This is truly astonishing: This is a really good exchange. MAGA's current rage at the top brass is all about the fact it wouldn't back the coup. https://t.co/c6PKCeVovX — Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 27, 2023 Fox didn’t question any of the kids table about this at the debate last night. In fact, they didn’t mention anything about Trump at all, not the indictments, the fraud verdict, the rape trial or any of it. And the kids table didn’t offer anything. What cowards. All of them.
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Trump is wounded but not done There is some good news out there: Democrats keep winning post-Dobbs elections. A recent poll from Univision shows Latinos trust Democrats more than Republicans to lower their cost of living (their No. 1 concern). As you saw yesterday, better polls than the Washington Post’s admitted outlier show Joe Biden better positioned for 2024 than the soon-to-be bankrupt Donald Trump. The GOP is determined to shut down the government, doing no one any favors. The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson summed up the GOP debate Wednesday night by posting, “I’ve attended probably 30 primary debates and watched most of them over the last 30 years. This is the most shambolic trainwreck I’ve ever seen.” Nevertheless, the threat of violence persists from the fringe right when democracy does not hand them the power they demand. Eric Levitz writes: Last Friday, the Republican Party’s presidential front-runner suggested that America’s top general deserves to die.
Premise of GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry It is a consistent ploy of conspiracy theorist that where supporting “evidence” is concerned, what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity. That was plenty evident on Wednesday when Republicans introduced their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden by releasing 700 pages of bird shot. It did not go well for House Ways and Means Committee Chair Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) when asked by NBC’s Richard Neal to explain why whatever Hunter Biden did when his father was a private citizen was somehow an abuse of power and worthy of impeaching Joe Biden now. U.S. Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) melts down as an NBC reporter questions GOP claims of DOJ political interference in favor of Joe Biden before he was president. pic.twitter.com/Afm75G5CDq — Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) September 27, 2023 But we have 700 pages! Have you read our 700 pages?!
Political strategist Simon Rosenberg got the 2022 election right when almost everyone else got it wrong. He’s worth listening to. Here, he discusses that Washington Post/ABC poll and suggests, correctly, that they should have just thrown it out. (And the rest of the media should have ignored it.) He has some other info you might find interesting: A few other notes on this poll and other recent election data: -In a recent post I talked about something I’ve been calling asymetrical engagement. It’s the idea that right now, due to Republicans having a robust primary and Democrats not that our two coalitions are not paying equal attention to the Presidential election, and polls are coming back a bit more Republican than is the actual state of things. A confirmation of this theory is the new CNN poll of New Hampshire, a state where voters are paying attention and engaged, which has Biden ahead of Trump 52-40. Biden won NH by 7 pts in 2020. So in this large sample poll of a state where ads are flying Biden is outperforming 2020 by 5 points, similar to our overperformance in special elections across the US this year.
Good Lord. Philip Bump has the story: America transitioned out of its covid-19 mobilization the same way it transitioned in: awkwardly, unevenly and with mixed results. The Biden administration’s interest in formalizing the end of the official pandemic — under pressure from President Biden’s right — meant that systems that had been cobbled together to measure and address the problem were often just switched off, with varying downstream effects. Given that the tools we’d used to track the pandemic are now mostly broken or out-of-date, it’s a bit harder to know when and if the virus might again be surging. But in recent weeks, there’s been little question: wastewater measurements and other calculations made clear that infections were again rising. Hopefully, despite the shift to cooler weather in the Northeast, the recent plateau in cases means the trend is reversing. When KFF earlier this month asked Americans if they thought that cases were surging, however, about a third said they didn’t. That was a minority position, but the demographic divides on the question were revealing.
wow this new biden ad is brilliant pic.twitter.com/9zcuq9Qlp9 — MeidasTouch (@MeidasTouch) September 28, 2023
This from Punchbowl is just astonishing. It represents a failure of education that a faction of Republicans has absolutely no knowledge of history and is too stupid and arrogant to listen to anyone who does: One week after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered a plea for additional American aid, a sobering reality has set in on Capitol Hill — Congress has no clear path, as of this moment, to approve new funding for the embattled U.S. ally. The issue has become tied up in the dispute over government funding, with Speaker Kevin McCarthy refusing to include new Ukraine aid in any stopgap spending measure over fears that a conservative revolt could cost him his post. In some ways, McCarthy’s own standing has become tied to this issue. Ukraine in general has become such a charged issue for House Republicans that party leaders late Wednesday night stripped a small portion of Ukraine aid from their version of the FY2024 Defense spending bill. That came just hours after the House overwhelmingly defeated an amendment to strip this exact same funding from the bill. The vote was 330-104.
He’s upset that the RNC is hosting debates he refuses to attend: The former president cloaked his effort to shut down opponents by claiming to be concerned about the Republican Party. Former President Donald Trump on Thursday called for the cancellation of further GOP debates, perhaps hoping to deprive his rivals of a national stage under the guise of what he claims is best for the Republican Party. “They have to stop the debates. Because it is just bad for the Republican Party. They are not going anywhere. There is not going to be a breakout candidate,” Trump told the right-wing Daily Caller. “I am very concerned about the RNC not being able to do their job,” the multi-indicted frontrunner added about the Republican National Committee (RNC). His comments doubled down on his campaign’s order Wednesday to halt the debates, which Trump has studiously avoided while he enjoys a large polling lead. He confirmed to the Daily Caller that he would also not attend the third one. “It’s clear that President Trump alone can defeat Biden,” campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said in an earlier statement.
“Donald Trump is no longer in business.” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled Tuesday that the Trump Organization is guilty of a decade of systemic fraud. The evidence is so plain that edjudicating the facts at trial is unneeded. Engoron also revoked its state business licenses and ordered it dissolved (Washington Post): A judge overseeing a $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump ruled the former president and his company committed fraud by inflating his net worth in business transactions, narrowing the scope of what the state’s attorney general must prove at an upcoming civil trial.
The way Sen. Tuberville talks so openly about about white supremacy is just jaw dropping. I refuse to allow this to feel normal. https://t.co/Hmv1P5JYpD — Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) September 27, 2023 He’s the heir to George Wallace. Alabama must be so proud.