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Created
Wed, 03/07/2024 - 03:30
We’re starting to get the first real post-debate polling. Today CNN released its poll. It doesn’t show any change in voter intentions but 75% of people say they think the Dems would have a better chance with a different candidate. In a matchup between the presumptive major-party nominees, voters nationwide favor former President Donald Trump over Biden by 6 points, 49% to 43%, identical to the results of CNN’s national poll on the presidential race in April, and consistent with the lead Trump has held in CNN polling back to last fall. Not exactly good news, of course. But it’s not the free-fall many expected. (CNN’s poll has had Trump leading by much more than any of the others for months.) However, there is this, which is intriguing: The poll also finds Vice President Kamala Harris within striking distance of Trump in a hypothetical matchup: 47% of registered voters support Trump, 45% Harris, a result within the margin of error that suggests there is no clear leader under such a scenario.
Created
Wed, 03/07/2024 - 03:02

Those who define themselves by the thing they are not eventually find themselves more and more like their imagined opposite. To be someone’s antithesis is also to be their alter ego. Watching the disintegration of Joe Biden in his CNN debate with Donald Trump, I was reminded of Hans Christian Andersen’s chilling story “The Shadow,” […]

The post Savior Complex appeared first on The New York Review of Books.

Created
Wed, 03/07/2024 - 03:00

Hey, so great to see you! Sorry, the bar’s so crowded tonight; it’s not normally like this. Usually, you can grab a booth, no problem, but it looks like we’ll have to share a single barstool. Hope that’s all right.

Normally, there’s live bluegrass on Sundays too. That’s why I picked this place, because I know you like the mandolin. But I guess Fiddle Creek isn’t coming tonight, and also, there’s no music playing at all, just the Lolita audiobook.

But it’s great to see you regardless. It’s been forever! It’s weird, though; I was just here last week, and the vibes were totally different. For one thing, they were serving alcohol, which it doesn’t look like they’re doing tonight. We could find somewhere else, or I’m okay with just having milk if you are.

Created
Wed, 03/07/2024 - 00:30
What’s the plan, Stan? A lot of savvy people don’t see how flighty and fickle (and disinspiring to voters) they appear with their post-debate insistence that Joe Biden step aside for another Democrat. They’re dressing up their panic as strategery.  I’m with Rick Wilson on this. November is a Bidenary choice until it isn’t. Steadfastness is a virtue Dems need more of. Much more.  The other point I’d make in this is a lack of any global sense of the race from the Biden-panicked. Dobbs, Chevron, Trump v. U.S. might as well not exist. Someone I spoke with shrugged off Monday’s SCOTUS decision as “expected”! None of the commentary I’ve seen offers any perspective on how Trump himself may be bleeding support, on his electability. All some Democrats can see is Biden’s bad debate. One play is not the whole game. The focus needs to be back on Trump’s perfidy, on his cognitive and legal impairments, and on the conservative thirst for a urinary unitary executive. There’s a conspiracy to end America.
Created
Tue, 02/07/2024 - 23:36

In mid-June, the Associated Press announced that the U.S. Navy had been engaged in the most intense naval combat since the end of World War II, which surely would come as a surprise to most Americans. This time, the fighting isn’t taking place in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans but in the Red Sea and the adversary is Yemen’s — yes, Yemen’s! — Shiite party-militia, the Helpers of God (Ansar Allah), often known, thanks to their leading clan, as the Houthis. They are supporting the Palestinians of Gaza against the Israeli campaign of total war on that small enclave, while, in recent months, they have faced repeated air strikes from American planes and have responded by, among other things, attacking... Read more

Source: Turning the Red Sea Redder appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Tue, 02/07/2024 - 23:00
What are you prepared to do to stop it? The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday all but guaranteed this country has dictatorship in its future. If not under “your favorite president,” as Trump the imperial might say, then under another, smarter, more skilled autocrat. “[T]his ruling is a brazen and dangerous expansion of presidential power in ways that entrench a deep climate of impunity,” constitutional scholar Aziz Rana tells The Ink. But you knew that. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen report at Axios that if elected Trump will “immediately test the boundaries of presidential and governing power.” (What boundaries?) Axios: There’s more if you have the stomach for it. This toxic, authoritarian movement, for all it’s flag-waving and pretensions to patriotism, is anything but American. And never was. It is a knife to the throat of this republic. There are people in this country who want a dictator and a one-party state. Some of them wear black robes and accept bribes. But the bribes are just a perk. They are true believers in something other than the Constitution they are tasked for life with interpreting.
Created
Tue, 02/07/2024 - 22:00

Have a cookout

The Fourth of July is a great opportunity to gather your friends and family outside and eat some burgers and hot dogs. On the land that you own, of course. Not on any other land, especially not any public spaces like parks or sidewalks, because it’s clear you didn’t spend money to purchase a deed, so what are you doing there? Being outside and eating at a place you haven’t given up your life savings to a bank for so that it’s momentarily okay for you to exist there? Wait, you do have a home, right? Oh no, you don’t own a home? How do you even exist?

Created
Tue, 02/07/2024 - 21:01
If the current Supreme Court had held comparable office in Weimar Germany, that is, its opinion in Trump v. United States would have rendered the judgment in this post’s headline. Never mind that the Weimar Constitution was different from the U.S. Constitution (importantly, in granting emergency powers to the President to rule by decree under […]
Created
Tue, 02/07/2024 - 19:44

The Labour Party recently unveiled a new political apostate from the capitalist class, the billionaire mobile phones and property magnate, John Caudwell, who announced that he would be voting Labour for the first time in his life this general election. This was apparently big news. A billionaire who gave £500,000 to Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party […]