NC GOP gives veterans the boot After comemmorating Memorial Day with a rally in Greensboro, N.C., Common Defense and Veterans for Responsible Leadership attempted to deliver a letter to the NC GOP state convention “calling on the GOP and on Donald Trump to reject calls for violence inflammatory rhetoric,” per Cardinal & Pine. Listen to the speeches below. The latter was a stunt. The camera crew was a giveaway. Here’s how NC Newsline describes the letter effort: Across the city, the state Republican Party is holding its annual gathering, which will include members of the Republican National Committee, like new co-chair former president Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump. In attendance at the GOP event are multiple individuals, who echo Trump’s doubts about the legitimacy of U.S. elections and his refusal to commit to accepting this year’s results. The former president, who has displayed an unprecedented disrespect for military service over the years, has also repeatedly threatened violence if the election does not go his way.
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Uhm: “The polls have shown Donald Trump with an edge for eight straight months, but there’s a sign his advantage might not be quite as stable as it looks: His lead is built on gains among voters who aren’t paying close attention to politics, who don’t follow traditional news and who don’t regularly vote.” Read that again. Now read this: “Importantly, these low-turnout voters are often from Democratic constituencies. Many back Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate. But in our polling, Biden wins just three-quarters of Democratic-leaning voters who didn’t vote in the last cycle, even as almost all high-turnout Democratic-leaners continue to support him.”This trend illustrates the disconnect between Trump’s lead in the polls and Democratic victories in lower-turnout special elections. And it helps explain Trump’s gains among young and nonwhite voters, who tend to be among the least engaged.
After the “butter emails” debacle you don’t really need this but if you want another example of how editorial choices about what to cover in politics can actually lead to a lack of understanding, here’s a good one: The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was “an international signal of distress” and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute. Martha-Ann Alito made the comments when the reporter went to the couple’s Fairfax County, Va., home to follow up on a tip about the flag, which was no longer flying when he arrived… The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said.
Media Matters has issued an important report on how they are already planning to contest the election: It was clear just a few months after Trump’s seditious plot to subvert the 2020 presidential election concluded with a violent mob of his supporters storming the U.S. Capitol that the right-wing propaganda apparatus was laying the groundwork to try again in 2024. Fox News and the rest of the MAGA media, which spent the weeks after the 2020 election fabricating and amplifying a host of election fraud lies and conspiracy theories to undermine the results, had begun working to institutionalize Trump’s lie that the 2020 election had been stolen from him and to construct an alternative path to the presidency in which compliant party officials would secure a Republican victory by any means necessary. Fox had become a loaded gun aimed at American democracy. Three years later, the bullet is in the chamber. The disinformation ecosystem which revolves around Fox is telegraphing a plan to reject the results of the 2024 election if Trump loses.
So say those working to steal it So this is what it’s like to live history. You may have read about the Civil Rights movement and watched coverage of Vietnam, the first moon landing, and the Watergate hearings as they happened. But in this century, American history is more personal. A friend who lost her fiancé on Sept. 11 and dreads every anniversary. We participated in electing the first Black president, lived through the Great Recession, and sheltered from COVID-19. We watched the Trump insurrection unfold live. At a remove like past events, yes, but the feeling is more visceral. This week, we found out that key actors in our national drama fly flags representing support for unmaking our democratic republic and constructing in its place a white Christian theocracy. Heather Cox Richardson reminds us that the Appeal to Heaven flag has been on display “in front of the office of House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and over the houses of Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito and the architect of the right-wing theocratic takeover of the federal courts, Leonard Leo.” “Slow-motion train wreck” may be overused but feels right here.
Have a voice in your own future Brian Beutler cautions against lefties shooting themselves in the foot in 2024: The 2000 election turned out as it did in part because a small but decisive number of voters convinced themselves the major parties were fundamentally similar and similarly unappealing. (Plus the whole Supreme-Court-stopping-the-count thing.) The consequences have shaped the entirety of my adult life; for people of a certain age—my age and just a bit older—the lessons against complacency and collapsing important distinctions have proven lifelong. To see something very similar happen based on similarly lazy thinking in 2016 was a history-repeating trauma. One fateful hinge point ought to have been enough to create a whole oral tradition and stigma against falling into the same traps.
If you want to know what’s causing all the pessimism look no further than him I am loathe to discuss the polls right now because they’re all over the place and mostly within the margin of error which means the snapshot of the electorate we are seeing may be a mirage either way. There are arguments going on throughout the commentariat over whether the polling methodology is accurate and whether they are modeling the electorate correctly. I have no idea about that and frankly I don’t really care. It’s enough to know that the election remains close which I suspect is intensely frustrating to everyone in both parties at this point. It seems as though we are destined to re-enact this polarized groundhog day election every four years and it’s tiresome. It’s especially difficult for Democrats to deal with this considering that the Republican opponent is once again the most odious candidate in American history, a crude brute currently facing 88 felony counts and a record that includes two impeachments and an attempted coup. It’s as if the world has suddenly tilted off of its axis and nothing makes sense anymore.
That pretty much says it all about Trump’s cult. Sadly, that 30% includes most GOP elected officials.
Another contender enters the VP ring: Donald Trump appears to have a few requirements for his running mate, including that whoever it is does what they are told and does not steal the spotlight. He would also prefer an Ivy League pedigree, according to The New York Times, which reported that Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a Harvard graduate, is now a “top contender.” According to three anonymous sources who have met with Trump, Cotton is a favorite, alongside North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and three of Cotton’s Senate colleagues: Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Tim Scott, R-S.C., and J.D. Vance, R-Ohio. According to the Times, Trump is also considering the five men for posts in his administration, should he win in November. Where Cotton is concerned, there are some issues to consider. Trump has privately expressed his admiration for Cotton’s reliability and abilities as an effective communicator, as well as praising the senator’s Army service and his elite education. But Cotton voted to certify the 2020 presidential election, which could be a dealbreaker for a man who refuses to acknowledge his defeat.
And yet I heard the CNN reporter on the ground talk about how big and diverse the crowd was and how the Biden campaign must be nervous about his appeal in this blue city. They interviewed the rallygoers (aka Trump fans) and earnestly listened as they complained about the economy without pushing back on their erroneous alternative facts. If you were just a casual viewer you would come away with the idea that Biden is in trouble in New York because tens of thousands of Democrats are abandoning Biden. The Trump people say 25,000 people showed up. It was actually more like 2500.