JV Last at the Bulwark published one of those essays this morning that make you both depressed and relieved at the same time. Depressed because it tells a truth that you really wish wasn’t true and relieved because you realize you haven’t been crazy for thinking the same thing. He starts off by quoting one of my favorite analysts, Philip Bump of the Washington Post: The Trump era is about Trump in the way that the War of 1812 was about 1812: a critically important component and a useful touchstone but not all-encompassing. Turning the page on the era requires more than Trump failing to get an electoral vote majority. Perhaps a more accurate time span to consider is something like 15 years. The election of Barack Obama as president in 2008 was hailed as a signal moment in the evolution of American politics and demography, but it also triggered a remarkable backlash. Ostensibly rooted in concerns about government spending, it was largely centered on the disruption of the economic crisis (which triggered an increase in spending) and that overlapping awareness of how America was changing.
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Gosh, I wonder? The leader of House Republicans’ biggest super PAC told donors last month he needed $35 million more to compete with Democrats in the fall. Senate GOP campaign chair Steve Daines used his primetime speaking slot at the Republican convention to lament that massive spending from Democrats was keeping him awake at night. And his House GOP counterpart warned that their party’s challengers trailed Democratic incumbents by a collective $37 million at the end of June. Republicans were already worried about a glaring financial gap even before Kamala Harris’ rise. Now, with the election just two months away, they found themselves in an even more dire position: Democrats have seen a flood of enthusiasm in recent weeks, they’re far outspending Republicans on air and their donors are more energized than ever — with campaign finance data showing a surge in grassroots fundraising in late July after President Joe Biden dropped out. Panic is starting to set in.
He tried. Oh how he tried: The long line there was the Special Counsel he had Bill Barr name to “investigate the investigators” — the Durham investigation. Like all the others they came to nothing because there was nothing. He, on the other hand, tried to overturn an election and incited an insurrection and then stole a bunch of classified documents and refused to give them back. Big difference. Yuge.
I remember it well. Sadly it’s just as relevant today as it was then:
Let The Brotherhood Of The Damned be your tour guide Kamala HQ flagged this clip of tech bro “thought leader” Curtis Yarvin advocating an American Caesar as the next step for America. This is the guy incels and billionaire tech autocrats like Peter Thiel (J.D. Vance’s mentor) look to for envisioning a future with them running the world and getting laid, like, anytime they want. Gaze upon Yarvin, all ye who dream big. TPM’s Josh Marshall quipped, “Amazing that this college sophomore level thinker is a major force in Silicon Valley.” I’m reminded of the formulaic pap The Sphinx (Wes Studi) spouted as wisdom in Mystery Men (1999). Invisible Boy (Kel Mitchell) gazes on in wonderment (or is it befuddlement?) and remarks, “It’s cool, isn’t it? It goes right up to the point of being, like, confusing.” Shallow and stupid or not, don’t think they won’t attempt something like this. Marcy Wheeler predicts they’ll try. Violently, preferably. https://mstdn.social/@lolgop@journa.host/113068278494067131 Vote like you mean it. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● It’s Labor Day.
I was going to deconstruct Trump’s inane interview on Fox last night but Tom addressed it well earlier and I came across this and thought it was well done. Trump ran through most of his greatest hits, mangling them like an aging crooner who forgot the words. And Levin sat there like a potted palm. (I know that Steve Schmitt is an asshole — at best — but when he’s right, he’s right. Especially about Mark Levin.)
The Republicans have spent the last four years caterwauling about the “Biden Crime Family” and its alleged connections to foreign countries, especially China. They called it the greatest corruption scandal in American history. There was no evidence of this, of course. But they just repeated it relentlessly and pushed hearings and investigations until the old “where there’s smoke, there must be fire” dynamic kicked in. Well, here’s a raging, out of control conflagration and nobody cares: [W]ith Trump running for the presidency once more … foreign governments — including brand-new regimes that weren’t involved in Trump’s first whirlwind in the White House — have only spied new opportunities to burrow into his pockets and into a second administration. Many of these networks are already known, if forgotten. Trump’s financial links with regimes in places like China, Kazakhstan, or Indonesia were already reported in detail during his presidency.
Since Trump is determined that we are going to talk about the Afghanistan withdrawal let’s talk about it. Kevin Drum has the best discussion that I’ve seen: The entire operation had only one serious failure: the death of 13 American service members (and 170 Afghans) to an al-Qaeda suicide bomber at Abbey Gate. Multiple investigations by the Pentagon concluded that there wasn’t really anything that could have stopped it. Everyone processes grief differently, and I can’t bring myself to reproach the families that blame Biden for the deaths of their children. But the fact remains that Biden wasn’t at fault; the Army wasn’t at fault; and deaths in the line of duty are a natural occurrence in war. The withdrawal wasn’t handled perfectly, but there weren’t any huge mistakes. Nor was it really possible not to withdraw given the situation Biden inherited: the Taliban’s takeover was inevitable as soon as Trump signed the withdrawal agreement with them. It might well have been inevitable even without that.
Zach Beauchamp at Vox wrote this sometime back: On November 21, 1922, the New York Times published its very first article about Adolf Hitler. It’s an incredible read — especially its assertion that “Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so violent or genuine as it sounded.” This attitude was, apparently, widespread among Germans at the time; many of them saw Hitler’s anti-Semitism as a ploy for votes among the German masses. Times correspondent Cyril Brown spends most of the piece documenting the factors behind Hitler’s early rise in Bavaria, Germany, including his oratorical skills. For example: “He exerts an uncanny control over audiences, possessing the remarkable ability to not only rouse his hearers to a fighting pitch of fury, but at will turn right around and reduce the same audience to docile coolness.” But the really extraordinary part of the article is the three paragraphs on anti-Semitism.
The Clown Prince of Grievance Every time one thinks Donald Trump cannot possibly get more demented, he surprises. It’s as if Mark Levin were interviewing The Joker. Except The Joker sports a wide, lipstick-red smile. Trump: “Who ever heard you get indicted for interfering with a presidential election where you have every right to do it.” Who ever heard you get indicted for embezzling billions from the U.S. Treasury when (immunized by “conservatives” on the U.S. Supreme Court) you “have every right to do it”? Think “the short-fingered vulgarian” won’t plunge his stubby mitts into the national cookie jar if reelected? That is, if he hopes to impress Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and get richer doing it? No one more sentient than mold slime doesn’t know that’s exactly what Trump will do. Maybe even before sending troops into the streets to apprehend and throw into concentration camps anyone brown and migranty-looking . For context, Trump was commenting on the superseding indictment filed last week by special counsel Jack Smith in the stolen documents case.