint in a battleground state over certification — a step in the election process that’s usually ministerial and routine.
Local boards confirm the number of voters who cast ballots matches up with the total votes. Legal challenges to results are heard in the courts.
But when it came to certifying the May primary in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, one board member refused.
“It’s time to fix the problems in our elections by ensuring compliance with the law, transparency in elections conduct and accuracy in results,” Republican Julie Adams said before abstaining from the vote.
Adams said she didn’t have access to enough underlying election records to verify the vote herself. Adams’ colleagues overruled her and the May certification went ahead.
But for some, it signaled a worrying trend. Adams is one of several local officials in Georgia who declined to certify results this year — and that number could grow.
The new state rule allows local boards to conduct “reasonable inquiry” before certifying results. The measure passed 3-2, backed by Republicans with the sole Democrat and nonpartisan chair opposed.
“If I’m going to ask a county election worker to sign their name on a legal document saying this is accurate, when in fact they may see there is some discrepancy, then we’re setting them up for failure,” says Janelle King, a Republican on the state board who voted for the rule.
But some election experts worry a local board member, driven by unsupported claims of election fraud, might refuse to certify if they argue they could not conduct that inquiry or say it turned up problems.
So, finally, I will bring Marc Elias into the discussion. “Georgia Election Deniers Deliver for Trump.”
At his rally last Saturday night, Donald Trump praised three members of the Georgia State Election Board. Calling them “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory,” Trump lavished praise and attention on these members of the obscure state agency — by name.
The odd exchange raised more than a few eyebrows. When I wrote about it earlier this week, I suggested that the least damning explanation was that the “three who Trump mentioned from the stage: Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King have refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020.” We now know that the real reason for Trump’s support for the election officials was far more sinister.
Late yesterday, the board approved a new rule that seeks to expand the role and authority of county boards of election in the certification process. This new rule redefines the certification process to include “reasonable inquiry” into whether the results are “complete and accurate.”
The vote to adopt this new rule was 3-2, with the Trump-endorsed members commanding the majority. It seems that Trump was prescient when he said these three members would fight for his “victory.”
That this violates state law seems clear. The obligation of county boards to certify elections is mandatory and ministerial. Nothing in Georgia law permits individual members to interpose their own investigations or judgment into a largely ceremonial function involving basic math.
For Trump, these legal niceties are beside the point. He wants to be able to pick and choose which election results are accepted based solely on the outcome. This rule is a step in that direction.
If the new rule survives the inevitable court challenge, Trump will have another powerful tool in his election subversion arsenal. If it is struck down, which seems more likely, he will claim to be the victim of biased judges and an unspecified conspiracy.
And a final one here from Matt Cohen writing at Democracy Docket. These are the people who ultimately want to replace the 14th and other Amendments concerning who votes with something more agreeable for rich old right-wing white men. “Meet the Trump-Linked Think Tank Waging a Legal War on Elections.”
By all accounts, the May presidential primary election in Georgia went as smoothly as it could have. There were no reports of long lines or malfunctioning voting machines. “Virtually none, nothing I really can report on,” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) told reporters when asked if there were any irregularities in the election. “So it’s been very, very quiet. So we’re pleased with that.”
But Julie Adams, an election board member in Fulton County — the state’s most populated county — wasn’t satisfied with the election process and refused to certify the county’s election results. Adams, who is a member of the controversial right-wing Election Integrity Network, said she wouldn’t certify because she was denied access to data and “key election information” that she claimed was necessary to see to sign off on the county’s election results. Her abstention didn’t matter, the other four board members voted to certify the election. But Adams soon filed a lawsuit against the board’s director, Nadine Williams, over the election certification process.
The lawsuit was filed on Adams’ behalf by America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a conservative think tank founded in 2021 by a handful of prominent Republicans with ties to former President Donald Trump. Although AFPI’s work spans the spectrum of right-wing policies and issues — like promoting free enterprise, immigration policy, foreign policy and other policies championed by the Trump administration — the Georgia litigation is one of several recent voting-related lawsuits that the group is involved with.
AFPI is hardly the first right-wing think-tank to get involved in election litigation. Groups like the Public Interest Legal Fund, America First Legal and Judicial Watch have made a name for themselves in the past few years for their legal assault on voting rights. But AFPI’s recent pivot to election litigation is part of a larger right-wing focus on rolling back voting rights and sowing discord in elections through the courts.
Given AFPI’s leadership ties to the Trump administration, it’s no secret that their litigation efforts in Arizona, Georgia and Texas are strategic legal moves that, should they prove successful, could have far-reaching implications in the 2024 election.
You may read more at the link. I recommend you make the site one of your daily visits. Also, you may support them and subscribe. This is one of those places where democracy matters and something is being done about it.
So, now that I’ve gone way longer than usual, I will turn the comments over to you.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Mostly Monday Reads: Ye Olde Addlepated Donald
Posted: August 5, 2024 Filed under: just because | Tags: #DonOld, @repeat1968, Donald the Addlepated, Harris Veepstakes, John Buss, Patti Smith, People have the Power, Vance is WEIRD 3 Comments
“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.
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?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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