Philip Bump says Biden had a bigger mandate than Trump has: A lot of early analysis of the 2024 presidential election has suffered from three overlapping problems. First, that vote margins can be influenced by changes in turnout as well as changes in vote preference. If voters stay home, the candidate they would have supported receives fewer votes. And it looks like a lot of 2020 voters stayed home in 2024. But — second — not as many as one might have thought in the first few days after the election. Many immediate analyses of what happened exaggerated the decrease in Democratic votes or suggested that Donald Trump won an outright majority of votes cast, both errors that were a function of failing to consider (particularly) California’s sizable, slow-to-count vote total. The third problem is that the shift to Trump in the voting — real and widespread — is being conflated with broad support for Trump, which is far less dramatic.
Uncategorized
They lied Representative-elect Sarah McBride is transgender. And that thirsty harpy Nancy Mace is in front of the cameras as usual behaving like the harridan she is: This was never about girls competing in athletics. It was always about shunning transgender people, embarrassing them, making their lives a living hell. This is heartbreaking. There is no reason to do this to this person other than rank cruelty. Oh, and by the way:
Oh look, Trump’s nominee to head the DOD isn’t just an enthusiastic supporter of war crimes. He’s a full-fledge Christian Nationalist fruitcake. Those tattoos mean exactly what we thought they meant. When Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth to serve as Secretary of Defense, concerns were raised immediately about Hegseth’s undisguised Christian nationalism. Hegseth, who has admitted that his multiple crusader tattoos got him “deemed an extremist” by his own National Guard unit, has deep ties to misogynistic Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson.
Love these billionaire tech bros. But hey, at least Elon has the heart to warn us that it’s going to cause us all hardship — but it’s for our own good. “We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said. “And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.” Many economists agree that Trump’s economic and fiscal proposals could spark an economic calamity, though it is not clear whether they have considered, or given credence, to Musk’s calls for austerity. Is austerity what people voted for? I’m going to guess no. But if these miscreants have their way, they’re going to get it:
Trump sure knows how to keep the cultist thrilled: To his detractors, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s cabinet looks like a rogues’ gallery of people with dubious credentials and questionable judgment. His supporters see something different. “It’s a masterpiece,’’ Eileen Margolis, 58, who lives in Weston, Fla., and owns a tattoo business, said of Mr. Trump’s cabinet picks unveiled over the past week. “If it was a painting, it would be a Picasso.” A “brilliant alliance,’’ is how Joanne Warwick, 60, a former Democrat from Detroit, described many of the nominees. “It’s pretty much a star cast,’’ said Judy Kanoui of Flat Rock, N.C., a retiree and lifelong Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump for the first time this month. {…] In Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nominee for health and human services secretary, Mr. Trump’s supporters see a crusader searching for new solutions to chronic illnesses, not a conspiracy theorist promoting questionable and debunked ideas about vaccines and fluoride.
They’re really going after the military. I suspect a lot of this is an intimidation tactic to keep the brass in line and possibly push some into retirement. But you never know. This psycho administration is clearly high as a kite right now and areliable to do anything: The Trump transition team is compiling a list of senior current and former U.S. military officers who were directly involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan and exploring whether they could be court-martialed for their involvement, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the plan. Officials working on the transition are considering creating a commission to investigate the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, including gathering information about who was directly involved in the decision-making for the military, how it was carried out, and whether the military leaders could be eligible for charges as serious as treason, the U.S. official and person with knowledge of the plan said. “They’re taking it very seriously,” the person with knowledge of the plan said. The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He’s a former MMA fighter which is considered”highly qualified” for the US Senate in Oklahoma. Of course he thinks appointing LGBTQ people is equivalent to appointing a lunatic weirdo like RFK Jr. He is a very, very stupid person. There have always been a fair number of fools in Senate. But MAGA has really upped the numbers. This fellow is a perfect example. And for some reason he’s all over television lately. I guess they figure he’s one of their new poste boys.
Here’s Donald Trump accusing a pollster who got it wrong of causing great distrust in the electoral system and he wants her investigated. You CANNOT make this shit up!
After the shock of the 2016 election, as I felt I was emotionally drowning, I recall writing more than once that the only thing I could do going forward was try to see things as clearly as possible and convey that to the best of my ability. It’s not easy at times like this, and it’s especially difficult when your own friends and allies are often siezing on the opportunity to validate their priors and ride their hobby horses without a whole lot of evidence. It’s human to do that but I’m rarely persuaded by those arguments at times like these and I suspect most of you aren’t either. It’s just too soon and there are too many variables to be sure of any particular analysis. I have missed reading Michael Bérubé in recent years. As a founding member of the old liberal blogosphere his wit and wisdom were hugely influential of me so I was glad to see that he’s written one of the best critique of the critiques I’ve yet seen. You’ll see what I’m talking about: By now, everyone knows why Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump: because she didn’t do the thing I wanted her to do.
Cokie’s Law über alles Longtime readers recall Cokie’s Law. Digby coined the term in 2008 for how skillfully the right wing tosses smears into the air to be carried by the media like the wind. Smears, lies, and disinformation become a “legitimate” subject of mainstream reporting not because they are true or meaningful but because they are “out there.” The law is named for the late NPR/ABC reporter Cokie Roberts: “At this point,” said Roberts, “it doesn’t much matter whether she said it or not because it’s become part of the culture. I was at the beauty parlor yesterday and this was all anyone was talking about.” Thus right-wing smears, lies, and disinformation become, in campaign parlance, “earned media.” James Fallows on Saturday did not reference Digby’s law, but essentially conceded that “the death-cloud of misinformation, ignorance, lies, myths, fears, stereotypes” has come to represent, like the shadows in Plato’s cave, an “artificial reality playing out in the minds of citizens.” Fallows: —It’s not a new problem in American democracy.