In two weeks, I start teaching. My class this fall is Politics Through Literature, which I’ve taught before but have made some big changes to. There are still seats available in the class. If you’re a student at Brooklyn College or any of the colleges in the CUNY system, or if you’re a student in the New York area (the class meets in person), you should sign up for the class. We meet on Monday and Wednesday mornings, from 9:30 to 10:45. The course readings are below; the syllabus is here. I’ve decided to open the semester with a set of readings on sex and sickness—Amia Srinivasan’s essay on teaching pornography and Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor—and how our most […]
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“Did you know the Kamala price hikes have cost the average American family $28,000?” — Donald Trump, in a TikTok video, Aug. 15 Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter. “As a result of Kamala’s inflation price hikes, they’ve cost the typical household a total of $28,000. These are numbers coming from the government. They are not coming from me.” — Trump, media event in Bedminster, N.J., Aug. 15 Former president Donald Trump rarely updates his political rhetoric — he’s using many of the same lines against Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 that he used against Joe Biden in 2020 — so it’s always news when a fresh talking point emerges. In recent days, Trump has claimed that the “average American family” or the “typical household” has suffered a hike in spending of $28,000 under the Biden presidency. Nobody knows where he got that amount and the campaign isn’t saying.
I can’t believe he did it: Noooooo! In case you don’t remember: Back in 2004 during the presidential campaign, George Bush ordered his cheese steak “Whiz wit,” while John Kerry asked for his with Swiss cheese, a misstep that solidified Kerry’s effete reputation and made him the subject of ridicule across Philadelphia. Vance is supposed to be the salt o’ the earth guy…
Saving the country from Donald Trump is the most important job the Democratic Party has ever had. Without that nothing else will matter. They (we) came through in 2018 to take the House and end the trifecta. In 2020 we kicked him out of the White House. In 2022 we stopped the Red Wave. The Party hung together throughout all the chaos and attempted destruction. I couldn’t be more surprised. And now it is more united than I’ve ever seen it to put an end to his reign in the GOP once and for all. The Democrats shouldn’t have to do it. The Republicans have abdicated their responsibility to purge him themselves. But that’s how it is, and it means that the GOP itself is infected and will have to be dealt with over time. But job one is to stop Trump. What’s shocking is that it’s so hard to do because so many of our fellow Americans worship the man.
Not everything, that’s for sure. Here's Raphael Warnock's full speech. This is an important address for MAGA to hear because he went hard after Donald Trump for rejecting Christianity. It's a message that Fox didn't air for even a second live. pic.twitter.com/i9Q9b4RMTl — Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) August 20, 2024 Matthew Sheffield watched Fox News’ coverage of the DNC last night and found that they censored the Black politicians except for Kamala Harris’ brief remarks. Seriously. They did not show the speeches by Karen Bass, Laphonza Butler, James Clyburn, Jasmine Crockett, or Raphael Warnock. They also didn’t show the speech by Sean Fein, which says everything: Another very powerful speech which Fox did not air for even one second was by UAW president Shawn Fein. This was a really important address because Fein meticulously showed how Donald Trump pretends to support working people but never actually does so. Here it is in full. pic.twitter.com/6XhZEbvfV7 — Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) August 20, 2024 The crowd erupted into “Trump’s a scab” chants repeatedly. I can only imagine how much that irritated him.
You may be wondering where Tom Sullivan is today. Well, as he has vaguely mentioned, much more humbly than he should have, he’s in Chicago as a delegate to the DNC this week. That’s him above with rising star Anderson Clayton the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party. Tom recognized Clayton as a singular talent some time ago and worked to help elect her to the post. North Carolina may very well be in play this election. At the very least Clarton and Sullivan are going to make Trump fight for it. I couldn’t feel more privileged than to have Tom writing here every day for all these years. He’s out there getting done.
But what do I know? Judy Woodruff reports that as the administration is trying hard to get a cease fire and hostage release in Gaza, Donald Trump is on the phone exhorting his buddy Netanyahu not to do it. How can this be ok? More importantly how have we come to the point where it’s just a passing comment instead of front page news? I realize that the Logan Act is pretty much a joke. And there are certainly previous examples of Republicans doing this for political gain during an election (I’m looking at you Nixon and Reagan.) But it’s still not right, especially now what with Trump being a convicted criminal and a fascist and all. The media should never treat this as normal but they especially shouldn’t be doing it now.
I’ll confess that I got a little teary last night at the ovations for Biden. It was nice to see him get a little love from the party. His accomplishments have gone largely unappreciated by the public and his decision to withdraw from the race had to be incredibly difficult. He deserves all the appreciation we can give him for all of it. David Leonhardt had an interesting piece today about Biden’s legacy. And he defined him perfectly as a man who travelled his whole career in the mainstream of the party, whether more right or left as the party felt the times required. But Biden has not simply gone with the Democratic flow. Over his more than 50 years in politics, he has periodically shown strong opinions about how his party should change — and helped it do so. Biden has always understood the class resentments that many Americans feel. (If you haven’t read Robert Draper’s profile of Biden for The Times Magazine, I recommend it, including the section in which Biden analyzes George W. Bush.) Biden’s political career began in 1972, when he defeated an incumbent Republican senator in Delaware even as Richard Nixon won a landslide.
Yes there is such a thing Probably my favorite part of the election season is stuff like this. Here’s one for Trump from 2016:
The NY Times reported: Two other women shared their stories as well and the whole segment was incredibly moving: Against a black background on the convention stage in Chicago, Amanda Zurawski and her husband, Josh Zurawski, described how she nearly died after going into premature labor at 18 weeks of pregnancy. Doctors at a hospital in Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban, sent her home, deeming her not sick enough to qualify for an abortion under the law’s exception for life-threatening emergencies. “Every time I share our story, my heart breaks,” Ms. Zurawski said. “For the baby girl we wanted desperately. For the doctors and nurses who couldn’t help me deliver her safely. For Josh, who feared he would lose me, too. But I was lucky. I lived. So I’ll continue sharing our story, standing with women and families across the country.” Kaitlyn Joshua told of being in the middle of a miscarriage and being old to go hom by two different hospitals because they feared being held liable for an unauthorized abortion in Louisiana. Hadley Duvall, in the video above,brought gasps from the audience when she said: Ms.