Will she succumb? I think we all suspect that Haley will end up endorsing Trump. But this doesn’t seem like a very smart way to make that happen. If it’s a close election, Haley’s endorsement might just be helpful. I guess they don’t think they need it.
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I was hard on Stewart for his “both sides” opening show. I don’t think we need any more of that. But this? Oh yeah: Update: Here’s Mary Trump responding to Stewart’s thin skinned response to the criticism he received for last week. I think she’s got a point: I’ve been to some wonderful places in my life, but this weekend I found myself somewhere I never expected to be — living rent-free in comedian Jon Stewart’s head. Stewart was back for his second show on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, and apparently felt the need to respond to my very real concerns over his dangerous both-sides-ism last week, when he equated President Biden and Donald. I criticized him for erroneously elevating my uncle by claiming, “We’re not suggesting neither man is vibrant, productive, or even capable.” Any honest, objective person knows this is completely false — Donald is neither productive nor capable, while, President Biden is both of those to an impressive degree.
Greed and its fallout “Where once We the People held capitalism’s leash, now we wear the collar.” It’s something I’ve repeated since taking the Hullabaloo morning shift ten years ago. “Working people know in their guts they work for the economy, not the other way around.” Joe Biden gets it. In July 2021, he spoke of ensuring “that our economy isn’t about people working for capitalism; it’s about capitalism working for people.” Unfair competition and monopolies the Roosevelts once worked to rein in have landed us in a second Gilded Age. “Forty years ago, we chose the wrong path, in my view,” Biden said, “following the misguided philosophy of people like Robert Bork, and pulled back on enforcing laws to promote competition.” People still know in their guts they are getting screwed, write Katherine J. Cramer and Jonathan D.
So much of the media seems determined to portray the Democrats as big huge losers with a constituency full of apathetic losers and it just ain’t true. Just because they aren’t staging freak show rallies with a bunch of nuts dressed like weirdos doesn’t mean people aren’t voting and voting in droves. The problem with this stuff is that they are setting up Trump to say the election was stolen next November. After all, the media has been saying that Biden is universally loathed because he’s old, that the polls have Trump winning in a landslide and that nobody in the country knows anything about what Biden has done as president because he’s … old. How can trump possibly lose? It’s impossible! This stuff might as well be an in-kind donation to fund his legal challenges in the next election.
The angry mob Atrios today: Not a member of the “David French liberal fan club” but I’ll give him credit for addressing an incredibly undercovered – and certainly ignored by political reporters – story. Of course, he has the obligatory THE LEFT IS VIOLENT TOO paragraph, so fuck that guy, forever and always, but still. Yep. I don’t think anyone should underestimate the power of the threat that Trump’s army of violent, brainwashed followers bring to the political system. Look what’s happened to James Lankford in the Senate for having the nerve to negotiate a hard right, draconian border bill that until five minutes ago would have been a Republican wet dream. Death threats, sanctions and probably a primary opponent.
Better unwoke than woke It’s one thing to watch a Terry Gilliam film. It’s another to live inside one. But the white, Christian-nationalist MAGA right wants to. And a child named Tucker will lead them. Friends circulated this Gerard Baker op-ed from Monday’s Wall Street Journal mocking Tucker Carlson’s fawning, America-hating profile of life in Russia: Why can’t we be more like Russia? The minute you see the welcoming smiles on the faces of the kindly immigration guards, all spiffy in their shiny jackboots, at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport you realize that unlike our own morally louche, spiritually decrepit cesspit, run by a corrupt and brutal regime bent on destroying its opponents, Russia is a nation united around a vision of the historic greatness of its civilization. From state-of-the-art supermarket cart technology to a president who is youthful and vigorous, able to dilate on European history at length, the contrast couldn’t be greater with a technologically backward and collapsing U.S. in the grip of a geriatric autocrat who can’t remember what day it is. American capitalism is corrupt and exploitative.
As those of you who read my blog regularly know, I have long been critical of the rather self-righteous decision of the networks not to show Donald Trump in all his unhinged glory out of a misplaced sense that it somehow “costs” them to do it. No. It has resulted in way too many people forgetting just what a total nutcase he is. I know they don’t want to think about it but it’s a reality and they need to see it. This has obviously concerned the Biden campaign which has found through their own polling that people have forgotten what they hated about him and over time have come to see him as rather benign. After all, the Republicans are all still with him,how bad could he be? But they are wrong. He’s worse than he was before and they need to see that. So, that’s why the campaign has decided to highlight the crazy stuff and push it out there hard. It’s the only way to counter this insufferable obsession with Biden’s age and it’s entirely relevant. You choose: the decent, accomplished old guy or the crazy, corrupt old guy. That’s what’s on the menu.
Can you blame them? House Republicans were shocked by some of the recent high-profile retirements announced by their colleagues, which have included powerful committee chairs and rising stars inside the GOP. But given the miserable state of affairs inside the House right now, they also weren’t exactly surprised. “They’ve signed up to do serious things. And we’re not doing serious things,” said Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a conservative who is retiring after bucking his party on several key issues. Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, a moderate who represents a key swing seat, pointed to his party’s struggle to govern as driving the departures. “When you’re divided in your own conference, the joy of the job is harder,” Bacon told CNN. “When you have folks on your own team with their knives out, it makes it less enjoyable.” And Rep.
Houston Chronicle endorses Biden President Joe Biden is more than his accomplishments in office, a knowledgable acquaintance advised. Rather than spit out a bullet list of them in its Monday endorsement, The Houston Chronicle connected them to wisdom, experience, and strength of character. Newspaper endorsements mean less today than they once did, if they ever meant that much. But if any major newspapers issued them earlier than The Houston Chronicle Editorial Board’s endorsement of President Joe Biden (ahead of the March 5 primary), I can’t recall. A president who “believes in the power of government to make life better for the American people, is a key reason we heartily endorse the reelection of President Joe Biden.” Another is “to fend off the chaos, corruption and danger to the nation” represented by a second Donald Trump term. The paper provides a list of what Biden has accomplished in his first term with a narrow legislative margins in Congress. For starters: “The economy has recovered from the perils of the pandemic and is now healthier than that of any other advancednation.
From the man who runs 538 since Nate Silver left: