Doing real American stuff Just watch it: As Tom Nichols said on twitter: This is what I meant when I said democracy will collapse in small pockets here and there in the country instead of all at once. Imagine this police dept but without the state’s TBI, or DOJ, or a federal government willing to step in. That’s a view of the future.
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She’s more culturally aligned The Daily Blast podcast with Greg Sargent introduces findings by the Harvard Youth Poll’s John Della Volpe: An important new poll of young voters finds that Harris’ entry has dramatically shifted their preferences in her favor and against Trump. Which confirms a larger story: The Democratic-leaning constituencies who had drifted toward Trump now may be swinging to Harris, exposing a weakness in his previous support. A new survey conducted for Won’t PAC Down in battleground states (AZ, GA, MI, NC, NH, NC, PA, WI) finds 18-29 year-old registered voters (that’s important; more later) favoring Kamala Harris over Donald Trump by 51-42, a 13-point shift from a previous poll showing support for Trump. The poll was conducted before the announcement of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as Democrats’ vice-presidential pick and the high-energy rallies that followed. Della Volpe believes approval for Harris needs a margin somewhere in the mid-50s, as it was in the 2020 election among this cohort. A 20-point margin here in the battleground states helped bring Joe Biden victory in 2020.
You’ve probably heard about the nefarious plot in Georgia to challenge the election by now and I’m sure you’re familiar with Trump’s shenanigans in other states in 2020. This article in the Guardian takes a look at the current national effort led by Trump insider Cleta Mitchell. Read the whole thing, but I thought this was a worthy excerpt: Since 2020, there have been at least 20 instances in eight states of election officials refusing to certify election results. The first red flag came in 2022, when county commissioners in Otero county, New Mexico, refused to certify the results of a primary election, citing vague concerns about voting equipment. The secretary of state eventually went to court to force the commissioners to certify the election. In July of this year, two Republicans on the county commission in Washoe county, Nevada – a key county in a battleground state – refused to certify its primary vote, setting off alarms. The commissioners who refused to certify eventually reversed themselves.
‘Nuff said (h/t M.E.) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
I’ve written before that I suspect this ongoing discontent with “the economy” actually stood in for something else: It was the age thing. That’s all it was. Oh, and by the way, inflation numbers came in today lower than expected. Sorry Donnie: Whatever that panic was last week seems to have been a bit …. uhm premature. Update: How about this? All that’s changed is that one of the old guys withdrew.
He’s their role model This piece by Josh Kovensky at Talking Points memo is a must read if you hope to understand where the right is going — with or without Trump: The American right’s love affair with Hungary seemingly knows no bounds. Hungarian officials appear at GOP events; CPAC has a Budapest event. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán met with Donald Trump last month, and earned a dilatory shoutout from the Republican candidate at the RNC, where Trump called Hungary a “strong country, run by very powerful, tough leaders — a tough guy.” But if the strength is the draw, then how did Orbán become a strongman? What is it about Orbán that right-wingers are supporting when they say that they like what he’s done in Hungary? TPM spoke with Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a former Hungarian MP who recently wrote a book, Tainted Democracy, about Orbán’s rise to power and the crackdown that followed. Szelényi was once a member of Orbán’s political party, Fidesz, in the early 1990s, before leaving as the party grew more conservative, and eventually founding her own opposition party in 2012.
I’ve noticed an interesting if subtle choice of words in Walz’s commentary. He frequently invokes the phrase “the democracy.” This is noticeable for two reasons. First, since the rise of Trump, liberals and progressives of all stripes have resorted to the phrase “our democracy.” I’ve never liked it. It’s cringey and sanctimonious. It has the air of a fetish, as if democracy were a possession, like a precious ring or family heirloom. Democracy is not a possession; it’s a prospect and a process, a condition to be fought for, perpetually. Second, during the early half of the nineteenth century, democracy was frequently called “the democracy.” As if it were a threatening animal, which it was. It was initially the term […]
MAGA goes back to the drawing board So the whole fake electors and Green Bay Sweep did not work as Trumplandia planned for overturning the will of the voters in 2020. And since the coup plan counted heavily on Republicans holding the vice presidency, and since Congress reformed the 1887 Electoral Count Act in 2022 to prevent a recurrence, the enemies of democracy went back to the drawing board for 2024. Sure, red-state legislators have since erected every new hurdle to voting they could conjure and pass. But what’s a MAGA Republican to do if troublesome citizens still manage to muster enough votes to elect a Democrat and not Donald Trump to the White House in 2024? Monkey-wrench election certification, that’s what. As a Rolling Stone investigation explained, “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania . . . at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials” stand ready to question “the validity of elections” and to delay or refuse to certify results as mandated by law.
Now get to work This time next Sunday, I’ll be in Chicago as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Don’t expect to see much from me in this space for a few days. At a dinner last night, several people asked if I’m excited. I disappointed them. Not really. I’m more about the business than the hoopla. When returns come in on Election Night and our candidates win, others pump their fists, scream and jump. I go quiet so I can savor the moment and a job well done. To each their own. For now, savor this. Then get to work. And this. “Some are calling our rally the largest in Arizona political campaign history,” the Harris campaign tweeted. “At some point media is going to notice that for once a major political party delivered what people really, really wanted and in doing so, ignited a civic renaissance just in time to save American democracy,” added strategist Rachel Bitecofer. This has got to be ominous for Arizona Republicans, and Republicans elsewhere. But don’t get cocky.
As you have probably heard, Trump mixed up Brown with another Black California politician named Nate Holden who was from LA and had nothing to do with Kamala Harris. He has memory issues.