Everyone has lots of advice for Joe Biden about the State of the Union speech tonight. I suspect it will be like most of them — forgettable. The wing nuts can make it a little bit more memorable by acting like juvenile delinquents and maybe Biden can get off a few memorable lines. Generally, these things just engender a lot of breathless anticipation only to land with a whimper not a bang. However, we are in the middle of the most high stakes presidential campaign in my lifetime so it would be very good if Biden did well tonight and begin to change the trajectory of this race. There are as many ideas about what he should do about that as there are talking heads. But I like this from Brian Beutler: I like to point out that Donald Trump is a shitty person along multiple axes, and I believe his shittiness, which makes him unlikable, is his biggest political liability. There are others liberals who believe complaining about corruption and poor character falls flat if it seems disconnected from regular workaday concerns. Donald Trump accepted millions of dollars in payments from China while he was president?
Uncategorized
He knew ’em all!
Will it be this guy? President Joe Biden won’t mention a certain multiply indicted someone during tonight’s State of the Union address, but TFG will be the the elephant in the room. Dan Pfeiffer notes: Tonight, you will likely hear President Biden run through his impressive list of accomplishments — the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and so forth. If you read this newsletter, you have heard Biden talk about these things countless times. You know all about it. Well good for you, but you are in the minority. Biden will use tonight’s address to accomplish multiple things. One of his main goals will be to replay for Americans his greatest hits: wage gains, low unemployment, and factory construction generated, in part, by onshoring industry that had left the U.S. As Pfeiffer suggests, it’s lengthy, and most Americans have no idea what Biden’s accomplished since beating Trump in 2020. Because the GOP message machine is working overtime to make sure Americans don’t. More on that later. As important, Biden needs to make no mistakes.
It looks like it’s going to happen. I can hardly believe it, although I should. Mark Penn and Joe Lieberman are two former Democrats with massive axes to grind against their own party. They will burn this country down to get revenge for having been treated disrespectfully: The third-party presidential movement No Labels is planning to move toward fielding a presidential candidate in the November election, even as high-profile contenders for the ticket have decided not to run, two people familiar with the matter said Wednesday. After months of leaving open whether the group would offer a ticket, No Labels delegates are expected to vote Friday in favor of launching a presidential campaign for this fall’s election, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the group’s internal deliberations. No Labels will not name its presidential and vice presidential picks on Friday, when roughly 800 delegates meet virtually in a private meeting. The group is instead expected to debut a formal selection process late next week for potential candidates who would be selected in the coming weeks, the people said.
He is also against anything the Democrats are for. That’s it. There’s nothing ideological about it.
This is the one we should all send to our conservative relatives who aren’t dyed in the wool cultists. (There is no hope for them.) It’s just nuts that Biden’s getting slammed on the economy by everyone. I have friends with money who are bitching and moaning about how much their always expensive restaurant meals cost. But then they haven’t gained a lot on “wages” (don’t ask about their portfolios which have exploded) so they’re not getting enough of a taste. It’s a mantra. I think this just shows that politics isn’t really politics. It’s entertainment for some and therapy for others. It certainly isn’t about policy. And it certainly isn’t about reality.
Is anyone surprised? I don’t think anything could be more predictable, not even the sun coming up tomorrow. “It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States,” McConnell said in a statement to The Washington Post. “It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support. During his presidency, we worked together to accomplish great things for the American people including tax reform that supercharged our economy and a generational change of our federal judiciary — most importantly, the Supreme Court. I look forward to the opportunity of switching from playing defense against the terrible policies the Biden administration has pursued to a sustained offense geared towards making a real difference in improving the lives of the American people.” McConnell — who has announced he will step down from his leadership role in November — is one of the most influential Washington Republicans to back Trump, and the endorsement was a remarkable, if expected, move from the Kentucky Republican.
That’s quite an invitation, no? By contrast, here’s Biden: You tell me which one is fit to be president. By the way, this from Dave Weigel is interesting: A super PAC that urged non-Republicans to cast primary votes for Nikki Haley is pivoting to November, urging Haley’s voters to support President Joe Biden. Starting today, Primary Pivot will become Haley Voters for Biden, and urge anyone who supported Haley in a swing state to stick with the president in November. “This is an effort from people who have actually supported Nikki Haley to try to guide as many of them as possible toward the candidate that respects democracy, even if they may disagree with him politically,” said Primary Pivot co-founder Robert Schwartz. In a statement, Primary Pivot said it would focus on Haley voters in states where they could be counted — nearly 300,000 in Michigan, and nearly 250,000 in North Carolina. The super PAC, which started by urging New Hampshire Democrats to temporarily switch their registrations, spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to activate potential Haley voters in South Carolina and Super Tuesday states.
One of the all time great con jobs As I watched the Super Tuesday returns last night I was struck by exit polls which showed that the economy is the most important issue to many Republican voters and they believe Donald Trump will be better for them financially than President Biden. Considering how successfully Biden has managed a swift recovery from the economic catastrophe he inherited, I find that disturbing but according to the NY Times, a majority of the electorate is suffering from “collective amnesia” and doesn’t remember why they ousted Trump back in 2020. Apparently, they are nostalgic for the golden days of a Trump administration that never existed. I don’t know if that amnesia will be cured by facts and statistics, but even Fox News has to admit that the Biden economy is doing very well. Nonetheless, Trump and all of his various henchmen spend their days insisting that the economy is on the verge of collapse. Last night during his low-energy victory speech he said it once again and as he told Lou Dobbs in an interview in January, he hopes it will crash within the next 12 months so that he won’t be like Herbert Hoover.
Sometimes I feel as if they’re just trying to make me think I’m crazy. I never in a million years would have thought that Republicans would cut the funding for the FBI but here we are. I think the most astonishing thing about this is that they’ve done it strictly for the purpose of defending that cretin Donald Trump. It’s not that they’ve truly decided that the police need to be hemmed in or that the FBI is too big and powerful. They just want to exact revenge on behalf of their Dear Leader. If he wins they’ll pack it with toadies and give them everything they ever wanted to go after their enemies.