I think this is yet another piece of evidence that people are just not paying attention —- to anything, apparently. I’m fairly shocked at the age breakdowns but the rest seems predictable under the circumstances. This is such an ugly situation. Pray for a ceasefire and the toppling of Netanyahu. Nothing good can happen until that does.
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Dan Pfeiffer’s newsletter today answers one big question: The biggest divide in politics is not between Left and Right; it’s between political junkies and everyone else. There is a massive chasm between those who actively seek out political news and the vast majority of the country. The gap has been exacerbated by tectonic shifts in the media environment. I summarized the changes that led to this “News Gap” in a recent post: Readers (and the writer) of this newsletter have barely noticed the changesy. We watch cable news, we download podcasts, subscribe to newsletters, and (some of us) still use Twitter to track current events. We are junkies. We seek out political news at every opportunity. But for the vast majority of Americans, who do not actively engage with politics and the news, these changes significantly altered their media diets and what they know about politics and politicians. Pfeiffer says that 3 polls this week address that phenomenon and somewhat answer the question about why this race is so close.
Everything is rigged — unless he wins. Donald Trump claimed the 2016 election was rigged and refused to accept the popular vote total.He established a commission to investigate it and claimed for years that illegal immigrants had tipped the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. (The commission was disbanded because they found no proof of it and they “turned the investigation over” to the DHS, which never found anything either.) We all know what he did in 2020. He set up the whining excuse for his loss months in advance by claiming that mail in voting was fraudulent and the vote had been rigged in the swing states. So what’s he saying today about the 2024 election? Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday didn’t commit to accepting the results of Wisconsin’s presidential election in November if he does not win and again promoted the falsehood that he won the Badger State in 2020.
Ron DeSanctimonious is back! This is completely ridiculous. The same people who are freaking out about the government pushing non-gas stoves is telling people they are not allowed to be vegetarians who like to eat impossible burgers at Burger King. FREEDOM!!!! Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB 1084 to prohibit the sale of lab-grown meat in the state of Florida. Florida is taking action to stop the World Economic Forum’s goal of forcing the world to eat lab-grown meat and insects, “an overlooked source of protein.” While the World Economic Forum is telling the world to forgo meat consumption, Florida is increasing meat production, and encouraging residents to continue to consume and enjoy 100% real Florida beef.
Not that there was any question He still has a constitutional right to testify in his own defense. Obviously. I have no idea why his lawyer is bobbing his head up and down in agreement.
“Monarchy shit” A Jon Stewart clip from March resurfaced that echoes what I’ve been arguing for years. The underlying ethos of conservatism in this country is not patriotism but “monarchy shit.” Neofeudalism, to use a pointy-headed term. It’s not freedom or liberty, but a desire to bow and scrape before people believed to be your superiors by birth. Among people who fancy themselves superior by birth and their willingly willing supplicants. Ask Donald Trump about his genes and step back. Quickly. And don’t scratch a MAGA Supreme Court justice too deeply either. Or one of the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street. They aspire to being “a nation unto themselves” under a system of government by hereditary royalty and landed gentry where the hired help doesn’t get uppity. (I’m “reading” Ari Berman’s “Minority Rule,” what can I say?) Stewart’s monologue was a response to Sen.
Maybe we need a movie? We suffer from a failure of imagination, Tom Nichols argues, about what a second Trump administration would actually look and feel like. It’s not that the clues aren’t there. They are. Trump told us again in his Time interview this week: In the interview, Trump once again promised to pardon the January 6 insurrectionists; once again, he vowed to use the Justice Department as his personal legal hit squad. He said he will prosecute Joe Biden, deport millions of people, and allow states with newly strict abortion regulations to monitor pregnant women. He will kneecap NATO and throw Ukraine to the Russians. […] Nostalgia and presentism are part of politics. But a second problem is even more worrisome: Americans simply cannot imagine how badly Trump’s first term might have turned out, and how ghastly his second term is likely to be. Our minds are not equipped to embrace how fast democracy could disintegrate.
His Big Lie is the gift to the Democrats Donald Trump was all over the place in his big TIME Magazine interview this week but there is one issue on which he’s never wavered. When asked if he thought there would be violence around the election this fall he said, “if we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of an election.” On Wednesday he went even further, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “if everything’s honest, I’ll gladly accept the results. I don’t change on that. If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.” It’s pretty clear that in his mind and the minds of his followers there is no such thing as an honest and fair election that doesn’t result in a Donald Trump victory so there’s little doubt about what to expect if they don’t get their way in November. Over the past three years Trump’s Big Lie has become the main organizing principle of the Republican Party. There had been a festering sense of grievance and resentment among the GOP base for decades which Trump skillfully tapped into.
Yesterday, the Democratic leadership announced that they would vote to save Mike Johnson if Marjorie Taylor Greene went ahead with her threatened motion to vacate the chair. Marge is having a temper tantrum over it: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced Wednesday she will move ahead with her attempt to oust Speaker Mike Johnson from the House’s top job — though her plan seems doomed to fail. The Georgia Republican, who first introduced a motion to vacate the speaker’s chair in March, held a high-energy news conference outside the U.S. Capitol to say she will trigger a vote on the House floor next week. “Mike Johnson is not capable of that job,” she said. “He has proven that over and over again.” Greene, joined by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, aired a litany of grievances she has with Johnson, who she described as a Democratic speaker working against former President Donald Trump’s agenda.
Tucker Carlson is just going for it these days. Chased off of mainstream media he’s now operating in the subterranean, alt-right propaganda world: A far-right Russian philosopher who’s called for Russia to expand its borders and rise up against the West says his interview with Tucker Carlson shows Americans are ready to accept his fascist ideas. Alexander Dugin, dubbed “Putin’s brain” for supposedly influencing the Russian leader’s geopolitical crusades, took to Telegram in the wake of his interview with the former Fox News host to note that he’d made it into the “American mainstream” by sitting down with Carlson, and that the “American public is a little ready for my ideas.” He claimed there’d been a “defamation” campaign against him hatched by “globalists” and “left-wing liberals” who portrayed him as “Dr.