Following my posts below, I thought I’d post Timothy Snyder’s recent post on this: Mainstream media have treated President Biden with prejudice and arrogance. Quite a few Democrats, reacting to this, treat any mention of President Biden’s fitness as disloyalty. This is mistaken, if understandable. One source of the negative energy is Trump’s fascism. Focusing on it will not answer the question of what Democrats do, but will help us to understand the context in which the discussion is taking place. By fascism I just have in mind (1) the cult of personality of a Leader: (2) the party that becomes a single party; (3) the threat and use of violence; and (4) the big lie that must be accepted and used to reshape reality: in this case, that Trump can never lose an election. Much more could be said (as I have done elsewhere), but it is the official big lie and the threats of violence that are dangerous to those whose job is to report truth. Trump is on the record as regarding reporters as enemies of the people. What should I make — a journalist might ask — of Trump’s talk of arresting journalists?
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Anat Shenker-Osorio is a political communications expert and she has some excellent advice for America’s center-left: We have a lot more time than they did. And we’re confronting a crisis within the coalition that may or may not be resolved quickly. But this offensive is happening here and needs to ramp up considerably. Trump and the Republicans are furiously trying to disavow Project 2025 and the job of all of us to make sure they cannot.
They have brainwashed their audience. And they’ll keep doing it because when they took the tiniest step toward the truth after the 2020 election they all fled to OAN and Newsmax. They won’t make that mistake again.
This piece in the NY Times by a geriatrician is nicely done. As someone who is older and will be hitting those geriatric years sooner than I might like, the cruel ageist attitudes we’ve seen in recent days is more than a little bit depressing. I realize that Joe Biden is in the most high pressure difficult job in the world and we all have a perfect right to be concerned about his ability to handle it. (I only wish everyone was as concerned about his opponent’s obvious intellectual and character deficiencies.) I think this is a sensitive analysis of what may be going on with Biden: I’m a geriatrician, a physician whose specialty is the care of older adults. I watched the debate and saw what other viewers saw: a president valiantly trying to stand up for his record and for his nation but who seemed to have declined precipitously since the State of the Union address he gave only a few months earlier. As a country, we are not having a complete or accurate discussion of age-related debility. I know no specifics — and won’t speculate here — about Mr. Biden’s clinical circumstances.
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This is the way to do it James Fallows, former presidential speechwriter, writes a speech for Joe Biden: Address to the Nation President Joe Biden July 2024 My fellow Americans: I’d like to talk with you tonight about the faith that connects nearly all of us who share the blessing of calling ourselves Americans. That is a faith in the country’s past and a belief in its future. And a willingness, in the here and now, to do what we can—to fulfill our duty—to make our country stronger, prouder, fairer, greater. More open to opportunity. More equal under the law. More faithful to the values to which so many generations of Americans have pledged “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,” as our founders put it nearly 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence.
Q: Is Project 2025 ideological lunacy? Trump VP contender Marco Rubio: No. I think it’s center-right Q: Is Project 2025 ideological lunacy? Trump VP contender Marco Rubio: No. I think it’s center-right (Trump’s Project 2025 wants to ban abortion nationwide, restrict IVF access, defund education, round up immigrants in mass detention camps, put guns in classrooms, and go after… pic.twitter.com/kUyupdYtwA — Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) July 7, 2024 It’s good to know what’s considered “center right” these days: By the way: The three top guys on the Project 2025 website are all former Trump admin staffers:Paul Dans (chief of staff at Trump OPM) Spencer Chretien (special assistant to Trump) Troup Hemenway (Trump OPP) Of the folks assigned to write or co-write policy chapters, most are Trump admin veterans.
I am glad to see Velshi and a few others in the media looking at the big picture. I wish there was more of it.
Trump “is somebody who is trying to destroy our country” Democrats need to look themselves in the mirror when former Republicans from the Lincoln Project are standing behind Joe Biden more steadfastly than they are. We need to look beyond the players to the broader stakes in this election and make clear to voters what they are. “I will take an old man with a cold over a narcissitic sociopath with a dictator kink any day,” said Ryan Wiggins, the group’s chief of staff. “We have got the Democratic nominee’s back because Trump cannot be president of this country ever again.” “Our answer is to go out and find the bad guys and punch them in the face,” insists Rick Wilson. “You can never take your foot off the gas in attacking Donald Trump.” When you’ve cut your opponent over the eye, work the eye! “Only one of the two main presidential candidates poses an existential threat to democracy,” said MSNBC’s Ali Velshi Saturday. So take a deep breath and hold that thought.
Taniel at Bolts with a short primer on today’s runoff in France. France is holding its parliamentary elections today. Clear stakes: Will far-right end up governing France? And if it fails, what possible coalition will end up governing given fragmentation? You can follow me for results starting at 2pm ET; but a quick context 🧵: Let’s start with: In France, president runs the show… as long as their party controls the Assembly. If presidential party loses that control, the president has few domestic powers—no veto, for instance. This isn’t a US-style split government. That’s why stakes today so high. Macron called these just 4 weeks ago. Decision shocked his own allies. He already lost his gamble: His bloc is sure to lose seats & its tentative control on Assembly.