Their reasons are not all meritless On the topic of the sort of “Hey, watch this!” idiots who’d run off when told to join the new Confederacy, The Bulwark cautions: WHEN 23-YEAR-OLD GAMER ADIN ROSS presented Donald Trump with a Rolex watch in a first-of-its-kind livestreamed interview on the platform Kick Monday, a tiny subset of the internet descended into blows over whether it was a campaign finance violation or not. The rest of the approximately 600,000 people watching thought it was hilarious and cool. And that, unfortunately, is a major problem for Democrats—the majority of whom were likely oblivious to the whole episode. Ross, who boasts 1.3 million followers, is part of a cohort of young hyperonline men who promote an unapologetically MAGA aesthetic and culture. He is a sycophant of the legendary king of the manosphere, Andrew Tate, known equally for his overt misogyny and the charges he faces for rape and human trafficking. These clowns are heirs to Gamergate, dubbed the “Barstool Sports generation” by Harvard youth pollster John Della Volpe.
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Here’s Tim Walz: The reaction to that: The choice couldn’t be more clear. If American democracy produces a result that puts that freak Stephen Miller in power we’re probably doomed anyway.
It’s all good, from Shapiro to Harris to Walz. If you didn’t have a chance to watch, I highly recommend it. Amanda Marcotte went to both the JD Vance rally and the Harris Walz rally and they couldn’t be more different: He’s so weird! He’s so weird!” the crowd chanted in a sing-song, taunting voice that echoed across Temple University’s packed basketball stadium Tuesday evening. Gov. Josh Shapiro, D-Penn., was the first person to mention Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, to the crowd that had packed the overflowing Philadelphia rally for Vice President Kamala Harris, as she introduced her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn. The spontaneous chant cracked Shapiro up, causing him to pause momentarily before laying back into the authoritarian threat posed by Donald Trump’s “weird” and beardy running mate. The chanters didn’t know the half of it. Hours earlier, I had been at a South Philly venue where Vance spoke briefly to about 200 supporters and a group of bored journalists.
This is huge: In a new poll released Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has taken an enormous lead on former president Donald Trump among independent voters. Harris is up nine points with that group (53%-44%) after being down 14 points with them when she launched her campaign just two weeks ago Kamala Harris and Tim Walz debut at Philadelphia rallyKamala Harris and Tim Walz debut at Philadelphia rally In early July, Trump was beating President Joe Biden by four points with independents. Overall, Harris has built a 51%-48% lead over Trump, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. That’s a four-point improvement for Harris, who became the Democratic choice when Biden bowed out. Harris maintains a three-point lead (48%-45%) when third-party choices are included. Harris leads by 13 points with women (55%-42%), but is losing men by nine points (54%-45%). Here are other breakdowns, according to NPR: Fueling her rise are Black voters, white women with college degrees and women who identify as political independents.
Providing tampons for high school students is something the Trump people seem to think is very weird. I think most people probably think it’s weird not to. Why do they care about this stuff so much? Former President Trump’s campaign and supporters are going after Vice President Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), dubbing him “Tampon Tim” in reference to a bill he signed last year requiring schools to provide free menstrual products in all public school bathrooms. The Minnesota law, which went into effect Jan. 1, mandates menstrual products — including pads, tampons and other items — “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12 according to a plan developed by the school district.” State Republican lawmakers pushed back on the legislation at the time, but ultimately failed to amend the bill to apply only for girls’ bathrooms. […] The primary super PAC supporting Trump called Walz a “weird radical liberal,” as part of a new campaign ad against the governor.
Brian Beutler says moderates should stop worrying that the Real Americans are going to run for the hills: The implicit premise, familiar to every Democrat in politics, is that Republicans will declare all progressive ideas “socialism” whether their contents or proponents are socialist or not. One school of liberal thought holds that Democrats should thus downplay these kinds of ideas—avoid bad-faith GOP backlash and seize the center through the absence of controversy. Another holds that Democrats can defeat Republicans in a contest to define the issues. As a liberal politician, you can run away from the idea of universal school lunch, because Republicans will call it socialism, or you can run toward it, while persuading people that it isn’t socialism, it’s neighborliness. If you opt for the latter, you can go a step further by noting that stripping free lunch from hungry children, or making school lunch programs a source of stigma for the children of poor parents, are ideas that only animate people of troubling character.
I keep hearing that we needn’t take Trump and company seriously about this fascist stuff. Really? Maduro is not a right winger. This is not about ideology. It’s about authoritarianism. That’s what he cares about. So when you hear people saying that the “threat to democracy” isn’t worth talking about, keep this in mind.
Time is running out to be on it “It’s OK to vote against Donald Trump,” Mesa, Arizona’s Republican mayor, John Giles told a press conference on Monday. Giles remains a registered Republican but is stumping for Kamala Harris. He hopes to see the GOP “get away from the personality cult our party has become.” “I think the time has come for us as Arizona Republicans to admit the obvious,” Giles told reporters, “which is that our party’s nominee is not qualified for office and that we need to vote for the adult in the room, and that is Kamala Harris.” “Character matters,” said former GOP state Rep. Robin Shaw. The Harris campaign days ago named Giles and Shaw to head up a task force to do outreach to Arizona Republicans: “As a lifelong Arizonan and longtime Republican, I strongly believe in defending democracy and standing up for our personal freedoms. Donald Trump and JD Vance represent the greatest threat to American values and institutions that I have seen in my lifetime – and that’s why I am committed to defeating him in November,” Giles said in a written statement.
Middle-American White Dad I felt that all the choices were pretty good and Walz is one of the best. He’s a progressive who knows how to talk about progressive issues in ways that sound very accessible to middle Americans. He’s an American archetype — a football coach. I think he makes a very good pair with Harris.
The more people see that decrepit Liberace clone the Republicans are running for president up against Kamala Harris, the worse he looks: A Morning Consult poll published Monday revealed that voters are suddenly viewing Trump as the decrepit candidate after Biden dropped his campaign. Americans are apparently far more likely to describe Vice President Kamala Harris as healthy, mentally fit, and a strong leader than the 78-year-old Republican presidential nominee. According to the poll, 71 percent of respondents agreed that Harris was “in good health,” while 52 percent said the same about Trump—6 percent fewer than believed the same about Trump when Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. The number of respondents who thought that Trump was “mentally fit” for the job also dropped. Roughly 64 percent of respondents believed that Harris was mentally fit, while just 48 percent believed the same about Trump—a 5 percent drop from before Biden withdrew. Meanwhile, the number of respondents who believed that Trump is too old for the job rose.