A personality cult in search of a personality You know what No Labels is. Digby’s been shouting it. But they are stuck with no serious candidate yet still hope to keep the spoiler train roling. Without the spoiling. Roll tape leaked to The New Republic: The contents of the call offered nothing to dispel this fear. The call consisted of No Labels party members from numerous states, each reporting on what members in their states and regions were thinking and feeling. While many of these local leaders said there’s a lot of enthusiasm for a No Labels run, some of them reported that members are wary of functioning as a spoiler. For instance, a No Labels leader in Idaho said that while members are all for run, they believe the ticket should “only” be offered to a candidate who has a “reasonable path to succeed and not be a spoiler.” A leader in Iowa said the candidate must be “strong” and have “the ability to win.” They don’t know what they want but they want it now. Somehow. What was striking about this call was how deeply a lot of these party members have bought into No Labels’ hype.
Uncategorized
He doesn’t want women being reminded about his piggish behavior I’m not surprised he’s having problems getting the money together to pay his massive judgments. He’s such a liar about his net worth and it’s hard to believe that any legitimate financial institution is going to issue a bond for that huge amount required in the fraud case. However, he can sell secrets to rich foreign actors and there’s not much anyone can do about it. I suspect someone is going to bail him out and I don’t know that we’ll ever know who it was or exactly why they did it. Meanwhile, this piece, also by Haberman, was a delicious little bit of tea about how much Trump hates the hush money case, which may be the only trial that he has to face before the election at this point: For the past couple of weeks, the spotlight has been focused on the timing of Donald Trump’s four criminal trials and the prospect that at least two of them might not go to a jury before this fall’s election.
It appears that the campaign is hitting the ground running. Let’s hope they keep it up: In “For You” President Biden discusses how his wisdom, experience, and—yes, even age—have been critical to getting big things done for the American people in his first term, and the choice Americans will face this November between Joe Biden’s experienced and effective leadership versus Donald Trump and his assault on Americans’ rights and democracy. The six-week ad flight will air on national cable and local broadcast and cable television in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina. The ad campaign will target audiences in the key markets of Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Milwaukee, Madison, Green Bay, Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Raleigh, with a focus on voters of color and young voters. The ad will air on popular entertainment and sports programming on stations like ESPN, TNT, FX, Adult Swim, and Comedy Central and during high-viewership moments like the NCAA March Madness Tournament.
Peas in a pod In case you were wondering if all this dictator talk is just liberal hysteria, I give you exhibit A: Need we say more?
Still the same phonies I could only watch so much of Alabama Sen. Katie Britt’s whacked response to President Biden’s SOTU address Thursday night. The reviews are in: “What the hell am I watching right now?” an unnamed Trump adviser told Rolling Stone. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever,” another unnamed Republican strategist told the Daily Beast. Look, we know these people are shameless phonies, hypocrites and worse. They’ve given RINO a whole new meaning. They are embarrassments as Americans. Now, the Britt outtakes. I met Jess Piper briefly at Netroots-Chicago last summer. Here’s her anaylsis of Stepford Katie’s delivery. Haven’t lived half a century in the South not to recognize that practiced “church testimony” delivery. Update: A key, tear-stained tale presented by Britt has been throughly revealed as deliberately misleading. Biden rebutter Sen. Britt blasted for recycling 20-year-old sex traffic story to attack border policy This guy tells all: Post by @motlet02 View on Threads ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download.
In case you were wondering: The 2024 State of the Union address drew a larger TV audience than the 2023 address. President Joe Biden’s speech to Congress averaged 32.23 million viewers across 14 broadcast and cable outlets, almost 5 million more viewers than the 2023 State of the Union. Viewership rose on all of the largest outlets as Biden’s address grew by about 18 percent. The vast majority of viewers — 28.47 million — watched the State of the Union on the big four broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC) and the three largest cable news outlets (CNN, Fox News and MSNBC). All seven outlets drew a bigger audience than they did for last year’s address. Fox News led all outlets with 5.84 million viewers for Biden’s speech, beating out the 5.24 million for ABC, which had the biggest tune-in among the broadcast networks. NBC’s 4.47 million viewers finished third, followed by MSNBC (4.43 million, its biggest audience ever for a State of the Union), CBS (4.09 million), CNN (2.63 million) and the Fox broadcast network (1.77 million).
Add Katie Britt to the list of liars Tom put up the viral reaction about Katie Britt as well as the TikTok from journalist Jonathan Katz this morning, proving that she’s a big fat liar. It took a while but the mainstream media finally caught up. Katz was right. Here’s the WaPo fact check: “We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days. When I took office, I took a different approach. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas. That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoe box of a room, and they sent men through that door over and over again for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.” — Sen.
Forcefully takes on Republicans in SOTU President Joe Biden Thursday night did not slip on his Aviators and, as Dark Brandon, stare down Republicans in the House chamber. But Biden did all but in his State of the Union address, even calling out Supreme Court justices to their faces for overturning Roe. Biden needed to bring the heat to put the lie to Republican smears that he is a doddering fool. As Col. Pickering said of Prof. Henry Higgins, indeed he did. This was “Fiery Biden” (Washington Post). And “In-Your-Face Biden” (New York Times). MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell followed along in the text and counted the Biden ad libs: more than in any SOTU he’d seen. Biden was not only not doddering, but nimble enough to engage Republican hecklers (including Georgia’s clownish Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene) again and again (Washington Post): At several points, Biden went back and forth with lawmakers — something that used to be a rarity. But in each moment, Biden looked to capitalize on the interruptions, using the heckling to pivot into Democratic talking points. Biden began his address with reference to the U.S.
Biden’s speech was just what the doctor ordered Everyone was expecting a historic train wreck of a State of the Union last night and they got it. But it wasn’t the one they thought it would be. Biden’s address was powerful and dynamic and no doubt put a lot of timorous Democrats’ worries to rest (at least for a day or so.) It was Trump’s highly touted response that failed dramatically. Biden came out swinging and knocked the Republicans so far back on their heels that they had to completely abandon the image of him they’ve been building since 2020 — that he’s so old and feeble that he can’t even feed himself — and instead whimper like a bunch of little old ladies that he offensively aggressive.
Biden likes the political fray. It’s his life. JV Last says we shouldn’t be surprised by Biden’s performance last night because he’s actually good at this stuff. And he is. But for some reason people always forget that until he does it again. Anyway, Last has an interesting observation about the campaign that I think is correct: But I’m not here to sell t-shirts. I’m here to point out one of the fundamental asymmetries that was on display last night and how it’s going to drive this campaign. Donald Trump is a dominance politician. His mode of operation is to bully and intimidate. He is bad at making deals. (Shocking, I know.) He is personally offended by people who do not prostrate themselves to him. He has no interest in legislating and no policy goals he seeks to achieve. His theory of the 2024 election is that he will drive the turnout of his base—primarily rural white men without college degrees who do not often vote—to such a degree that their numbers swamp an average Democratic turnout and the turnout of frequent-voting independents. Trump is interested in capitulation, not persuasion.