#when have we ever not elected a republican? it's all up to who republican voters decide they want to run

[mootmuse]

the downside of subscribing to a substack telling me about US trans news: i now know about US trans news

[potofsoup]

Happy July 4th, everyone, and good luck to the UK voters out there!

Wow it's Year 11 of doing these!! Here's the AO3 link to the past 10 years, and here's the tumblr link.

Reminder that this is a long game -- some of the judges making decisions were appointed back in the 80s. Many of the cases that were decided this round were from Trump's term. So it's going to take long-term, consistent voting over a decade to start tipping things in the other direction. (Which I talked about in 2018 re: Trump shenanigans and 2022 re: Dobbs).

A lot has been done by the Biden administration (I'm assuming most folks have seen this post by boreal-sea with their very helpful sources), and much of that will be overturned by Trump, especially if he gets the Senate, and especially now that he would have a blank check for anything "official". So let's make sure that doesn't happen.

And even if Trump does get elected, your decisions down-ballot might effect control of the House or Senate, or might make it easier to vote next time, plus the whole plethora of state and local issues. It's Republican state attorney generals who are challenging climate regulations, for example.

Plus, when you really get down to it, only one of the candidates plans on pardoning himself and all his friends if he wins, and attacking the government if he loses. Maybe that guy shouldn't be the President.

If you're new to voting, remember to check voter registration deadlines! I'm a permanent vote-by-mail voter and it's so nice. :)

Transcript under the readmore

Page 1: Sam and Bucky meet up with Steve for a picnic. Steve: Thought you guys were still in Sudan? Bucky: I’m forcing Sam to take a break.

Sam collapses onto the picnic blanket. Sam: Oof, it just never stops, does it? Steve: Nope.

Bucky hands Sam an orange popsicle. Bucky: Eat and relax for a bit, Sam. Sam: Thanks.

Page 2: Bucky asks Steve: How are things state-side? Steve responds: HORRIBLE. Bucky: I thought you’ve been tentatively hopeful about what Biden has been able to achieve? Steve: I was! Student loans, child care, climate regulations, infrastructure, labor, trans rights … he’s quietly done a lot through regulatory improvements and congress bills. But now all people will talk about is how he’s OLD. And then there’s the Supreme Court’s decisions … Chevron and immunity… Steve puts his head in his hands, while Sam and Bucky look on with some concern.

Page 3: Bucky hands Steve a blue/raspberry popsicle: Steve, take a deep breath, and a popsicle. Sam: Sounds like we missed a lot. What’s going on? How bad is it? Steve: Pretty bad. The Supreme Court has made some decisions that give the Court and the President A LOT of discretionary power. Sam: Yikes, that doesn’t sound good. Steve: Well, the Chevron thing means that judges with life-term appointments can override policies made by government agencies. And now it’ll be harder to hold a President accountable because he will have immunity for any “official” actions.

Page 4: Sam: So if the President tries to, say, overturn a democratic election result, he’ll be allowed to as long as it’s in his job description? Steve: I don’t think threatening state electors is “official” business, but that will be decided by federal judges. Who get their jobs by approval from both the President and the Senate. Bucky: Yeesh. No wonder you’re stressed. Any good news? Steve: Well, thanks the Biden and the razor-thin Senate majority, the newer bills don’t rely on the Chevron deference. Still not great but not catastrophic. Sam, squirting ketchup on his hot dog: So what I’m hearing is that it’s now more important than ever to have a President and a Senate who you can trust to appoint fair judges, pass bills, and not commit crimes.

Page 5: Steve: Plus all of the state level offices, now that more and more deciding power has been thrown back to the states — abortion, LGBTQ rights, voting access… Bucky: Hey, at least this is a big election year so we can actually do something! Steve, with his arms crossed, looking surly: Except that all people want to talk about is how Biden is “too old” and “not doing enough,” as if that is on par with Trump’s desire to dismantle basic rights! As if the candidate who doesn’t embody ALL their ideals is not worth voting for! Bucky interrupts with a smart and a loud “PFFT.”

Page 6: Bucky: Um, Steve. YOU were like that in 1940. Sam, nudging Bucky: “Oh, this I gotta hear. Spill, Barnes.” In sepia, Steve is pacing around their apartment while Bucky is sitting and reading a newspaper. Steve: I can’t believe he’s running for a 3rd term! we need a fresh candidate to vote for! This is hardly a choice at all! AND he refuses to engage in Europe! All of Europe under fascist control and we’re just twiddling our thumbs? He’s letting millions die through his inaction! Bucky: Most people don’t want another war, Steve. If he came out for it, he would lose. Steve, indignant: But Buck, it’s your Polish relative who are in danger! Bucky, closing his newspaper and looking at Steve: Yeah, and between FDR and Willkes, I trust FDR to help if he could.

Page 7: Steve, in sepia, looking away: Should he be encouraged to do more? Maybe I should vote for Browder. The Communists have historically be Anti-Fascist.

Sam interrupts off-screen: Waitaminute! STEVE was going to PROTEST-VOTE? Steve: We were in a Blue State, Sam! Sam: But what about the down ballot races?! Steve: RELAX, I did my due diligence down-ballot. I wanted a senate that’s more progressive than the President.Voted LaGuardia for Mayor, too. Steve hesitates: Then, when I got to the President… I realized that the Best case scenario would be that my vote did nothing, versus if it actually spoiled the election. And when I asked myself who I could trust to work with my Senator… well, FDR had a good record with Labor. (sepia shot of young Steve voting) Bucky interrupts: Hold on, Steve.

Page 8: Bucky, eating a cookie, arching an eyebrow: You didn’t vote for Browder? Why didn’t you tell me? Steve: And have you say “I told you so” for the next century? Bucky: Heh.

Steve, with hand on his chin: What’s weird was that, despite everything, I still felt HORRIBLE when I ticked that box. Sam: Sounds like you built up the meaning of that vote far too much in your head. Logically, we know that a single box can’t represent all of the complexity of a whole system, but the desperately WANT it to. Just look at how people have built up so much around the term “Zionis” that it’s made productive conversations difficult.

Page 9: Sam and Steve speak in the background while Bucky reaches into the cooler and pulls out a box. Steve: Sigh. And that’s something that goes beyond the election. Sam: Which is why we need to vote, AND do other things. Bucky, looking at Steve and Sam: Like how Steve works to push organizations on the local level? Or like all the work you do as Captain America? Sam: Exactly. Vote AND.

Sam looks at Bucky fondly: Like how you vote AND make me and Steve take breaks. Bucky, looking stern because he can’t handle compliments: Shush, Sam.

Bucky holds up a cake that has the number “107” on it: It’s time for cake. Happy Birthday, Steve.

[qqueenofhades]

I’ve had this feeling for a while, but the last few weeks have made it stronger: I feel like people are just sick of Trump, even people that are solid Republicans. Even aside from the politics and the threat to democracy that he represents, I’m just tired of hearing about him and all the vitriolic buffoonery that comes out of him. He’s a class clown that’s gone from occasionally funny to just annoying. And I’m sure there’s plenty of Republican voters that resent what an absolute cultish embarrassment he’s made of their party. Even if I had no other reason to vote, I would’ve still voted blue in the desperate hope that I might not have to hear about Trump anymore.

I mean... Yeah.

The other day, we had a whole group of Arizona Republicans (otherwise known as one of the most extreme and cultist state GOP parties in the country) coming out as the leaders of a Republicans for Harris taskforce. Republicans for Harris also immediately hit it big on Twitter. Haley Voters For Biden instantly changed their name to Haley Voters For Harris and told Haley herself to hit the bricks when she laughably threatened them with legal action. There were always a few Never Trump Republicans before, but like. Not many. And many of them have ventured like, one criticism and immediately fallen back into line when Trump posted one mean tweet about them, because they have spines like soufflés.

Now mind you, the entire national/establishment GOP is still completely and cravenly beholden to Trump in ways that defy all logical human understanding, but people who have voted Republican all their lives and did so habitually once or even twice for Trump are increasingly hitting breaking point, and that should be noted. If you want to know how much, the goddamn MORMONS are, allegedly, preparing to quit the GOP this election in larger volumes than they have voted for Democrats in at least 60 years. I don't know how much this will end up panning out, and they have always been at least somewhat skeptical of him in comparison to the completely deranged mainstream evangelical fundies, but. The Mormons. THE MORMONS. Voting for a black female Democrat for president? In my wildest fantasies, this makes me think of Blue Utah 2024 like Blue Indiana 2008 (yes, that happened, along with Blue Florida TWICE).

Trump does have and will always have his ever-dwindling base of diehard cultists, but they have not and will never be numerous enough to win a fair democratic election on their own, which is why the GOP has pulled every dirty trick in the book trying to ensure that they don't have to. But yes: there are many more of us than them, and if we finally pull together and quit arguing about dumb shit, we could get rid of Trump once and for all, and god. GOD. I long for that day so bad and I can finally think it might be coming. So let us NOT fucking screw this up, kay? Kay.

[hussyknee]

The wild thing about the Vote Blue rhetoric is that according to them, Biden is an uwu helpless baby who's had no power to stop any of the shit that's gone down the last three years but if Trump comes to power he can end democracy as you (don't) know it. You just have to get through this election cycle because the GOP can't find its own ass with both hands and a mirror on a stick and they're breaking apart, but they're also about to transform into the Third Reich. If Biden gets a second term you can totally push him further left when he isn't even up for re-election, but not with half the country on the streets a year out from when he does still need their votes. Biden can't get Netanyahu to stop because he has no power over Israel, but Trump will be able to destabilize democracy all across the world. The enemy is either weak or strong, y'all can't have it both ways.

Also, "If democrats haven't earned your vote, what has the republicans done to earn your complicity"????? You think this is how democracy works??? But oh, that's right you don't have a democracy, you have Evil (genocide without personal enjoyment) and Super Evil (genocide with personal fun). But you need to Vote Blue to save the democracy you don't have. Which they've had three years and one more to get around to saving, just like they had two years to legislate Roe vs Wade and eight before that, but they need another four to do anything.

"We cannot afford to divide the left and alienate voters!" you yell, as you harrass people whose relatives are currently being starved and blown to pieces as the entire world watches, a full year before elections, proving you have no intention of holding the Dems accountable even for a literal genocide. Because your winning strategy here is to scream at people for having a moral compass and basic empathy for their fellow human. These are luxuries you cannot afford because the GOP doesn't have any either, but the two parties are different bro, I swear bro, pay no attention to Hakeem Jeffries standing next to Mike Johnson and Christian Zionists bro, don't look at how much AIPAC has bought and paid for the whole of Congress bro, don't look at the bipartisan support for sending billions to Zionists overseas while cutting funding for every public service bro, don't look at how much more land for fracking they've sold off than Trump ever did bro, don't look at cop city and the border wall and ICE crackdowns and kids still in cages three years later bro, Biden totally controlled COVID and saved millions of lives unlike Trump and the pandemic is definitely not still raging bro, queer and reproductive rights are definitely not flaking off piecemeal under the Dems right now bro, Project 2025 can definitely happen when Obama couldn't even push through Medicaid with a trifecta bro, bro where are you going bro—

[feminismisstillahatemovement]

As a resident of a completely different country and from an outsider's point of view, at this point I honestly think US democracy is done for, no matter who wins. As much as I love the libertarian party & other third parties fighting for a recognition, they have absolutely no chance in this election or the next ten.

If Harris wins this one, that'll strengthen Democrats' hold on their voter base because look, we did it, we saved democracy ! It won't be as apocalyptic as republicans say, but it's gonna be much easier for them to win voters just by saying "After all we did, you're not seriously gonna go back to the orange guys, right ?", leading to a (multiple) decades long string of increasingly incompetent democrat politicians. After Biden, they have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to competency anyway.

If Trump wins, it won't be as apocalyptic as democrats say, but there's definitely going to be a lot of rioting, enough to bring significant economic damage and fun statistics to blame on Trump. Considering he's also kind of an idiot, he'll also feed the trolls like a 10 year old discovering online forums, so the media will make it sound exactly as bad as they said it would be.

Then you'll have republicans going full on contrarian no matter what happens, and you end up with an incredibly polarized country that's impossible to put back together. Probably not a Yugoslavia repeat, it's gonna stay one very dysfunctional country.

"If Trump wins, it won't be as apocalyptic as democrats say, but there's definitely going to be a lot of rioting"

Yes, by democrats, and the groups of people the democrats whip up into hysteria.

I just think that the last chance America has of clearing house of some of the machinations of the deep state and military-industrial complex, as well as the blatant weaponizing of the legal system to try imprison the leading candidate for election... the only hope of any of these being challenged is for Trump to get back in. Regardless of how one feels about the man himself, he has a vested interest in directly challenging that corruption, which no previous president has ever had.

A vote for the democrats of today is just a vote for endless wars, division and hatred, globalism, gender insanity, population replacement, cultural destruction and an end to freedom of speech. Trump is the only plausible figurehead pushing back against all that, and, with America still being the world empire, the rest of the world is very much focused on what happens, as what befalls America will likely befall the rest of us, very soon after.

Every election someone says "this is the most important election of our lifetime", but I really think this one is, for all the above reasons.

[drunkenskunk]

So, despite knowing that it's probably futile, I called the office of my senator once again, in the vain hope that the staffer I talked to will pass on the message and get her to see reason in regards to KOSA.

Trouble is: how? Catherine Cortez-Masto is a cosponsor of the bill. I couldn't appeal to her sense of morality, as she's a politician; she had her ethics surgically removed before coming into office. I couldn't appeal to the stated goal of the bill, protecting kids, because if she had spoken to a single cybersecurity professional, she would know that the bill is dangerous to kids, adults, and anyone wanting to use the internet. I couldn't appeal to the Constitution, because if she actually gave a shit about the US Constitution or the Bill of Rights, she would already know its a blatant, flagrant violation of both the 1st and 4th amendments, and be trying to kill the bill, not cosponsor it. And I probably couldn't appeal to the fact that the bill was dreamed up by the same republican think-tank that dreamed up Project 2025, the plan to turn what little remains of our democracy into a theocratic dictatorship run by evangelical christians; she probably believes she's wealthy and influential enough that it will insulate her from the worst effects, assuming she isn't already in on it anyway.

It was a puzzler. And then I had an idea. This is what I said:

"Do you know who Steve Sisolak is? You do? Good. Do you want to know why he's the former Nevada state governor, and not the current one? It's because Sisolak was, without exaggeration, the most unpopular politician I've ever come across. No one liked him. Democrats hated him, republicans REALLY hated him, libertarians hated him, and even people like me, who have never felt represented by any of the major political parties in the state but still vote in every single election because we consider it our civic duty as American citizens, didn't like him either. I can't think of a single person who ever had anything positive to say about his tenure as governor, and as a result? The voter base in Nevada was willing to do anything and vote for anyone just to get him out of office.

"I tell you this, because if Senator Cortez-Masto does not change course, and continues to cosponsor and vote yes on the incredibly unpopular, incredibly dangerous, blatantly unconstitutional KOSA bill, then she will make Steve Sisolak's year, as he will no longer be the most reviled politician in the state of Nevada. If she does not reverse course, she will be committing political suicide on a scale hithertofore unknown to science. If she votes yes, then she might as well pull a Mitch McConnell and announce her retirement right now, because any of her political aspirations for the future, at least among the Nevada voter base, will be dead in the water.

"Now, I don't know how many phone calls you've gotten about KOSA. But I suspect it's not as many as you should. Most people in this state don't have time to call their senators. Most people are working two or three jobs to make ends meet with stagnant wages among the rising cost of living and landlords finding any excuse to increase our rent. Hell, I'm calling you on my lunchbreak right now. But despite all that... people here still find time to vote. And if there is one thing I've learned about voters in this state in the 18 years I've been able to? It's that if you piss us off, the people in this state will absolutely vote entirely out of spite, just to burn everything down. KOSA is so incredibly unpopular among the voter base of this state, that when she's next up for reelection? She will find herself out of a job, mark my words.

"Make sure you tell the Senator that, word for word. And if you can't remember, just play her this phone call that I already know is being recorded."

Will this do any good?

I don't know.

Probably not.

But it made me feel a bit better, at least.

[possessesnightshift]

i'm not an eloquent political speech person so im just gonna be direct about this

americans, please please fucking register to vote and vote for joe biden in november

and before you jump to whatever policy thing or weakness of his to counter this plea, just stop. it doesn't actually matter. trump is worse. trump is fucking so much worse

our job from here on out is not only to hold our noses and vote for biden, but also to convince all of our friends family and whoever else to also vote for him in spite of all of his flaws. yes all of them

we need to make the fucking argument that trump is so dangerous, the country would be better off with a drooling old genocide lover whose mental faculties are drying up faster than the sahara desert. we need biden voters to be keenly aware of his shortcomings and refuse to back down. there's no use in pretending biden is still sharp as ever or has this mass grassroots support (he does not). he sucks. he is probably the worst democratic candidate in the party's history.

don't care. trump is worse. he needs to be stopped from taking power by any means necessary. he needs to be STOPPED.

from a non-republican pov, democrats constantly leaning on the "but the other guy is worse" argument is frustrating as all hell. i certainly hate it myself. but what gets lost in the conversation is that the republicans are essentially so beholden to this principle nobody even notices.

i know plenty of small town midwestern republicans who were embarrassed to admit they voted for trump. they voted for him in spite of his nastiness and blatant buffoonery (not in spite of his racism bc they're likely ok with that) because he was on the republican ticket, and to them any republican is better than a woke liberal who wants to take away our gas stoves and force drag queens to read us stories at bedtime

so yeah i kinda don't fucking care at this point

biden is a laughably bad candidate for the election of 2024. any other time he could've run (including 2020) is completely different than now, when he's just too fucking old. so should we just roll over and let him lose? just for trump to finish his term, be biden's current age, and either run for a third term or just stay in power bc the supreme court is on his side and they've been preparing for this for decades? fuck that

actually i think a rotting, pulpy corpse would make a fine president compared to dumbass donald "reality gameshow host" trump. literally if biden dies the day of the election he's still got my vote because it is not for him

the left has to learn to have the tenacity that republicans have. we emulate the right in the worst fucking ways (e.g. closing the southern border for no reason) but we never emulate their pettiness. we never say 'i hate the republicans so much i will willingly vote for someone i kinda hate to spite their smug asses'

remember when trump used to be a joke? remember when he was a giant embarrassment? remember the memes about his illiteracy and his lack of awareness? (see 'covfefe' for more info) trump may have the means to become a brutal dictator, but he relies on people smarter than he is to pull it off

if trump continues to hype up his project 2025 and his fascist ambitions with the swagger and confidence of fdr running against herbert hoover, what does it signal to the rest of the world for that man to LOSE to a corpse with the stamina of a wet flounder? it could stop the fascist momentum in its tracks by associating it with weakness and incompetence (you talk up all this hype and you lose to THAT man?? i guess you must be full of shit huh)

these are fraught times. there's no way to get out of this without letting go of our ideals of a perfect candidate who responds to the political desires of the people. that candidate does not exist and never will

right now we have not just an opportunity to preserve our rotting democracy for a little longer, but something much more special. we can fucking put an end to the trump experiment once and for all. we can make trump wannabes like ron desantis scramble to dissociate their image from the toxicity of the trump administration. we can turn him back into a joke.

at this point im screaming into the wind. no person who isn't already voting for biden is gonna read this far. but i want these words to be here anyway because i think they have value. 2024, 2028, and 2032 are all going to be pivotal election years. we can't wait around. we have to act NOW.

vote rotting fish 2024. i will plug your nose with a clothes pin if you refuse to do so yourself...

[mariacallous]

After a period of relative quiescence, everyone has started talking about fascism again. This is, in part, due to the threat of a second term for Donald Trump, which has reactivated a highly polemical “fascism debate” in the United States. But there are plenty of other actual or quasi-fascists elsewhere. The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is the leader of a genuine neo-fascist party. In Latin America, Argentina’s Javier Milei has picked up where Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro left off. And, in India, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party was reelected in June, albeit with a much-reduced majority.

By contrast, much less has been said about anti-fascism. Most commentators and journalists—and even many academics—seem to have accepted that anti-fascism belongs to the 20th century. Which is a little strange. If fascism is real, why not its opposite? And what happened to all of those historical memories of fighting fascism, above all in Europe, but also further afield?

Fortunately, we still have France, the only country that continues to talk about anti-fascism in a consistent and meaningful way across the political spectrum—and one of the few places where this talk translates into a hard electoral reality.

The explanation for this anomaly lies in the concept of the so-called front républicain (republican front). This refers to any coalition or alliance that is designed to keep the far-right from power.

In the late 1880s and 1890s, the front républicain included those who were opposed to the rise of Boulangism, a militarist far-right movement, and those who defended the cause of Alfred Dreyfus, whose false conviction was one of the great republican causes at the time. The clash between an insurgent far-right and the massed republican forces of the moderate right, the center, and the left was subsequently repeated time and again.

There were echoes of the front républicain in the 1936 Popular Front, although this was in a more obviously left-wing key. The same logic was invoked in the 1950s, at the time of Poujadism, and again in the 1980s, when Jean-Marie Le Pen’s Front National began to make its first electoral breakthroughs.

By this time, the front républicain had taken on a clearly electoral dimension. The aim was to ensure that the best-placed candidates from “republican” parties would win in the second-round of an election. This involved strategic désistements (withdrawals) by weaker “republican” candidates, followed by tactical voting.

The most famous recent iteration of the front républicain is usually also considered to be its last hurrah. In 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen squeezed past the socialist candidate, Lionel Jospin, in the first round of the presidential election. This was the first time that any far-right candidate had come so close to power, and it was a profound shock.

In response, the entire political class called on the French to vote for the center-right candidate, Jacques Chirac, in the second round. It worked spectacularly: Chirac was elected with more than 82 percent of the vote on a turnout of almost 80 percent. Left-wing voters massively supported a right-wing candidate in order to save the French Republic.

But, as we now know, Jean-Marie Le Pen’s success was only the beginning. Since then, his daughter Marine Le Pen has climbed ever higher in the polls. She qualified for the second round of the presidential elections in 2017 and 2022, when she received 41 percent of the vote. Le Pen’s party, too, has gone from strength to strength. Now rebaptized as the Rassemblement National, it has gradually developed its local and regional presence—and, in 2022, it made a major breakthrough when it won 89 seats in the National Assembly.

For most analysts, the success of Marine Le Pen and the Rassemblement National was easily explained by the atrophy of the front républicain. After 2002, fewer and fewer left-wing voters felt inclined to block the far-right, and a significant minority of right-wing voters embraced it. With each new election, the remnants of a century-old French anti-fascist tradition seemed to fall away. Indeed, many of the most pessimistic result forecasts of the 2024 elections were based on the assumption that it was essentially dead.

Imagine the surprise, then, when the results of the second round were announced on Sunday night. Despite increasing its seats and vote share, the far-right flopped compared to the polls. It was soon clear that voters had done everything they could to stop the Rassemblement National from winning a majority.

All of a sudden, the front républicain was back, and the phrase was plastered across the French mainstream media. Commentators and pollsters scrambled to explain themselves. For those with long memories, it felt as if the spirit of 2002 had been resurrected from the grave.

The simplest way to explain this remarkable revival of anti-fascism is to invoke something that all historians of modern France will recognize: the fear of disorder and social collapse. Modern French history is littered with regime changes, protests, revolutions, and civil wars. The constitutional settlement of the Fifth Republic, born in 1958 during the Algerian War, was specifically designed to ensure stability, and it survived the momentous protests of 1968 and the economic crisis of deindustrialization unscathed.

Still today, voters are scared of the consequences of bringing a far-right party to national power. They fear that a victory for Marine Le Pen or her prime-minister-in-waiting, Jordan Bardella, would unleash violence and instability across the country. On the three occasions when they have realistically faced this prospect—2017, 2022 and 2024—they have pulled back. Each time, they have invoked the front républicain as a defense mechanism.

But there was more to the 2024 elections than simply a kneejerk reaction to the threat of disorder. For the first time since the early 2000s, anti-fascism was imbued with a positive quality. People invested hope in the left-wing alliance, known as the Nouveau Front Populaire. They saw anti-fascism as the basis on which to build a fairer society, with more public spending, a higher minimum wage, a wealth tax, and a reversal of Macron’s pension reforms.

This process was especially striking amongst young people, some of whom were not even born in 2002. Theirs is not the same anti-fascism as those aged 50 or older, who remember the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen and the Front National. Young activists still talk about “fascism” and “racism,” just like the elders from whom they have learnt their history, but they are doing more than replaying the political battles of the past. They know that they are only one front in a global anti-fascist universe that stretches from the Trump trials to the smooth authoritarianism of Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.

The campaigning of young anti-fascists has been made all the more intense by the fact that the Rassemblement National has succeeded in mobilizing a significant proportion of young people. The struggle to contain the far-right in France is not an intergenerational clash between youthful liberals and reactionary boomers. If anything, old people are the least likely to vote for Marine Le Pen and her acolytes. In fact, young people are fighting for the political soul of their own generation.

The most obvious symbol of this fight is Bardella himself. He is only 28 years old, and his meteoric rise has not passed unnoticed. Some voters in the 2024 elections even asked where the “Bardella” voting slip was when they arrived at the polling booth. They wanted to vote for him, even though he was not on the ballot.

Yet his youthful persona—and his facility with Tiktok—drew a committed response. During and after the elections, French social media was filled with a cascade of anti-fascist memes and counter-videos. Young people, often people of color, lampooned Bardella’s campaign tactics and press conferences. They pilloried his party and the—sometimes very inexperienced—candidates who ran for election, calling them out for their racism, homophobia, bigotry, or plain stupidity.

It helps that some of the emerging figures on the French left are also young. Clémence Guetté, of La France Insoumise, is 33. Marine Tondelier, the current leader of the main Greens party, is 37. And Raphaël Glucksmann, who led the center-left to second place in the 2024 European elections, is 44. They are all politicians who have cut their teeth in a political landscape where the far-right is a fixture, not an anomaly.

It is impossible to say whether this youthful French anti-fascism has a future. In his “letter to the French” after the elections, Macron referred to the front républicain, but it is not clear that he or his allies intend to adhere to it. In particular, the proposal to form a governing coalition without some or all of the left—which several members of Macron’s party have endorsed—would run counter to the spirit of the election results. Meanwhile, the RN is waiting patiently for its next opportunity to show off its electoral strength.

Nevertheless, the recent electoral cycle in France is a reminder that today’s anti-fascism is no longer beholden to the 1930s or 1990s. It has a life of its own—and a whole new generation of foot soldiers ready to go to war against their oldest enemy.

[misfitwashere]

August 12, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

AUG 13

The 2024 election is shaping up to be bizarre on the Republican side. The party’s presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump, has largely stayed home and posted on social media while his vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance has been trying to cover the campaigning for the team. Indeed, Vance’s offer on Wednesday during a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to debate Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris suggests that Vance is not unwilling to be seen as the face, if not the leader, of the Republican ticket.

The actual presidential nominee appears even more unstable than usual, and it certainly appears that his handlers are trying to keep him off stage. As Tom Nichols of The Atlantic noted yesterday, “When Trump is on TV a lot, his approval goes down. When he’s in hiding and his surrogates are rearranging his bonkers crazypants word salads into something like real thoughts, his approval goes up.” 

Observers, including Jackie Calmes of the Los Angeles Times, have been clear that “Donald Trump’s state of mind should be under debate.” “Trump’s fire hose of cray-cray has inured Americans to his outrages,” Calmes wrote today. “But now that President Biden, a normal and empathetic man, has been pushed out of the 2024 race over concerns about his age and mental acuity, Trump’s more manifest unfitness for office should be ignored no longer—by the media, former advisors and military leaders who remain silent and, yes, Republicans.”

Trump held a surprise “press conference” on Thursday, where, according to a team of reporters and editors at NPR, he misstated things, exaggerated, or lied outright at least 162 times in 64 minutes, a rate of more than two times a minute.

He said that the United States “is in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint,” and warned we could end up in another depression like the Great Depression of the 1930s. In fact, the economy is strong and growing at a faster rate than it did in three of the four years of Trump’s presidency. 

He warned of a national crime wave although crime has been plummeting after a surge in 2020, during Trump’s term, and said that we are “very close to a world war,” which illustrates that Trump’s main lever to turn out voters is fear. With the successes of the Biden-Harris administration having neutralized the economic fears that worked in the past, and with the goals of antiabortion activists achieved in 2022 with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, Trump is apparently going for broke with the threat of World War III.

Altogether, the event did Trump no favors. 

Poll numbers for Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz have climbed since President Joe Biden announced on July 21 he would not accept the Democratic nomination, and observers have reported that Trump’s anger is leading him into unforced errors, picking fights with allies and seemingly unable to let go of his focus on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a focus that his advisors warn is turning off voters.

Trump has repeatedly seemed to fantasize that Biden will return to the head of the Democratic ticket, and on Sunday, seemingly frantic about Harris’s huge rallies while he can no longer attract big crowds, released a rant accusing Vice President Harris of using AI to create fake footage showing large groups of supporters greeting her airplane. Faking crowds with AI is a technique we know Trump uses, but there is no evidence Harris does. Immediately, people who attended her events released their own videos proving the size of the crowds, and political pundits openly questioned Trump’s mental health.

Then, this morning, Trump posted on his social media channel: “I’m doing really well in the Presidential Race, leading in almost all of the REAL Polls, and this despite the Democrats unprecedentedly changing their Primary Winning Candidate, Sleepy Joe Biden, midstream.” He went on until his closing: “We are going to WIN BIG and take our Country back from the Radical Left Losers, Fascists, and Communists. We will, very quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” This afternoon, Five Thirty Eight showed Harris up 2.7 points in the national polling average.

Trump’s advisors are pleading with him to stop name-calling and to stay on message. His campaign began today to run ads on X that look like his tweets but are much more like standard political ads. 

Tonight, X owner Elon Musk planned to “interview” Trump, although it seemed pretty clear the event was intended simply to be a long advertisement for him. European Union commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton wrote an open letter to Musk warning about E.U. laws against amplifying harmful content “that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.” Breton warned that his team “will be extremely vigilant” about protecting “E.U. citizens from serious harm.” Musk responded with a meme that said: “TAKE A BIG STEP BACK AND LITERALLY, F*CK YOUR OWN FACE!” 

Last month the European Union charged X with failing to respect its social media law by letting disinformation and illegal content run rampant. X faces fines of up to several million euros. 

In the end, technical difficulties delayed the start of the X Spaces event. Instead, wrote BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh, who specializes in exposing disinformation, a “deepfake livestream of the Trump-Musk interview” was playing “on a fake Tesla channel on YouTube, with 200,000 people watching.” Sardarizadeh noted that the channel was running a crypto scam, and YouTube finally suspended it. When the real X channel finally began to function, it showed Musk and Trump heaping praise on each other. But Trump was slurring his words, and when HuffPost White House journalist S.V. Dáte asked the campaign about his inability to articulate, it answered: “Must be your sh*tty hearing. Get your ears checked out.” 

Trump went to Montana on Friday in support of Republican candidate Tim Sheehy, who is running to unseat popular Democrat Jon Tester, but otherwise has said he is not planning to hit the road until after the Democratic National Convention concludes next week, an odd lack of campaigning at this point in a presidential contest. He seems to be trying to regain control of the political narrative through tweets and social media. Today he said he is suing the government over the raid on Mar-a-Lago that recovered hundreds of classified national security documents, but this is almost certainly posturing to try to make him look strong: he would never be willing to undergo the discovery phase of such a lawsuit.

In the midst of Trump’s frenzy, J.D. Vance has been doing the usual appearances of a campaign, although, unable to generate rally crowds himself, he has been reduced to following Harris and Walz to theirs and trying to grab headlines there.

On Sunday he did the rounds of the morning talk shows, where on CNN he complained that Democrats are bullying him by calling the MAGA Republicans “weird.” Political journalist Brian Tyler Cohen promptly answered: “Crooked Hillary, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Sleepy Joe, Coco Chow, Lyin Ted, Ron DeSanctimonious, Birdbrain Nikki Haley, Old Crow McConnell, Gavin Newscum, Pencil Neck Schiff, Pocahontas, Cryin Chuck, and Kamabla would all like a word.”

Republicans have made punching down a key part of their rhetoric since at least the 1980s, and Vance’s frustration that the tables have turned feels a bit as if someone is finally standing up to the schoolyard bully. 

Outside of the MAGA frenzy, Harris and Walz last week held big, joyous rallies in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada, contrasting their happy campaign with the MAGA Republicans’ drumbeat of carnage and revenge. A cover article from Time magazine today by Charlotte Alter described the scene of one of her rallies as a mashup of a Beyoncé concert, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and “the early days of Barack Obama”: “a kind of reception a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t gotten in years. Fans packed into overflow spaces, waving homemade signs made of glitter and glue as drumlines roared. When Harris introduced her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the cheering lasted more than a minute.”

At the same time, the grave issues that are propelling the Democrats continue to gain traction. The Associated Press today reported that in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs decision, more than 100 pregnant women have been treated negligently or turned away from emergency rooms despite federal law. Two women, each of whom lost a fallopian tube to an undertreated ectopic pregnancy—one also lost 75% of one of her ovaries, and the other nearly bled to death—have asked the federal government to investigate whether the hospitals that sent them home to miscarry without medical assistance violated federal law.   

On Saturday, Trump’s campaign said it had been hacked, after Politicoreported that it had received communication from an account called “Robert” about internal Trump campaign documents. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo put together a helpful timeline of the story today, explaining that on Sunday the Washington Post said it had also received some of that information and said it believed the information to be that referred to in an August 9 warning from Microsoft that Iran was engaged in an influence campaign. Today the New York Times also said it had received the information, and this afternoon the FBI said it is investigating attempted hacking against both the Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz campaigns. 

CNN national security and justice reporter Zachary Cohen reported tonight that the hackers apparently were able to access the campaign by compromising the personal email account of Trump operative Roger Stone. 

“Buckle up,” Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, wrote on X. “Someone is running the 2016 playbook, expect continued efforts to stoke fires in society and go after election systems—95% votes on paper ballots is a strong resilience measure, combined with audits. But the chaos is the point….”

—

Chaos is the point.

[qqueenofhades]

what's been particularly vile to me is this group of white online leftists who insist that anyone who cares about more than this one issue for the election is a bad person, like, as if us black and brown people are making up reasons to be afraid and not.....believing the gop when they say they are coming for us. believing trump who has said previously that he does not bluff, that he will do the things he's said he will do (i hate what social media has gone to the word gaslighting but it feels like gaslighting. we lived through four years of trump. we saw the damage. stop treating us like we're being dramatic). it must be great to not have to worry about that i guess? "life won't change under trump" is such a telling admission because maybe theirs won't but mine will. and so many others' will.

and it is often again these (white) online leftists that love to call anyone who disagrees with them a white liberal (derogatory) because they know it would be racist (bad) to be this shitty and condescending to poc but they don't want to actually listen to anything black and brown voters are saying. it's easier to just call us white liberals and throw our opinions out, to ignore the work of black people for decades to gain the right to vote, to disregard the weight of telling them to not do that. it's genuinely appalling. they care so much about racism until it's time to engage with poc who have different opinions than their online echo chambers, then we're just stupid liberals with terrible opinions like..... wanting to live. not wanting four more years of trump. so sorry for that.

sorry for this vent in your inbox, i'm just so fucking tired of white people trying to rewrite history as if trump wasn't that bad. he was for my family and countless others and i am terrified for what's to come if he wins.

The thing about (the often-white) Online Leftists is that they have become just as much as a radicalized death cult as the diehard Trumpists. If you don't want to die for The Revolution and/or sacrifice your life, friends, family, the rest of the country, etc., then you're Insufficiently Pure and must be Purged. (Which I think is just complete BS, as none of them could actually handle sacrificing anything, but it's increasingly the only kind of performative rhetoric that is acceptable in leftist-identified discourse spaces.) This is functionally identical to "if you aren't willing to lay down your life for our Lord and Savior Donald Trump and the Great White Christian Nationalist Dictatorship, you're a liberal cuck," but with the names and justification changed. It doesn't change the underlying radicalization, nihilism, and insanity of the premise.

Another thing the Trumpists and the Online Leftists have in common is that they are busily rewriting just how bad Trump was in order to serve their Ideology. Ever since January 6, 2021, the Republicans have thrown everything they have at revising and whitewashing any suggestion that it was an "insurrection," and the Online Leftists have done the same, in an attempt to "prove" their insane point that Trump "would be better" than Biden. This is embodied in the recent ultimate-brainworm-nonsense maximalist-online take that "Biden has to lose so the rest of the world will see that the US rejects genocide!!!" That's right, the message that the rest of the world would take from Biden losing to Trump is that the US rejects genocide. Never mind if Trump literally wants to commit all the genocide possible and to install himself as a fascist theocratic dictator. In the deeply twisted minds of the Online Leftists, this is the only possible interpretation of Biden's loss, so they'll push for it as hard as they can! The Trumpists and the Online Leftists, at this point, are working pretty much in concert to damage Biden for similar insane reasons and get Trump elected. Etc etc., one Nazi and ten people at the same table is eleven Nazis.

Like. Sure. Four years ago, when Trump was president and people were dying by the thousands because he didn't want to wear a mask because it smeared his bronzer, just to name literally one of the terrible things he did every single day (and not even mentioning how much worse a second term would be) we were absolutely better off. Super-duper great. (Sarcasm.) Either that or "there is suffering and evil in the world and the only solution is to drastically increase the suffering and evil for everyone and to destroy what progress we have managed to make because It Does Not Fix Everything Now" is an absolute moral imperative, and either way, yeah. I'm calling bullshit.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Thom Hartmann at TNR:

Republicans don’t want women to vote. They now think they may have a strategy that could prevent them from doing so. House Speaker Mike Johnson and former President Donald Trump were pushing the Safeguard American Eligibility, or SAVE, Act, demanding it be part of must-pass legislation to fund the federal government for another year (the funding runs out at the end of this month, and then the shutdown begins).

It died in the House Wednesday night, but, like a bad penny, you can bet it’ll return.* Trump, on his failing social media site, ranted Tuesday that Republicans must get “every ounce” of the SAVE Act passed or shut down the government “in any way, shape, or form.” He said it was necessary because Democrats are “registering Illegal Voters by the TENS OF THOUSANDS, as we speak,” adding the vicious lie that “they will be voting in the 2024 Presidential Election.” Trump, Johnson, and J.D. Vance claim that the SAVE Act is necessary to prevent people who aren’t citizens from voting, but they are entirely unable to prove that any meaningful number of noncitizens have ever illegally voted in any American election. After all, it’s a felony for a noncitizen to vote, and few are stupid enough to take that sort of a chance. Republicans love to point out that occasionally noncitizens end up on the voting rolls of various states. Oregon, for example, just found that 306 noncitizens were on the voting rolls because they were incorrectly added when they renewed their drivers’ licenses; two had voted because they were mailed ballots and didn’t know better. The state has fixed this error.

But Republicans have absolutely no evidence of any election, anywhere in America, at any time in our history that was ever changed by noncitizens voting. Or of any conspiracy to encourage noncitizens to vote.

[...] So why is this the hill Republicans are willing to die on? Why would Johnson, Trump, and Vance (and so many other Republicans) put so much effort into a lie that will, if acted on, create chaos for American voters?

And why try so hard to force it into a must-pass bill when it has already passed the House of Representatives on a stand-alone vote? The question contains the seed of its own answer. The SAVE Act is a proposed federal law, so, first off, it would put a future president (say, Trump) in charge of enforcing it, taking that power away from the states. Millions of voter registrations in any states the president decides are problematic could be removed until those voters “cure” their registrations, and state authorities would have no say in it. And what will the law require citizens who want to vote do? Lacking a passport or other proof of citizenship with their married names, they must produce both a birth certificate (with the seal of the state where it was issued; no copies allowed) and a current form of identification—both with the exact same name on them. That could instantly disqualify about 90 percent of all married women without passports or other proof that matches their birth certificates or proof of a legal name change.

For women in that situation, they can still register to vote if they can prove that they went to court to change their name when they got married, but most women just start using their new married name without ever going through all those formalities (although a few states recognize marriage as a legal name change).

This New Republic article from Thom Hartmann is a masterclass.

The Republicans’ War On Women has expanded to voting rights, as most women who marry do change their name, and that more women vote Democratic.

The SAVE Act is full of poppycock and a waste of time bill that causes more problems than it solves with dealing the phantom “noncitizen” voter crisis.

[spiderlegsmusic]

Trump is Resigned to Lose the Election and Prepared to Stage Another Coup

Seeing his chances of winning the election dwindling, Trump is changing his focus to staging another coup.

It starts with local election officers who are magats who have pledged to alter their numbers if Harris wins their district.

There are still plenty of cells of fake electors.

There is the good old fashioned ku klux klan method of voter intimidation at the polls.

And the unsuccessful last time, armed mob set upon the capitol or White House.

This corrupt convicted felon and his simpleton cult followers want a white American for white people. The corrupt wealthy who support Trump want no regulation and no taxes.

This coup will be more violent and organized than the last one. Make no mistake: the reason why this election is so important is because if these psychos get power, we won’t ever vote again.

His simpleton magat followers will argue with you on here, on tumblr. They call us fear mongers. Many of the antigenocide crowd call us fear mongers too and while their hearts are in the right place, they repeat republican propaganda unaware they are doing so. They think losing our democracy is a fair price to pay to protest genocide completely oblivious to the fact that if we lose democracy, that’s the end of their protest. And Trump has already gone on record saying to Netanyahu: “finish it.”

Trump will send them even more weapons which for some reason they refuse to or are incapable of understanding. Like I said, their hearts are in the right place, they just simply cannot conceive of democracy being dismantled. The concept is bewildering and therefore not realistic.

Others of them think democracy doesn’t exist. That our system of government is like the matrix, just a projection. That our votes don’t matter anyway. And still others are just anarchists who want to see America fall into dystopia. They think they’ll somehow thrive in trump’s autocracy. That we the people aren’t important enough to detain.

Trump said his next term was all about retribution. That’s going to be on all of us. He refers to his magat supporters in private as “basement dwellers.” They will be fucked over too along with the rest of us.

And trump’s basement dwellers have promised a civil war if their big orange bath daddy loses, which he has indicated he is making plans for.

Biden should have the armed forces ready to put down the coup attempt now. Magats don’t stand a chance against the might of the US Military, whom Trump refers to as losers.

So even if Harris wins, things won’t be settled. That’s when their war actually begins. There will be some sort of announcement by trump’s campaign at some point during the first week of September. Pay attention to it.

Things in this country are about to get more fucked up. And the rest of the world is watching nervously as the world’s largest super power gets thrown into chaos

Sources are from various web resources. Google anything you doubt

[vintageseawitch]

to those leftists who are "uncommitted" or will vote third party: what exactly is your alternative? you know goddamn well your "protest" vote isn't gonna change shit & may help trump win. you scoff & claim that "OBVIOUSLY i don't want trump to win 🙄" but you're working harder to make sure Harris loses than he does.

i can't get over how y'all know "so much" about far left theory... but you know jack shit about how the American government works. you already act like the president is a monarch. i NEVER hear y'all talk about how important local & state voting is because most of you spew the bullshit that is "my vote doesn't matter."

the extremist Republicans have been playing a long fucking game. a few genocides will happen on our own soil if they gain all the power they want - that of immigrants, specifically brown people, & LGBTQIA. they will destroy them & anyone who wants to help them. this has been a long game because they can count on their voters actually participating in every election & mostly old people are the ones doing the voting.

we all complain about old people being selfish, how "they had theirs & will work to make sure younger generations don't." young people however are NOTORIOUS for not showing up at the polls. where the fuck are you leftists complaining about all the horrible bad things? y'all almost act like shocked Pikachu faces when piece of shit politicians get power then do horrible things. WHY AREN'T YOU ADVOCATING FOR LOCAL POLITICIANS.

if anything, Republicans live more in the real world than leftists who want their precious, magical, instantly-fix-everything revolution. Republicans have been patiently playing a long game & it's been WORKING. leftists get mad that changes they want don't happen instantly so they just give up on the system altogether. y'all want politicians to check ALL of your goddamn boxes or they get no help from you.

your protest vote in this election is selfish. you're not being smart about this. for fuck's sake, you're not marrying Harris, you're thinking of the long game. we need to work hard to make sure trump loses. the likes of jill stein, who is also a traitor, will not save us. she will hand us over to Russia on a platter. you want the US to collapse? you are so fucking foolish that you not only remain ignorant of how our government works but also geopolitics & all the delicate nuance. YES, the United States is fucked up, but world leaders are more nervous about a trump second term than not. HE FREED THE FUCKING TALIBAN.

you think things will be the same as ever? you're as bad as MAGA. you want us all to fail & all it will cost is LGBTQIA folks, immigrants (including those who have been here for decades), any woman who needs some kind of abortion care to save her life, children as more get gunned down, the elderly & disabled & anyone else who qualifies for social security & Medicare, veterans, indigenous folks, the environment since they don't believe in climate change WHICH AFFECTS THE ENTIRE DAMN PLANET, etc. but at least you're conscience will be clear.

please be smarter than Republicans & think this through. in another election in 1995 in Isreal a protest vote occurred & as a result netanyahu won by LESS THAN A WHOLE PERCENT. they were protesting AGAINST him. your "principles" could aid in harming us all. "they should have chosen a better candidate" our system led us to either choosing Harris or trump. for now it sucks but one of them will govern us. if you're so unsure then you might as well look forward to trump winning. he's not long for this world so jd fucking vance will be president instead. he's much younger & more evil, horrible, & psychotic. THINK ABOUT THE LONG GAME. vote locally & at state level, not just during thr general election. y'all don't sound smart to me; you sound prideful & short-sighted.

[ausetkmt]

Donald Trump's Hate Has No Place in Black America. Let's Remind Him in November.

We are seven months out from the most consequential election in our nation’s history, and Black voters know what’s up: A recent survey conducted by Black pollster Cornell Belcher’s firm asked 800 Black voters in battleground states to identify the single greatest threat to the Black community.

Their answer? A second Donald Trump presidency.

We should not be surprised by this finding. Trump is prepared to enact – and in many cases, reenact – policies that will do great harm to the Black community and to communities of color. He is expected to authorize mass deportations, wage war on the federal civil service (of which Black employees comprise 18 percent), cut taxes for the rich at the expense of the middle class, fight to make healthcare more expensive and less accessible and support an abortion ban that will only worsen the maternal mortality crisis.

While we have focused a lot on what Trump would do during a second term with the stroke of his pen, we cannot forget about the damage he inflicted on our community as president without even lifting a finger. Over his four years in office, Trump normalized a culture of racism and xenophobia that trickled down from the highest levels of our government to everyday interactions in-person and online. The former president’s social media posts and speeches were laced with a mix of dog whistles and outright hate speech.

How could we ever forget his claim that the attendees of a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. were “very fine people?” Or when he ordered members of the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” after being asked to condemn the white nationalist militia group? Or when he suggested that four Democratic members of Congress – all women of color – should “go back…[to the] places from which they came” in a tweet that a Republican congressman even described as racist?

Coming from the mouth of the President of the United States, this kind of rhetoric signaled that hate did indeed have a place in his America and gave top cover to those who realized they no longer had to keep their racism under wraps.

Consequently, racial violence skyrocketed during Trump’s presidency. In fact, this trend started before he even took office. The Washington Post found that counties that hosted a Trump rally in 2016 experienced a 226 percent increase in hate crimes in the months that followed. From 2016 to 2017, hate crimes across the country increased by 17 percent. From 2018 to 2019, deadly hate crimes more than doubled. And in 2020, more hate crimes were reported than in any year since 2001. Perhaps unsurprisingly, alleged civil rights violations went under-investigated under Trump’s DOJ. During its first two years, the Trump DOJ opened 60 percent fewer civil rights cases than did the Obama DOJ and 50 percent fewer than the Bush DOJ.

For those who think that the extent of the harm inflicted by Trump’s racism can be fully captured in those statistics, think again. In a multitude of ways, the Black community continues to suffer from the flames of hatred that Trump fanned while he was president. For example, racism is exacerbating the Black mental health crisis: Black youth experienced a 144 percent increase in suicide rates from 2007 to 2020, with both institutional and interpersonal racism identified as strong risk factors driving this trend.

While Trump was president for only a portion of that period, he was active in spreading racism – including promoting the Barack Obama birtherism lie – for almost the entirety of it.

Speaking of Obama, the election of our nation’s first Black president helps us understand why the election of Trump – which once seemed unthinkable – was actually an inevitable reaction to Black progress. Study after study has pointed to racial resentment as a significant driver of the support Trump received from his voters. His base wanted trickle-down racism, and trickle-down racism is what they got.

Fast forward to today, and like any other proverbial old dog, Trump is clearly stuck on his old tricks. On the campaign trail this time around, he has already evoked Hitler, saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of our country, and suggesting that Black voters appreciate him because he is being “discriminated against” in the legal system. Naturally, Republicans have made him their nominee for the third time. But while he might speak for their party, we do not have to let him speak for our country. Not again.

In 2016, Trump promised his supporters the ability to hate openly with impunity, and he most certainly delivered. Now, he’s ready to do it all over again. And while it might be tempting to give into fear and cynicism, we should take hope in recognizing that thanks to our community showing up for Joe Biden in 2020, we helped elect a president who is committed to aggressively prosecuting hate crimes, who has appointed judges with a respect for civil rights, and who recognizes that “hate never goes away, it only hides.”

Donald Trump has never hidden his hate. This fall, let’s show him once again that it has no place in our America.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Mike Luckovich

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 12, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 13, 2024

The 2024 election is shaping up to be bizarre on the Republican side. The party’s presidential nominee, former president Donald Trump, has largely stayed home and posted on social media while his vice presidential running mate J.D. Vance has been trying to cover the campaigning for the team. Indeed, Vance’s offer on Wednesday during a rally in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, to debate Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris suggests that Vance is not unwilling to be seen as the face, if not the leader, of the Republican ticket.

The actual presidential nominee appears even more unstable than usual, and it certainly appears that his handlers are trying to keep him off stage. As Tom Nichols of The Atlantic noted yesterday, “When Trump is on TV a lot, his approval goes down. When he’s in hiding and his surrogates are rearranging his bonkers crazypants word salads into something like real thoughts, his approval goes up.” 

Observers, including Jackie Calmes of the Los Angeles Times, have been clear that “Donald Trump’s state of mind should be under debate.” “Trump’s fire hose of cray-cray has inured Americans to his outrages,” Calmes wrote today. “But now that President Biden, a normal and empathetic man, has been pushed out of the 2024 race over concerns about his age and mental acuity, Trump’s more manifest unfitness for office should be ignored no longer—by the media, former advisors and military leaders who remain silent and, yes, Republicans.”

Trump held a surprise “press conference” on Thursday, where, according to a team of reporters and editors at NPR, he misstated things, exaggerated, or lied outright at least 162 times in 64 minutes, a rate of more than two times a minute.

He said that the United States “is in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint,” and warned we could end up in another depression like the Great Depression of the 1930s. In fact, the economy is strong and growing at a faster rate than it did in three of the four years of Trump’s presidency. 

He warned of a national crime wave although crime has been plummeting after a surge in 2020, during Trump’s term, and said that we are “very close to a world war,” which illustrates that Trump’s main lever to turn out voters is fear. With the successes of the Biden-Harris administration having neutralized the economic fears that worked in the past, and with the goals of antiabortion activists achieved in 2022 with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, Trump is apparently going for broke with the threat of World War III.

Altogether, the event did Trump no favors. 

Poll numbers for Harris and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz have climbed since President Joe Biden announced on July 21 he would not accept the Democratic nomination, and observers have reported that Trump’s anger is leading him into unforced errors, picking fights with allies and seemingly unable to let go of his focus on the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him, a focus that his advisors warn is turning off voters.

Trump has repeatedly seemed to fantasize that Biden will return to the head of the Democratic ticket, and on Sunday, seemingly frantic about Harris’s huge rallies while he can no longer attract big crowds, released a rant accusing Vice President Harris of using AI to create fake footage showing large groups of supporters greeting her airplane. Faking crowds with AI is a technique we know Trump uses, but there is no evidence Harris does. Immediately, people who attended her events released their own videos proving the size of the crowds, and political pundits openly questioned Trump’s mental health.

Then, this morning, Trump posted on his social media channel: “I’m doing really well in the Presidential Race, leading in almost all of the REAL Polls, and this despite the Democrats unprecedentedly changing their Primary Winning Candidate, Sleepy Joe Biden, midstream.” He went on until his closing: “We are going to WIN BIG and take our Country back from the Radical Left Losers, Fascists, and Communists. We will, very quickly, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” This afternoon, Five Thirty Eight showed Harris up 2.7 points in the national polling average.

Trump’s advisors are pleading with him to stop name-calling and to stay on message. His campaign began today to run ads on X that look like his tweets but are much more like standard political ads. 

Tonight, X owner Elon Musk planned to “interview” Trump, although it seemed pretty clear the event was intended simply to be a long advertisement for him. European Union commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton wrote an open letter to Musk warning about E.U. laws against amplifying harmful content “that promotes hatred, disorder, incitement to violence, or certain instances of disinformation.” Breton warned that his team “will be extremely vigilant” about protecting “E.U. citizens from serious harm.” Musk responded with a meme that said: “TAKE A BIG STEP BACK AND LITERALLY, F*CK YOUR OWN FACE!” 

Last month the European Union charged X with failing to respect its social media law by letting disinformation and illegal content run rampant. X faces fines of up to several million euros. 

In the end, technical difficulties delayed the start of the X Spaces event. Instead, wrote BBC journalist Shayan Sardarizadeh, who specializes in exposing disinformation, a “deepfake livestream of the Trump-Musk interview” was playing “on a fake Tesla channel on YouTube, with 200,000 people watching.” Sardarizadeh noted that the channel was running a crypto scam, and YouTube finally suspended it. When the real X channel finally began to function, it showed Musk and Trump heaping praise on each other. But Trump was slurring his words, and when HuffPost White House journalist S.V. Dáte asked the campaign about his inability to articulate, it answered: “Must be your sh*tty hearing. Get your ears checked out.” 

Trump went to Montana on Friday in support of Republican candidate Tim Sheehy, who is running to unseat popular Democrat Jon Tester, but otherwise has said he is not planning to hit the road until after the Democratic National Convention concludes next week, an odd lack of campaigning at this point in a presidential contest. He seems to be trying to regain control of the political narrative through tweets and social media. Today he said he is suing the government over the raid on Mar-a-Lago that recovered hundreds of classified national security documents, but this is almost certainly posturing to try to make him look strong: he would never be willing to undergo the discovery phase of such a lawsuit.

In the midst of Trump’s frenzy, J.D. Vance has been doing the usual appearances of a campaign, although, unable to generate rally crowds himself, he has been reduced to following Harris and Walz to theirs and trying to grab headlines there.

On Sunday he did the rounds of the morning talk shows, where on CNN he complained that Democrats are bullying him by calling the MAGA Republicans “weird.” Political journalist Brian Tyler Cohen promptly answered: “Crooked Hillary, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Sleepy Joe, Coco Chow, Lyin Ted, Ron DeSanctimonious, Birdbrain Nikki Haley, Old Crow McConnell, Gavin Newscum, Pencil Neck Schiff, Pocahontas, Cryin Chuck, and Kamabla would all like a word.”

Republicans have made punching down a key part of their rhetoric since at least the 1980s, and Vance’s frustration that the tables have turned feels a bit as if someone is finally standing up to the schoolyard bully. 

Outside of the MAGA frenzy, Harris and Walz last week held big, joyous rallies in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada, contrasting their happy campaign with the MAGA Republicans’ drumbeat of carnage and revenge. A cover article from Time magazine today by Charlotte Alter described the scene of one of her rallies as a mashup of a Beyoncé concert, Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and “the early days of Barack Obama”: “a kind of reception a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t gotten in years. Fans packed into overflow spaces, waving homemade signs made of glitter and glue as drumlines roared. When Harris introduced her new running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, the cheering lasted more than a minute.”

At the same time, the grave issues that are propelling the Democrats continue to gain traction. The Associated Press today reported that in the wake of the 2022 Dobbs decision, more than 100 pregnant women have been treated negligently or turned away from emergency rooms despite federal law. Two women, each of whom lost a fallopian tube to an undertreated ectopic pregnancy—one also lost 75% of one of her ovaries, and the other nearly bled to death—have asked the federal government to investigate whether the hospitals that sent them home to miscarry without medical assistance violated federal law.   

On Saturday, Trump’s campaign said it had been hacked, after Politico reported that it had received communication from an account called “Robert” about internal Trump campaign documents. David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo put together a helpful timeline of the story today, explaining that on Sunday the Washington Post said it had also received some of that information and said it believed the information to be that referred to in an August 9 warning from Microsoft that Iran was engaged in an influence campaign. Today the New York Times also said it had received the information, and this afternoon the FBI said it is investigating attempted hacking against both the Trump-Vance and Harris-Walz campaigns. 

CNN national security and justice reporter Zachary Cohen reported tonight that the hackers apparently were able to access the campaign by compromising the personal email account of Trump operative Roger Stone. 

“Buckle up,” Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, wrote on X. “Someone is running the 2016 playbook, expect continued efforts to stoke fires in society and go after election systems—95% votes on paper ballots is a strong resilience measure, combined with audits. But the chaos is the point….”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[covid-safer-hotties]

Democrats and Republicans greet Covid spike with a collective shrug - Published Aug 28, 2024

What people say: "The Democrats are so much better on covid than the Republicans!"

What the candidates say: "Harris' campaign declined to comment while Trump's campaign did not respond to an inquiry."

(Yakov Smirnov voice) What a country!

Democrats and Republicans can agree on one thing coming out of their respective conventions: Almost no one cares about Covid anymore.

Infections are running rampant after the Democratic confab in Chicago, with staffers on Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign, reporters and other convention-goers all stricken — and in at least one case claiming the positive test was “worth it.” Cases also cropped up after the Republican National Convention in July.

And yet the single most-animating issue of the 2020 election is an afterthought for the major-party nominees coming out of two of the 2024 campaign’s biggest milestones — even as the virus remains an ever-present threat that's shaped broader debates over key electoral issues like strength of the economy and the future of families' health and child care.

Both campaigns have struggled with how — and how much — to address a pandemic that the U.S. never fully defeated, but that few Americans still want to dwell on.

Former President Donald Trump has bemoaned in speeches and interviews that he “never got the credit that we really deserved” for helping accelerate vaccine development in 2020, even as he later cast doubt on the shots' importance and has more recently maneuvered to gain the backing of prominent vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his supporters. Harris lauded President Joe Biden for bringing the pandemic “under control” when she took over his campaign but has hardly mentioned Covid since. Both parties have blamed the other for allowing deaths to spike under their watches.

“It’s very difficult to talk about politically, because it’s still present and neither side wants to acknowledge that this pandemic is still around,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration appointee with a background in global health. But “if it continues to worsen,” Bartlett said, “both parties will be forced to address it.”

The rhetorical vacuum around Covid comes even as cases have surged over the summer, hospitalizing thousands and killing nearly 700 people in one week in late July. Though that is far less than during the height of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Covid still ranks as a top-10 cause of death — and more broadly, a disease capable of disrupting people's everyday lives.

Yet Americans have never been less interested in the virus. Just a fraction of adults are seeking out new Covid vaccines each year, and even fewer wear masks or take the basic precautions that were once seen as standard.

"Voters do not like it being brought up at all," said Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and pollster for Biden's 2020 campaign, who marveled at the near-total absence of masks at a Democratic convention where roughly 20,000 people crammed into Chicago's United Center for a week. "They want to get over it."

With Covid receding from voters’ collective conscious — even as reports of post-convention cases keep coming — strategists posit it’s likely best for both candidates if talk of the pandemic fades away with it.

“Trump would be smart to just not talk about it,” said Mark Graul, a Wisconsin-based Republican consultant. And given the “relation” between the pandemic and the Biden-led economic recovery effort that voters now associate more with soaring inflation than rapid job growth, Graul said, “I’m not so sure it’s a smart move for [Harris] either.”

Lake, who has conducted focus groups across the battleground states, added that the only voters who bring up Covid now unprompted tend to be hardcore Trump supporters eager to bash the Biden administration's response. And even those who might be inclined to side with Democrats on the issue prefer health care messaging that excludes mention of the pandemic.

Inside a Biden White House that has now reoriented itself around electing Harris, senior officials have continued to keep an eye on Covid, wary of a particularly dangerous flare-up during the key stretch of the election that could force the virus back into the public consciousness and damage Democrats politically.

But much of the day-to-day work has been shifted out of the White House and back to a Health and Human Services Department far less tied to political dynamics of the moment.

The Food and Drug Administration just approved updated Covid vaccines that are now rolling out widely. Those will be central to a just-launched fall campaign led by HHS called "Risk Less. Do More." encouraging people to get both their Covid booster and flu shot in tandem. The administration also plans to restart its distribution of free Covid tests at the end of September.

Biden and Harris, though, are not expected to play much of a public role in that effort, driven in large part by a recognition that most Americans mulling their vote ahead of November don’t want to hear about Covid — and a White House that has little desire to remind them.

"For most people, Covid is less about getting an infection and more about a period of time when our lives were super disrupted — and that is behind us," said Ashish Jha, the Biden White House's former Covid response coordinator. "We do still have a public health problem, but it is no longer in any way a substantive societal problem."

White House spokesperson Kelly Scully touted the administration's initial pandemic response as critical to ensuring that Covid "no longer meaningfully disrupts the way we live our lives," while pointing to the ongoing efforts to manage the virus by making tests, vaccines and treatments widely available.

"When President Biden and Vice President Harris came into office, America was flat on its back reeling from a once-in-a-century pandemic with no plan from the previous administration to deal with Covid-19," Scully said. "The Biden-Harris Administration took swift action to get America vaccinated — and get our economy and schools opened up."

Yet two years removed from the pandemic's crisis period, polling shows that Covid ranks far down the list of urgent voter priorities heading into November — if it shows up in surveys at all — with few Americans eager to revisit the painful memories of the pandemic era. The government has relaxed guidelines originally meant to limit the virus' spread. And when Biden contracted Covid again in July, he did not wear a mask in public while actively shedding the virus.

During Biden’s abbreviated reelection run, he pointed to Covid as an example of the contrast in leadership between Trump and himself — accusing his predecessor of exacerbating a national crisis that he later said he successfully cleaned up. The president also highlighted the pandemic to show how much the economy had improved on his watch since then.

But that strategy never resonated with much of the electorate, and Harris has opted to take her campaign in a different direction by focusing almost exclusively on the future.

Fixating on the events of three years ago, aides and allies said, would risk distracting from the forward-looking campaign themes that have energized the electorate — and remind voters of the pinch they felt in their wallets from the inflation that grew out of the pandemic era.

But there is little benefit for Trump to harp on Covid, either. The Republican has long struggled to reconcile his messaging on Covid, torn between wanting credit for Operation Warp Speed, the program that accelerated developing the vaccine, and appealing to a base that distrusts mask and vaccine mandates and, in some cases, the very shot itself. He has recently attempted to play more into the latter, saying he would rehire military service members fired over Covid vaccine mandates “with an apology and with back pay” and threatening to withhold federal dollars from schools that require the jab.

“Any current debate on [Covid] is relatively meaningless,” said Democratic pollster Paul Maslin. “Each party cancels the other out.”

Harris' campaign declined to comment while Trump's campaign did not respond to an inquiry.

Still, the unpredictable nature of Covid — which is mutating more quickly than drugmakers can keep up with and is fueling surges outside of the typical winter period than infectious diseases experts initially predicted — could make it harder for Trump and Harris to ignore, especially if cases remain elevated as voting gets underway. Nearly one-third of respondents to a recent Axios-Ipsos poll said Covid poses a “large” or “moderate” risk to their health — an uptick from the same survey in early June, when cases were lower.

The “shock value” of each surge is more “muted” now that there are treatments and vaccines to prevent severe illness, Suffolk University polling director David Paleologos said.

But “as the virus spreads,” he added, “so will its importance in voters’ minds.”