I definitely like going on the offensive, and I think the "weird/creepy" line is definitely worth trying. I do hope it works and we're not just high on our own supply here.
I'm loving it. This feels like a fight again, one we can win. Joyous.
Also we're finding all the opportunities to be on the offense not defense, which is great. Vance just had to make a mealy-mouthed defense of his cat lady comments before Megyn Kelly.
Yeah, this is all great. It even seems to be working so far, though it's early yet.
Something, something OPINIONATED RICK SANTORUM
Harris is already several points above where Biden was, both nationally and in swing states. That's a good sign. She's not on top of the polls yet, but we've potentially got convention boost and VP boost to factor in!
Since the RNC has already happened, how complicated would it be to dump Vance? Although if they do that, who are they going to pick? It's all loons, goons, and buffoons.
No idea about the legality, but I imagine Vance would be too scared to resist if Trump ordered him to resign from the race, and that might make it simpler.
Trump would look weak and indecisive if he gave Vance the boot. I'll be surprised if he does it.
Yeah, the talk of dumping Vance seems weird. A candidate that would dump Vance wouldn't put him on the ticket in the first place.
But this is Trump. What's the fun of a VP who debases himself before you get a chance to degrade him yourself?
I love all of this. After I got over the initial vertigo, I've felt so buoyant and energetic this week. Hell yes let's harness some rude kid energy and mock their dumb asses.
I mean the Republican Party will just change their rules to whatever Trump wants, so I don't think there's any obstacle to pushing him out before the ballots are printed.
I mean the Republican Party will just change their rules to whatever Trump wants, so I don't think there's any obstacle to pushing him out before the ballots are printed.
Well, I learned recently (in the context of possible frivolous challenges to Harris) that state laws usually rely on the party convention's determination, so one question is whether that law includes time or even provision for post-convention changes, even if they were voted on by the party.
Trump would look weak and indecisive if he gave Vance the boot.
On balance I agree he probably won't, but anything's possible - he's panicking.
The attack ads against Harris have already started to air.
That's NOT what "intersectionality" means, JD.
AP News now claims that "JD Vance did not have sex with a couch" but I can't see how they know that. Surely it would be more accurate to say that "It has not been proven that JD Vance had sex with a couch," or that "There is no clear evidence that JD Vance had sex with a couch."
It's also not certain that he had sex with a dolphin, but we do know for sure that he was thinking about it.
What a time to be alive: https://x.com/Scaramucci/status/1816928720894169307
20: You should send that to the AP's ombudsman or whatever.
George McGovern's chosen VP candidate withdrew in 1972, a couple of weeks after the convention. I don't remember any legal problems . . .
20: The correct journalistic formulation is that this has been "claimed without evidence." Here is how the Associated Press normally handles such matters:
Since gaining the House majority in January, House Republicans have aggressively investigated Biden and his son, claiming without evidence that they engaged in an influence-peddling scheme.
With SCOTUS reform now a real issue, can Harris campaign on student debt forgiveness again?
She's probably going to try to run as a centrist by supporting student debt forgiveness and upholstery cleaning for people who don't keep the latex glove securely wedged.
Yay! These have been almost my exact words.
Trolls suck but a funny troll beats a scold like rock beats scissors.
17: The attack ads against Harris have already started to air.
Yes. Will Bunch was noting a lot of Harris (and Bob Casey) attack ads the last two nights during Phillies games with no Dem counter. My relief* bounce has ended and I find myself not really reveling in the online reverse "bullying." We'll see what breaks through to the normies. They are primed by the media/information world the other direction. I just don't think a sustainable sane democracy can exist in a country where Fox News is on in over half the small businesses that have a TV. (Not the brief influence on people while they are at the business, it is the evidence of normalization of that crap, and what the owners assume about there customers.) This is really one of my most fervent complaints about the media, their insistence on treating Fox News (and similar) as colleagues and not one of the biggest political malignancies of the past 25 years. They've debased the information environment and yet generally get ignored and sometimes defended. A great example was '21-'22 when Fox was full-throated in league with the Republican party in undermining public health for political gain. Hardly noted in other media; instead you had things like David Leonhardt in the NYT showing his full ass every few weeks about Covid measures. If there is merit to private media it should be competition. Where's the Front Page spirit? Your competitors are lying expose them!
*Sorry. It is in fact much better than early July. I'm just grumpy on several levels at the moment.
Just for you, Stormy:
From kingmaker to spectator: Rupert Murdoch consigned to Republican sidelines
Bernie *helping* in his own inimitable way,,,
.@BernieSanders at West Lebanon N.H. town hall: "She (Harris) is not going to win this election and she is going to have a very difficult time winning unless she begins to speak forcefully about the needs of the long-neglected working class of this country.
Trolls suck, I know
But even so,
I love to troll the fash
Because they're trash
I really like to troll,
Really like to troll,
Trolling's like a game
When you make the shot
Woah-oh-oh, trolls suck
We'll see what breaks through to the normies.
Yeah, I lack confidence that mockery and direct confrontation can work. I remember Marco Rubio making fun of Trump's small hands. It was a clever enough line and well-delivered, I thought.
But Rubio backtracked and apologized. Apparently voters did not react well. And I mentioned here the other day my skepticism that the Lincoln Project's nasty ads moved any votes.
So I have become less interested in trying to figure out how we win, because I don't think our medium-term odds are good even if Harris is elected. For me, the question is: How do we want to lose?
I want to go down swinging. Maybe that won't work, but what will?
"So I have become less interested in trying to figure out how we win, because I don't think our medium-term odds are good even if Harris is elected"
Why not? This year is Trump's last chance. In 2028 he will be dead or senile. And who is going to take his place? Who else has the celebrity status and the media presence?
I can't see people rallying in their thousands for Stephen Miller.
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"Today, I have had the divine grace to commune with all of you in this magnificent fraternal Eucharistic celebration. I thank God and I thank you. I am your servant; I am your child; I am your father; and I am your brother."|>
30: I was surprised he said that. He and Biden had done a lot of work together, and Inwonder if he sees her as less pro union.
34: I guess I don't have a good theory for what happens in the Republican party if Trump loses and retires, because yes obviously none of the other MAGA politicians have his weird charisma, but it's very concerning that the Republican brand is now pure uncut authoritarian nationalism.
It's inevitable that they'll be back in the presidency in '28 or '32 and not at all clear that whoever it is will be functionally more sane than Trump. Like , how confident can we be that US NATO membership survives another Republican administration?
38: fair points. Let me give you some reasons for optimism.
1- if Harris wins in November she will probably win in '28 because presidents are likely to be re-elected (18 put of 28).
2. There is no immutable law that states that parties only get two terms in office and then it's the other lot's turn. Bush won after two terms of Reagan. Truman won after four terms of FDR. Hoover succeeded Harding and Coolidge. Taft succeeded Roosevelt. Etc.
Since 1900 there have been 12 elections where the incumbent party had been in for at least two terms, and in six, the incumbent won. If Harris is still president in 2028, the Democrats have a solid chance of winning.
3. No reason either to suppose that in eight years the Republicans will still be like this. Eight years before Trump their candidate was John McCain. Parties change.
4. Trump was a terrible candidate, underperformed fundamentals by six percentage points in 2016. Given the economy etc he was predicted to win the popular vote by three points - he lost by three. Is there another authoritarian candidate out there who's a much better campaigner than Trump? Not obviously!
Like I said I really don't have a theory of what happens to the Republican party over the next 4-12 years if Trump loses. I'm afraid the genie is out of the bottle on his style of politics. The party elders could have (theoretically) put a stake in it's heart in 2021 but passed on the chance. I won't pretend that the politics of Bush, McCain, Palin, Boehner and McConnell were good but I don't see a future party run by DeSantis or Vance or Huckabee being any better, and I don't see the base stepping aside for a Hogan or a Sununu anytime soon.
No reason either to suppose that in eight years the Republicans will still be like this.
I think that's right. In the same way people look back on GW Bush as being from a different, more benign time in Republican politics, Trump may someday be viewed the same way. There is no particular reason to believe that modern Republicans -- and the US social environment that spawned them -- have hit bottom. To pick one example: I could definitely see the Republicans rejecting Trump's isolationism in favor of military adventurism, for instance.
The downward trajectory of the US has been baked into the political situation for a long time. Along with Trump's original victory, I think Jan. 6 and its aftermath were a real inflection point -- the period in which we all came to understand that there is no particular affection for democracy among voters in the US.
For instance, the Supreme Court recently ruled that partisan judges must make regulatory decisions, rather than expert regulators, regardless of the intent of Congress. That decision was entirely predictable, and it will have a predictably disastrous impact in limiting the ability of the US to act intelligently. The Republican Party has a direct stake in the failure of the US government. This has been true for decades.
But even with this Supreme Court, a few short months ago it would have been unthinkable that we would get a ruling that a president's official acts render him immune from criminal prosecution. What do we think the Republicans will do with that new power when they get a chance?
And the Supreme Court is just as likely to get worse as it is to get better, even if Harris is elected.
Congressional Republicans have followed Trump and the Republican electorate straight into the sewer. And they are all happy there -- in a way they were not with McCain and Romney. The early resistance of Republican elites to Trump was based on their belief that motives had to be hidden. Trump has shown that in important ways, this is not so.
Obama had his eight years, true enough, and did some good things. But all of the worst tendencies of Republicans are exacerbated by defeat. If the Republican Party is going to remain a political force in this country, we're pretty much screwed.
"I could definitely see the Republicans rejecting Trump's isolationism in favor of military adventurism, for instance."
That would not necessarily be worse. It would at least be somewhat comforting to their NATO allies, for a start.
And as for Trump not being fond of military adventurism.... have a look at what he did last time and what he's saying now. He wants to invade Mexico! He blew up an Iranian general! He launched vast numbers of unsupervised drone strikes!
Why should we think that Trump will leave the political scene if he loses again? Are Republican voters tired of him? Are any leading Republicans -- visible or behind the scenes, individual or collective -- strong enough within the party to push him out of public life? Are the media tired of his circus?
Only embalming fluid will cure that guy.
And who know how much Thiel is willing to invest to put off that day.
"Why should we think that Trump will leave the political scene if he loses again? "
Because in another four years he will probably be dead or incapacitated.
47 Lot's of people thought this in 2020/21. It was a reason not to impeach him: he's leaving the scene, why punish him further?
I mean, I'm not sorry with him continuing to play a significant role in Republican primaries. He's not interested in who can win, but in how thoroughly they abase themselves to him.
Yeah. He's not stopping until he's dead and if I had an electoral college vote for everyone who said he wouldn't come back after the loss, the coup, the whatever, I'd be president.
I'd wouldn't have done as well as Biden though.
I can't imagine having a lower opinion of Trump voters than I already do and I simply cannot make myself believe that they would nominate him again, if he loses. Probably they would, I guess? If nobody has the spine to run against him and say, "Vote for me, I'm not a loser."
Lot's of people thought this in 2020/21. It was a reason not to impeach him: he's leaving the scene, why punish him further?
Really? People argued "don't impeach Trump for insurrection because he'll be dead soon anyway"?
As i see it, trump won on a fluke, revealing the depressingly significant portion of the electorate that is susceptible to nativist and other base motivations and activating them as a political force that had been largely quieted in this country. Republicans gave into the rightward lurch because they could not win primaries without kowtowing to trump to get a share of these voters. But, with a Harris win (please please please), i think the maga movement will have peaked due to its string of electoral failures since 2018, the inevitable decline in its identity-forming salience given its association with losing (not only elections, but also friends and family members), and the lack of a successor snakecharmer to trump.
Only after all the violence, of course. (How I loathe the craven manipulators.)
Ninety-nine days to go. What y'all got?
Moby, does telephone canvassing help? I'm kinda stuck for what else I can do from Germany.
55.2: Probably. Phonebanking has already started. I have my personal doubts because there are just so many phone calls. There's also textbanking, which might be easier to do from abroad.
Ach, scheiss Telegramm
https://www.deutschepost.de/de/t/telegramm.html
54: Losing just reaffirmed the Republicans' devotion to Trump. The magic of Trumpism is that you are only defeated if you admit defeat.
Would the Republican rank-and-file abandon Trump after a massive, absurd policy failure? If his thugs invaded a government building in an effort to overturn an election and he subsequently referred to the convicts as "hostages," maybe that would do it.
Or if he took a stance on public health that cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Or maybe if the Democrats took over an economy in a shambles presided over a prosperous era of low unemployment and high growth.
I think ajay's question is the relevant one: Who is Trump's successor? The guy really does have an unusual skillset that is lacking in boring people like Desantis or Abbott or Haley or Cruz. My guess is that the media finds another one. Maybe Don Jr. Maybe Tucker Carlson. Reflecting on this makes me glad, all over again, that Rush Limbaugh is dead.
I think Jan. 6 and its aftermath were a real inflection point
There have been a lot of shitty inflection points over the past couple of decades, but I think history will probably identify Bush v. Gore as the most important among them. But for that ruling, I really don't know.
The broader question, I guess, is what point in the backlash against the New Deal consensus does Trump's rise represent? I'd say that Reagan was the start, and it would be nice if this were the end or near the end. But I don't think so, because the apparatus movement conservatives have constructed seems pretty robust to me. That said, I really don't feel at all certain about much at the moment. (I guess I should add that I'm certain Harris beating Trump would be a good thing. Four more years of Trump--whether or not he represents a true threat to democracy, whatever that word means in the United States--would be absolutely awful.)
Bush v. Gore as the most important among them
And as bad as the decision was the stay was worse.
I'd say that Reagan was the start, and it would be nice if this were the end or near the end.
Presumes there will be an end. It's been like 90 years now (depending where you start it) and there were only 20-30 with right-wing acquiescence. I think hostility is going to keep rising up in some form or other unless there's some really big and unpredictable change, like how the Dreyfus debate continued to divide France until WWII.
After Trump passes from the scene, there will be a struggle between Vance and Junior.
65: Both will struggle to remain on the map, I think. Vance will have an easier time of it than Junior, who is increasingly coked up.
But Trump said it was partially about securing the future of the Republican Party after he was gone. "He is going to be a superstar in the future," Trump told delegates and donors huddled inside the Baird Center, according to an attendee.
What better imprimatur of future failure?
66: Vance really does seem adaptable to neo-Republicanism, but if anything, I think being coked up provides a helpful edge to Don Jr.
I'm not going to look up the origins of the Shia/Sunni split, but I'm imagining generations of people following the shillbilly hating the ones who follow the cokehead.
Religious devotion to Trump's divine mission will only increase after he's gone. This fever isn't going to break, it's going to consume its host.
Josh Marshall -- who is essential reading -- discusses "weird" here, and he's got it exactly right. (Link probably will take you to a paywall, but you should pay!)
69: That's a plausible, non-depressing answer to the question, "What will stop Trumpism?" Schism!
A lot of liberal optimism is based on the idea that Trumpism is unsustainable -- and I agree that it is. The problem is, the reason it is unsustainable is that it will ultimately lead to a catastrophe so dramatic that even Trumpers will be forced to acknowledge it.
But what level of calamity will do the trick? A mismanaged plague was insufficient. If you want a historical analog, think Stalingrad.
I agree 70 is a good (and correct) summary. Gift link.
With his actual rallies getting less and less popular, I think at some point the bubble will pop and Trump will be yesterday's news. But that might not be for 5-10 years and it doesn't mean the party will improve.
If they don't seize power in some way in the next two years, I think they're on track for a slow decline into irrelevance, much like the CA GOP, AIHMHB.
Who was that guy who just kept on running? William Jennings Bryan? Any lessons there?
Even if 73 is correct, I don't see how it extends beyond presidential races.
74: Name a hospital in Lincoln after him?
William Jennings Bryan? Any lessons there?
Crucifying yourself on a cross of gold is bad, but talking about how it's bad doesn't win you elections.
The Republicans have done a bunch of stupid stuff, like switching over the RNC to be Trump's legal defense fund and eliminating the state GOTV efforts because Trump says he'll do the turnout and stocking the state parties with crazies. Eventually that has to catch up to them. It is taking such a painfully long time, but the truism that Trump destroys everything he touches has to come true sometime. He's an unhealthy old man. When he's gone, I think he'll leave rubble behind.
He only ran 3 times, even though it seems like he ran more than that.* The difference between him and the other major party candidates who ran 3+ times is that everyone else won at least once. Debs ran more times but was never going to be close to winning.
*Alton B. Parker in 1904: most obscure major party candidate of the 20th century?
Harold Stassen was still running when I was a kid, and for a while after. Per Google, nine campaigns total, beginning in 1944 and ending in 1992, skipping 1956, 1960, 1972, and 1976.
We should have given him a term, just for the effort
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I still find value in Xitter as a news aggregator and source of stupid pet trick videos, but it is quite something how many really awful posts and ads get served up even when set to show me only people I'm following, and also how many nominally female bots have started following my largely read-only account over the last few months.
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I learned about Harold Stassen from an old Mad Magazine where someone says "Sure, I believe you! And I also believe Harold Stassen will be president someday!"
I heard about Ronald Reagan from a Laugh In joke about him being president some day. Except that it was a rerun and Ronald Reagan was already president.
I heard about Laugh In from Richard Nixon, except it was a rerun and he'd already appeared on it and then he'd been impeached and then he resigned and then sometime after that I was born and then I didn't see an episode of Laugh In until Nick at Nite ran it for a target audience who seemed old to me then, but who were probably mostly younger than I am now.
I learned about the Bible when Trump said it was his favorite book.
I learned about Harold Stassen from an old Doonesbury strip where they're comparing their poker hands to politicians and he's the punchline as compared to the unstoppable forces of Richard Nixon and Ed Muskie.