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This podcast with the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, Jane Mayer and former GOP strategist Sarah Longwell was quite fascinating. Longwell is all over the media sharing the information about the focus groups she holds with swing voters. In this, though, she shares her advice for the Democrats about how to reach them and I thought it was excellent. The one piece of advice that really sounds smart to me is the idea that if Biden’s big weakness is his age, they should roll out all the surrogates from around the country, like Governors Whitmer, Newsom, Shapiro etc to show there is a strong Democratic bench that’s young and vital. It reflects on the party rather than Biden but its useful in any case. And she says they should go to lengths to show that he has young an vital people all around him. She didn’t advise it, but I wondered if they should show some cabinet meetings. Obviously, they don’t have to do it like Trump did with all the sycophants making fools of themselves over Dear Leader. But it might be useful for the public to see the people in the administration who back Biden up day to day.
How is this not disqualifying? The man who orchestrated what happened that day is under indictment for that crime but is running for president again. And he might win. We are living in Bizarroworld.
660 000 Australians are participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and 400 000 work in NDIS-related jobs. Our country needs the NDIS, but it’s expanded too quickly in recent years, as state-based services have withered on the vine. 11% of five- to seven-year-old Australian boys, and 5% of five- to seven-year-old girls, are now Continue reading »
If anybody in Australia is interested in real “Truth Telling” then look no further than the continued operation of Don Dale Juvenile Detention Centre in Darwin, NT. Don Dale has, and continues to provide, the real truth for all to see as regards the disaster that is race relations in Australia and how distant the Continue reading »
The saddest consequence of Donald Trump’s conviction is that it changes little. It may seem inconceivable that a convicted felon can run for President of the United States with a good chance of winning, but he would not be the first person to be elected after spending time in prison. Trump will appeal his conviction Continue reading »
The radicalised right has been very active in Australia and internationally recently. With corporate money backing the movement at every turn, the networking is amplifying. If democratic projects can be made more illiberal, and international bodies crippled, the liberal tradition can be replaced wit Continue reading »
As with any environmental disaster, the impact of heat stress hits the poorer harder than the privileged. The world’s largest elections unfolded in India during April and May 2024, with nearly 970 million registered voters. Daytime temperatures have been scorching across India and there are concerns the extreme heat in these two months may have played a role in Continue reading »
One of my closest friends was recently diagnosed with early stages of dementia. She is 80 years old and believed that the problems she experienced with her memory, were due to normal age-related forgetfulness. She has a science background, and after receiving her diagnosis she started to research the topic in great detail. She read Continue reading »
Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 09 2024
by Tony Wikrent
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Strategic Political Economy
Average Old Democrat, June 02, 2024 [DailyKos]
…What happens to the Republican Party? Where do they go and who will lead them?
The Chinese have an adage — 骑 虎 难 下 – “When you ride the tiger, it is impossible to dismount.”
I think they’re pretty good I don’t know if anyone’s seeing them though. There are a bunch of these. They’re being targeted at specific social media and, I assume, on television in some markets. I think they’re effective but then I’m already on the team. There is now a new Super PAC announced to try to get to young voters: The group, Won’t PAC Down, will raise and spend $20 million to $25 million, according to details shared exclusively with POLITICO. It’s also turning to Hollywood for help. Won’t PAC Down has hired millennial and Gen Z writers, directors and producers to help craft pro-Biden content that’s specifically engineered to sell an octogenarian candidate to typically disillusioned and hard-to-reach voters under 30. Those movie industry creatives, with credits from “Saturday Night Live” to “Parks and Recreation” to “Big Mouth,” have been meeting monthly for the last half year in a rented, loft-style conference room in a downtown Los Angeles office building.
Don’t nominate a criminal Here is where that framing has inevitably led. From Jonathan Chait: John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024. “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo.
The watchdog press needs to watch itself We looked at “radical constitutionalism” on Saturday. But a tweet caught my attention this morning that reinforces why so much ire gets directed at mainstream outlet headlines and bothsidesism: The Times has been taking a lot of well-deserved flak, especially for clickbait headlines that often mischaracterize the stories below. New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it A Deputy Standards Editor for Trust Initiatives might begin by finding new headline writers. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Cars are winning the war on cars while our cities crumble around us, and more from The Lever this week.
Trump fails to learn from it or to learn anything President Joe Biden will return to Washington, D.C. after a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. About 2,000 Americans who died in WWI lie buried there. Donald Trump refused to pay his respects during his presidency because a) rain might mess up his hair, and b) he viewed the dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” (Associated Press): It’s a fitting end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil. Every ode to the transatlantic partnership was a reminder that Trump could upend those relationships. Each reference to democracy stood a counterpoint to his rival’s efforts to overturn a presidential election.
In Doctor Who S01E06: "Rogue," Richard E. Grant was revealed as a "lost" Doctor. Could it be from the forgotten audio "Scream of the Shalka"?
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: SNL, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Doctor Who, Wonder Woman, The Boys, The Umbrella Academy, and more!
At least 210 Palestinians were killed and 400 others were injured in the central Gaza Strip on Sunday after Israeli forces carried out a “rescue operation” to retrieve four captives. Reports of U.S. involvement in the operation have sparked backlash. At least 210 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of others were injured on Saturday in Continue reading »
OK, it may not be Summer yet on the calendar…but try telling that to Mother Nature: Excessive heat warnings are set to expire this weekend after daily temperature records have been set across the US Southwest. Extreme temperatures are expected to continue in California, Nevada and Arizona into Saturday. An excessive heat warning in Las Vegas will expire Saturday night with temperatures remaining around 115F (46.1) on Saturday and dropping to 112F (44.4C) on Sunday. Similar to the trend throughout last week, temperatures will remain high at night hovering around the low 80s. On Thursday, the heat hit 113F (45C) in Phoenix. Record-breaking temperatures led to 11 people taken to the hospital while waiting to attend a Donald Trump rally on Wednesday. Phoenix will see some slight relief after the heat warning expires Friday night, but the high temperature remains in triple digits for Saturday at 108F (42.2C) and 104F (40C) on Sunday. National Weather Service (NWS) alerts remain in place on Friday for the wider area, covering a population of around 20 million people.
I couldn’t help but think that Kimberly may have just realized that she bet on the wrong horse.