Polling shows that people are taking his crimes seriously His middle of the night tantrums are getting worse and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s because his campaign has polled this too: A majority of U.S. voters consider the criminal charges in New York related to a hush money payment against former President Trump to be serious, per new polling. Trump is days away from the start of the first trial out of the four criminal cases against him, while electioneering for the presidency. The New York trial, set to start on April 15 with jury selection, concerns a 2016 payment allegedly made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. About 4 in 10 Republican respondents considered the hush money charges to be serious. Two-thirds of independents also deemed the charges serious. 64% of registered voters described the charges as at least “somewhat serious,” according to Reuters/Ipsos poll data published Wednesday. 34% said the charges lacked seriousness. The rest were unsure or didn’t answer.
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Same old, same old ain’t working “If you smell what the Rock is cooking,” so to speak, it’s long been clear that MAGAstan is more about posturing than policy. It’s about Trumpish attitude aided and abetted by his fans’ poor short-term memory. Donald Trump can say one thing on Monday and the opposite on Friday and fans couldn’t care less. Just as long as whatever he says is delivered loudly and proudly with the same shameless, in-your-face insincerity. Wrestling fans eat that shit up. They pay good money for it week after week. It’s not Sondheim or Shakespeare, but it’s theater. Digby yesterday mentioned the “stale sameness” of the Trump rally and “the weird hypnotic nature of his speeches.” But it’s that sameness that mesmerizes, like endless Grateful Dead improvs, like the old Latin mass and Gregorian chants. People can lose themselves for a while in the rhythms and harmonies before returning to the real world. The attraction of sameness, of pithy catchphrases, of the anticipation of the all-too-familiar you know is coming, is something the left, with its demand for novelty, has never appreciated.
Boo-hoo-hoo There has been something of a brouhaha this past week over a new book by Paul Waldman and Thomas Schaller called White Rural Rage. Evidently some political science scholars in the field felt that it was unfair to the rural voters by characterizing them as feeling rage instead of righteous anger. We urban types are mean as always and need to be more understanding of some people’s racism, xenophobia, misogyny and fetishistic Trump worship because well … they’re unhappy. Waldman and Schaller responded. Here are some extended excerpts. You can read the whole thing here and you should. When we wrote White Rural Rage, we knew that our provocative argument and book title would arouse ire on the far right. We were not disappointed. But we have been surprised by the ferocity of the criticism we have received from scholars of rural politics. Their response has made clear that there are unspoken rules about criticizing certain Americans—rules that get to the heart of the very case we have tried to make about the deep geographic divisions in our politics at this fragile moment in our nation’s history. Pillorying Donald Trump is fine.
It’s been reported that he doesn’t like his voters. Of course he doesn’t, he’s a rich guy who really only values important, powerful, rich people. He can’t stand his voters. They are marks to him, just like the rubes who bought his Trump University courses. He posts “something horrible” every day so I don’t know what he might be talking about but if he’s thinking of something else that Scavino might know about that’s “very sexually oriented” — via GIPHY We already know too much. Much too much.
That is an effective ad. President Biden’s campaign on Thursday launched a seven-figure ad buy in Arizona, focusing on abortion on as the state grapples with the fallout from a state Supreme Court decision earlier this week that enabled an 1864 law that bans nearly all abortions. The Biden campaign has sought to link former President Donald Trump to near-total abortion bans since Trump appointed three conservative judges who were instrumental in the 2022 Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. Trump has touted his role in the effort to “kill” Roe v. Wade, although he has sought to distance himself from the Arizona decision. “Because of Donald Trump, millions of women lost the fundamental freedom to control their own bodies,” Mr. Biden says direct to camera in the ad. “And now, women’s lives are in danger because of that. The question is, if Donald Trump gets back in power, what freedom will you lose next? Your body and your decisions belong to you, not the government, not Donald Trump. I will fight like hell to get your freedom back.” Yes. Freedom. That’s the message.
Just stop it Democrats regularly say three things that set my teeth on edge. It’s an ingrained cultural tic, I guess, and they recite them like the catechism without thinking. First, they complain that conservative voters, particularly rural ones, vote against their best interests. See “Thank you for not voting your best interests” for what I think about that. Second, they insist that every election is the most important of our lifetime. They seem to think this alarmist message is somehow motivating for their base. But is it? Really? When every damned election is the most important election of our lifetime, what happens instead is Democrats go into a defensive crouch. Innovation is off the table. They take no chances. Find another gear? Hell, no. For most campaigns, their idea of finding another gear is to do what they’ve always done, the way they’ve always done it, just more of it. That’s a dinosaur’s recipe for losing. Finally — and I heard this again at an event last night — Democrats of a certain age love to joke that you should vote early and vote often. IN THIS POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT, they still say that.
Anywhere else he’d be a chump… If there’s one thing that characterizes this election season so far it’s the fact that the country remains as polarized as it’s been these last few years and both sides are very upset. But nobody seems to be able to figure out exactly why. Is it inflation or the media or the pandemic or too much doomscrolling or something else? There are plenty of theories but no consensus, at least not yet. The most common explanation is that the economy is bringing everyone down. It’s hard to explain why people are so negative about it since the numbers are actually quite robust with the job market being the best it’s been since the 1960s and wages rising rapidly, especially for the people in the middle and working classes. For the first time in decades the gains in this economy are flowing to them instead of the upper 1%. Here’s Sen. J.D.
I wrote yesterday about the Steve Bannon plot to activate young environmentalists against Biden over the huge increase in American oil production during his administration (even as they lie to the MAGA cultists, telling them that Biden has shut off the spigot and Trump will come in an drill, baby, drill.) They figure they can get the young vote to turn on the Democrats and vote 3rd Party, whether it’s RFK or Jill Stein. Biden just put a monkey wrench in that plan: The US set aside 23 million acres of Alaska’s North Slope to serve as an emergency oil supply a century ago. Now, President Joe Biden is moving to block oil and gas development across roughly half of it. The initiative, set to be finalized within days, marks one of the most sweeping efforts yet by Biden to limit oil and gas exploration on federal lands. It comes as he seeks to boost land conservation and fight climate change — and is campaigning for a second term on promises to do more of it. The changes wouldn’t affect ConocoPhillips’s controversial 600-million-barrel Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.
I’ve heard of kitchen table issues but this is ridiculous I have to assume that Republicans think these are the issues people really care about and are demanding the GOP House of Representatives deal with immediately. It’s that important…
The GOP establishment is pathetic: A Pulitzer Prize-winning political photographer resigned Tuesday from the board of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, blasting the group for cowardice in rejecting Trump critic Liz Cheney as the recipient of its top yearly award. David Hume Kennerly claimed in a letter to fellow trustees that Cheney’s nomination for the Gerald R. Ford Medal for Distinguished Public Service was nixed largely out of fear that Trump would retaliate against the organization if he’s reelected. Cheney, herself a trustee, was rejected three separate times, Kennerly wrote, as other potential honorees declined the award. Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels will receive the 2024 medal in June, according to an email that Gleaves Whitney, the foundation’s executive director, sent to trustees Wednesday, after POLITICO broke news of Kennerly’s resignation. Whitney said in a statement sent ahead of the Daniels announcement that the foundation’s executive committee, guided by legal counsel, believed it was not “prudent” to give the medal to Cheney given her flirtations with a presidential run.