The first irrelevant primary is over. More to come, unfortunately. 14% of Republicans came out to caucus last night. It was one of the lowest turnouts in history. Sure, it was cold, but this was low even taking that into account. Enthusiasm? Yeah, sure. Also: I’m looking forward to when this little superfluous pageant is over. Lol:
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There is so much talk about the Trump economy being the best the world has ever seen and it’s mainly because Trump just keeps saying it over and over again. It was good but it wasn’t great and on many metrics Biden’s is better. But, of course, we’ve been hearing nothing but gloom and doom about the economy for the past three years so people aren’t hearing that. Here’s some reality from Krugman: Now that Donald Trump is the Republican nominee — I know, it’s not official, but let’s get real — we can expect to hear a lot about how great the economy was on his watch. Which is strange, because he was the first president since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer jobs than when he came in. What’s happening here is that Trump has been given a mulligan for 2020. And to be fair, the huge job losses that took place that year were caused by Covid-19, not Trump’s policies. What’s really odd, however, is that this mulligan appears to be highly selective.
Zeynap Tufekci studies authoritarian movements around the world. She took a look at the MAGA movement for the NY Times and it’s quite interesting. (Gift link, here.) An excerpt: Cheryl Sharp, a 47-year-old sales associate who was among the many Iowans turned away from a filled-to-capacity Trump rally last month, sounded pretty confident she knew why Donald Trump was so appealing to many voters. For her and many others, she said, his most important quality was strength: He had the fortitude to keep the country safe, avoid new wars and ensure the economy hummed along. “You want someone strong, globally, so that it creates mutual respect with other countries, and maybe a little bit of fear,” she told me. “Yes, it’s true, not everyone likes him. It’s good not to be liked. Being strong is better.” Sharp readily conceded that not everything Trump said was great, but she saw that as part of the right personality to be president. “You gotta be a little crazy, maybe, to make sure other countries respect and fear us,” she said.
Bravo. (In case you haven’t seen it, this ad is sending up a viral video shared by Trump all over social media.)
Remember when Ann Coulter used to ecstatically describe Donald Trump as an “alpha male” who was going to set the country straight? She even wrote a book called In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome! Well, she’s been off of him for quite some time because he failed to build the wall. And she doesn’t seem to believe him when he and his henchman Stephen Miller promise to deport millions of people who look like they might not be citizens. She’s going after him and his voters on twitter and it’s kind of hilarious. She doesn’t think he can beat Biden: “How many people who voted for Biden in 2020 have since switched to Trump?” If there are ANY, it’s a lot fewer than: 1) those who voted for Trump but who’ve since died (older white people);2) immigrants who turned 18 in the last 4 yrs and will vote (minorities);3) Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020, but have since changed their minds over, e.g.
We are a role model. Unfortunately. From @capitolhunters: A right-wing party loses a free & fair election, claims election fraud, and refuses to certify the results – first the US, then Brazil, today it’s Guatemala. No armed militia but still chaos at the Capitol – pushed by the same people who pushed Jan 6. Anticorruption candidate Bernardo Arévalo was fairly elected. The losers then blocked the peaceful transfer of power. The NYT shamelessly finds a new low in how to trivialize this attempted coup: “Tempers Flare as Guatemala’s Presidential Inauguration is delayed”. One difference: in Guatemala the people in the streets with flags are the winning party, those trying to preserve democracy. As on Jan 6, everyone knew what was coming and converged on the Capitol. The rise of authoritarianism is a global issue. The Biden administration has been quietly working to convince the losers in Guatemala to leave. Sen. Mike Lee (UT), who knew Jan 6 plans, is pushing for the coup – and Ric Grenell is there in person to cheer it on.
They have become completely un-moored from principles and morals: More than 6-in-10 likely Republican caucusgoers — 61% — say that it doesn’t matter to their support if former President Donald Trump is convicted of a crime before the general election, according to the latest numbers from the new NBC News/Des Moines Register poll of Iowa. By comparison, 19% of likely Iowa caucusgoers say a Trump conviction would make it more likely that they’d back Trump, while 18% say it would make them less likely to support the former president in the general election. As with the other findings from the Iowa poll, the likely caucusgoers backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley — half of whom are independents and crossover Democrats — have far different perceptions about Trump and his legal challenges than other GOP caucusgoers. Among Haley’s supporters, 56% say a possible conviction of Trump doesn’t matter to their Nov. 2024 vote choice, but 41% say it would make them less likely to back Trump.
Has there ever been a more pathetic decline into craven servility than what he see with this guy? Marco Rubio formally endorsed Donald Trump for president in a post on X Sunday. “I support Trump because that kind of leadership is the ONLY way we will get the extraordinary actions needed to fix the disaster Biden has created,” the Florida senator and former Republican presidential candidate wrote. He previously ran against Trump in 2016, during which he called him “an embarrassment” and a “con artist” before bowing out of the primary race. Since then, he’s been a careful supporter of Trump, dodging when asked to condemn the former president’s actions over the Jan. 6 insurrection or when asked to address Trump’s repeated election lies. In his 2024 endorsement, the senator managed to toot his own horn while repeating Trump’s anti-establishment messaging. “When Trump was in WH I achieved major policies I had worked on for years,” he wrote. “It’s time to get on with the work of beating Biden & saving America!” Remember when?
Trump isn’t the same person he was in 2016. Or 2020. McCay Coppins makes a point that I’ve been trying desperately to make a while now: people should be exposed to Trump not protected from him. They need to see what he’s become: If Donald Trump has benefited from one underappreciated advantage this campaign season, it might be that no one seems to be listening to him very closely anymore. This is a strange development for a man whose signature political talent is attracting and holding attention. Consider Trump’s rise to power in 2016—how all-consuming his campaign was that year, how one @realDonaldTrump tweet could dominate news coverage for days, how watching his televised stump speeches in a suspended state of fascination or horror or delight became a kind of perverse national pastime. Now consider the fact that it’s been 14 months since Trump announced his entry into the 2024 presidential race. Can you quote a single thing he’s said on the campaign trail? How much of his policy agenda could you describe? Be honest: When was the last time you watched him speaking live, not just in a short, edited clip?
Mike Johnson held a conference call yesterday and reportedly said that. Hmmm. What do you suppose he meant by that? Josh Marshall has this: Keep an eye on how the national press covers this. The White House, as you know, has been under immense pressure to offer concessions to address the continuing large number of migrants coming to the US-Mexico border. Now there’s a bipartisan compromise bill in the Senate. Last night Majority Leader Steve Scalise said that bill in DOA in the House. But Speaker Johnson said something more specific and revealing. He refused to bring up the bill and according to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl said “Congress can’t solve border until Trump is elected or a republican is back in the White House.” Two things to note here. First, Johnson isn’t saying they won’t consider this bill. He’s saying they won’t consider any bill until Trump is elected. Sherman appears to have accepted the GOP wording – that “Congress can’t solve [the] border until Trump is elected.” But there’s more here. Johnson is saying openly that they won’t pass any bill until Trump is elected.