Stay hydrated, get good sleep As we approach the winter solstice, things are not as dark as they seem. More sunlight is on the way. As I noted the other day: I’m assembling mailing lists for the 5th Ed of For The Win right now. Two years ago 40% of Idaho’s counties either had no functioning Democratic committees (or no sign of them on the Net). Today all do. Two years ago an even higher percentage of Iowa’s counties were MIA. Today only 5 [of 99] are. Sure, it’s red Idaho and Iowa, but it’s dramatic progress in two short years. Nobody knows about that. Now you do. Candidate filing closed at noon on Friday in North Carolina and I was thrilled: Chided for absences across more than 25% the General Assembly races in 2022, Friday’s final half-day of election filing for the 2024 cycle brought a resounding end to the fortnight. All 50 Senate districts have a Democratic candidate, and 118 of 120 House of Representatives districts have one. That’s a far cry from nobody in 15 Senate and 29 House races.
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The former president’s comments have ignited concerns from critics and scholars who have warned that a second Trump administration threatens democracy – even as his advisers push back on those fears, dismissing them as baseless. Many likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers have no issue with several of Trump’s recent statements, a new Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll has found, and, more often than not, they say the same statements make them more likely to support the former president. Holly Rice, a 57-year-old poll respondent from Cumming, Iowa, said she was backing Trump for his policy agenda, saying “I don’t care what he tweets. It’s a little off the wall, but you know? A lot of them do stuff like that,” Rice said. “At least we know he’s not a polished politician. He reminds me of my father.” June Koelker, a 71-year-old poll respondent from Monticello, Iowa, said Trump’s immigration plans made her more likely to back him, but she answered she was “less likely” to support him for his statement about those who enter illegally “poisoning” the country.
Make them explain it. Make them own it. CNN’s Kasie Hunt interviewed RFK Jr and confronted him with his own words. As with Trump, he basically told the audience, you can believe me or you can believe your eyes: I watched some “man-on-the-street” interviews at an RFK event the other day. Oh my god. The anti-vax crowd is well represented, of course, and some of them would otherwise be Trumpers.But there were some woo-woo lefties there too, so woefully mid-informed that it made my head hurt. (Did you know that Joe Biden is a criminal and lied about COVID on behalf of Big Pharma? ) So I’m not sure that this sort of interview will affect his potential voters much. They’re pretty far gone. Right now some polls show him getting about 20% and pulling from both sides. But we really don’t need this conspiracy addled gadfly in there stirring the pot. This election is too important. But it doesn’t look as if anyone can stop him. Let’s just hope he doesn’t get on the ballot anywhere where it can make a difference. Happy Hollandaise, everyone!
On Democrats fighting the last war Trying to teach Yellow Dogs new tricks sometimes seems pointless. With few exceptions, Democrats always seem to be fighting the last war because that’s the one they learned on. Brian Beutler sees it too. Beutler perceives that social media has fundamentally shifted our political ground: When Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016 on the strength of a media feeding frenzy over emails, it dawned on me that either my intuitions about partisan politics had been wrong, or something fundamental had changed. With the benefit of hindsight, I soon came to see the 2014 midterm campaign as a precursor. Republicans back then turned a closely fought election into a blowout in the final stretch by fanning a different media feeding frenzy—this one over a far-off outbreak of Ebola. […] All of this happened because Republicans situated themselves to win an information war in 2014, then situated themselves to win another information war in 2016. I had simply been underestimating the effectiveness of their antics.
Can we “match the level of in-the-streetsness”? Moonstruck Cher GIFfrom Moonstruck GIFs “I can’t seem to get out of my own way,” my best friend from college used to complain. By that he meant that all his smarts and cleverness were stumbling blocks to getting what he wanted out of life. Which was another way of saying he thought too much. Democrats and lefty allies have the same problem: stubbornly insisting this is a survival-of-the-smartest world when it isn’t. Anand Giridharadas the other night issued a warning about that. First he notes that while lefty anger is dialed up to 11, our actions do not reflect it. Are we serious about stopping fascism or what? Do our actions “really match the level of in-the-streetsness” we saw in the 1960s, Giridharadas asks. Just as I’ve argued before: Winning in your head is like bringing sports visualization training to the Olympics and thinking you’ll be competitive when you show up with no conditioning and no skills. At some point, you have to play the game for real. At some point, you have to run the election and count the votes.
Moms For Liberty, flash in the pan It looks like another vaunted group of culture warriors bites the dust: Moms for Liberty, a national right-wing advocacy group, was born in Florida as a response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates. But it quickly became just as well known for pushing policies branded as anti-L.G.B.T.Q. by opponents. So when one of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, recently told the police that she and her husband, who is under criminal investigation for sexual assault, had a consensual sexual encounter with another woman, the perceived disconnect between her public stances and private life fueled intense pressure for her to resign from the Sarasota County School Board. “Most of our community could not care less what you do in the privacy of your own home, but your hypocrisy takes center stage,” said Sally Sells, a Sarasota resident and the mother of a fifth-grader, told Ms. Ziegler during a tense school board meeting this week. Ms. Ziegler, whose husband has denied wrongdoing, said little and did not resign. Ms. Sells was one of dozens of speakers who criticized Ms.
It was only a matter of time I confess I didn’t see this coming. And I should have. Of course the normalization of the narcissistic imbecile Donald Trump would lead inexorably to a Nixon revival on the right. After all, how can you hold him responsible for his crimes if everything Trump has done is perfectly above board? Politico reports: In late August, Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy took a break from his typical campaign events to make a pit stop at an unusual venue for mainstream Republicans: The Richard Nixon Presidential Library. Speaking before a packed house, Ramaswamy was slated to deliver a speech on foreign policy. But his opening remarks served the more provocative purpose of challenging Nixon’s much-maligned status in the annals of conservative history. “He is by and away the most underappreciated president of our modern history in this country — probably in all of American history,” said Ramaswamy, without a hint of irony. Ramaswamy’s homage to America’s most disgraced ex-president perplexed some liberal commentators, for whom Nixon remains the ultimate symbol of conservative criminality.
Stephen Miller is only 38 years old. He sounds like somebody’s crotchety old grandfather there, living in some pre-1960s world. I suppose he’s speaking to the aging Fox boomer audience but I hate to tell him, purple and pink hair and piercings and tattoos have been around for decades now. We’ve been hearing an awful lot about appropriate dress and proper decorum from Republicans lately. But seriously, don’t you think they should take a look in the mirror? How about whatever this is? Let’s just say that the left doesn’t have a monopoly on wild hairdos and garish fashion. And those Fox News boomers need to take an extra dose of their Prevagen. This is from 1972: Miller’s idea seems to be that liberals and progressives are out of step with mainstream America but that requires a very creative definition of mainstream. Here’s how the dictionary defines it: having, reflecting, or being compatible with the prevailing attitudes and values of a society or group To put this into political terms, all you have to do is look at the popular vote counts since 2016 to see where the mainstream of America really is. Not that this is anything new.
He has a novel (final) solution for Social Security funding Asked in New Hampshire whether he plans to raise the retirement age he had some great news. It isn’t going broke after all! “What I don’t think people are acknowledging the way they should is that life expectancy in this country is declining. And so, you know, we used to think it was just gonna keep going up. I mean, it’s been a pretty steep decline. So I don’t see how you raise it if life expectancy is declining.” What a relief, huh? The old people are dying early! Whew! DeSantis said that the decrease in lifespans isn’t “just from COVID,” but is “from a lot of other things,” including “deaths of despair, overdoses” and “other things, that have happened that I think the government hasn’t been willing to really be honest about.” Apparently, he didn’t express any particular concern about this decrease. He clearly sees it as a big plus, saving him from having to support raising the retirement age. He’s here to tell you the truth which the government refuses to do! We’re all gonna be dead soon!
Clay Higgins is on the case Brandi Buchman’s offering was the first thing that popped up on the hellsite this a.m. Clearly, former Louisiana lawman Rep. Clay Higgins, perpetually in high dudgeon (I love that phrase), is enjoying his moment in Lara Logan’s Truth in Media spotlight. “The Cajun John Wayne,” the man who accused the FBI of sending “ghost busses” filled with agents to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6 to impersonate Trump supporters and spark the riot, has “done his research.” Again. Higgins insists that the Biden administration has weaponized the government (MAGAs love that phrase) to track Trump supporters. Higgins is gonna gear up, lock and load, expose ’em, flush ’em out, nip it in the bud: “I’m telling you, we’re in uncharted waters as it relates to the weaponization of our government against the American people. I am not frightened of these people. I’ve spent my life serving others, and I love my country. This thing is not going to just slip away. They’re not going to take us without a fight.