Trump fails to learn from it or to learn anything President Joe Biden will return to Washington, D.C. after a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France. About 2,000 Americans who died in WWI lie buried there. Donald Trump refused to pay his respects during his presidency because a) rain might mess up his hair, and b) he viewed the dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers” (Associated Press): It’s a fitting end to five days in which Trump was an unspoken yet unavoidable presence. On the surface, the trip marked the 80th anniversary of D-Day and celebrated the alliance between the United States and France. But during an election year when Trump has called into question fundamental understandings about America’s global role, Biden has embraced his Republican predecessor — and would-be successor — as a latent foil. Every ode to the transatlantic partnership was a reminder that Trump could upend those relationships. Each reference to democracy stood a counterpoint to his rival’s efforts to overturn a presidential election.
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Don’t nominate a criminal Here is where that framing has inevitably led. From Jonathan Chait: John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024. “Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo.
This podcast with the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, Jane Mayer and former GOP strategist Sarah Longwell was quite fascinating. Longwell is all over the media sharing the information about the focus groups she holds with swing voters. In this, though, she shares her advice for the Democrats about how to reach them and I thought it was excellent. The one piece of advice that really sounds smart to me is the idea that if Biden’s big weakness is his age, they should roll out all the surrogates from around the country, like Governors Whitmer, Newsom, Shapiro etc to show there is a strong Democratic bench that’s young and vital. It reflects on the party rather than Biden but its useful in any case. And she says they should go to lengths to show that he has young an vital people all around him. She didn’t advise it, but I wondered if they should show some cabinet meetings. Obviously, they don’t have to do it like Trump did with all the sycophants making fools of themselves over Dear Leader. But it might be useful for the public to see the people in the administration who back Biden up day to day.
Biden’s new immigration order sucks. I’m sorry, it does. I know it’s a big election issue for a lot of people, including Democrats, and they’re trying to mitigate any erosion of their voting coalition. But the reality is that border crossings are way down over the last 6 months and it’s really overkill. Having said that, they are apparently also on the verge of offering up something very positive on immigration: Looking to shore up Latino votes in Nevada and Arizona for his reelection campaign, President Joe Biden is on the verge of soon following up last week’s executive action aimed at curbing border crossings with another move focused on providing legal status for long-term undocumented immigrants who are married to American citizens. Though final details have not been decided, officials are reviewing an existing legal authority known as “parole in place” that would shield select undocumented immigrants from deportation and allow them to work legally in the country as they seek citizenship. The orders have not yet been presented to Biden himself for review.
The watchdog press needs to watch itself We looked at “radical constitutionalism” on Saturday. But a tweet caught my attention this morning that reinforces why so much ire gets directed at mainstream outlet headlines and bothsidesism: The Times has been taking a lot of well-deserved flak, especially for clickbait headlines that often mischaracterize the stories below. New York Times editor Joe Kahn says defending democracy is a partisan act and he won’t do it A Deputy Standards Editor for Trust Initiatives might begin by finding new headline writers. ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
I think they’re pretty good I don’t know if anyone’s seeing them though. There are a bunch of these. They’re being targeted at specific social media and, I assume, on television in some markets. I think they’re effective but then I’m already on the team. There is now a new Super PAC announced to try to get to young voters: The group, Won’t PAC Down, will raise and spend $20 million to $25 million, according to details shared exclusively with POLITICO. It’s also turning to Hollywood for help. Won’t PAC Down has hired millennial and Gen Z writers, directors and producers to help craft pro-Biden content that’s specifically engineered to sell an octogenarian candidate to typically disillusioned and hard-to-reach voters under 30. Those movie industry creatives, with credits from “Saturday Night Live” to “Parks and Recreation” to “Big Mouth,” have been meeting monthly for the last half year in a rented, loft-style conference room in a downtown Los Angeles office building.
How is this not disqualifying? The man who orchestrated what happened that day is under indictment for that crime but is running for president again. And he might win. We are living in Bizarroworld.
Onward radical constitutionalists In his early years in stand-up comedy, the late George Carlin played more with observational humor, mocking, for example, the internal contradiction in the term “jumbo shrimp.” What to make now of “radical constitutionalism” (Washington Post): A battle-tested D.C. bureaucrat and self-described Christian nationalist is drawing up detailed plans for a sweeping expansion of presidential power in a second Trump administration. Russ Vought, who served as the former president’sbudget chief, calls his political strategy for razing long-standing guardrails “radical constitutionalism.” He has helped craft proposals for Donald Trump to deploy the military to quash civil unrest, seize more control over the Justice Department and assert the power to withhold congressional appropriations — and that’s just on Trump’s first day back in office. And they called 1960s yippies radicals for having long hair, beards, and for wearing the American flag. Guess they won that culture war. Vought seemingly hasn’t noticed.
The story in the NY Times takes apart their ridiculous claim, which I’m sure you’ve all heard about by now. Millions of people no doubt believe that the FBI tried to assassinate Donald Trump now. The lies just pile on top of each other. It’s good to see the Times calling it like it is. There’s a certain hysteria about the GOP’s talking points right now that indicted a lack of confidence in their candidate. That’s understandable since their candidate is a convicted felon who is also a narcissistic pathological liar. But still, lately they’ve been completely out of their minds. The reaction to he verdict is the best example. They went completely over the top — all of them — complaining that it was a partisan prosecution and a political verdict. It was clearly coordinated to try to intimidate the Democrats into being afraid to use it in the campaign. (That’s not going to work — I hope.) Just yesterday they all went nuts over a random post by a self-professed “shit-poster” on facebook who had written a post before the verdict saying tat his cousin was on the jury and told him they were going to convict.