Oh how sad… Politico reports: Michigan’s Republican party is broke. Minnesota’s was, until recently, down to $53.81 in the bank. And in Colorado, the GOP is facing eviction from its office this month because it can’t make rent. Around the nation, state Republican party apparatuses — once bastions of competency that helped produce statehouse takeovers — have become shells of their former machines amid infighting and a lack of organization. Current and former officials at the heart of the matter blame twin forces for it: The rise of insurgent pro-Donald Trump activists capturing party leadership posts, combined with the ever-rising influence of super PACs. “It shouldn’t surprise anybody that real people with real money — the big donors who have historically funded the party apparatus — don’t want to invest in these clowns who have taken over and subsumed the Republican Party,” said Jeff Timmer, the former executive director of the once-vaunted Michigan GOP and a senior adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. Among some state GOP officials, the mood is grim.
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“If we get this right … a safer and more secure” world After Tuesday’s monumental third indictment of the immediate past president, perhaps a palate cleanser. Over the weekend, President Joe Biden, the president actually chosen by the America people in November 2020 visited Maine to talk about his administration’s progress on the economy. But it wasn’t his public remarks you need to read, it’s Heather Cox Richardson’s account of Biden’s remarks at a private reception in Freeport. Biden views change as a challenge, not something to run from but to embrace: Biden talked again about the world being at an inflection point, defining it as an abrupt turn off an established path that means you can never get back on the original path again. The world is changing, he said, and not because of leaders, but because of fundamental changes like global warming and artificial intelligence. “We’re seeing changes… across the world in fundamental ways.
It’s ultimately up to the American people During the 2016 presidential campaign Donald Trump repeatedly said that the electoral process was rigged. After losing the Iowa primary caucus he declared that Sen Ted Cruz had stolen it and tweeted, “based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.” That was just the beginning. Throughout the general election campaign he refused to say if he would accept the results , even in a televised presidential debate in October. He finally told his followers that he would accept the vote count — but only if he won — and they responded with rapturous adulation. Even when he won the electoral college he refused to accept the popular vote results and formed a commission to prove that the numbers were fraudulent. (It came up empty, of course.) So, it was no surprise that he spent most of the 2020 election casting aspersions on mail-in voting and planting the suspicion that the election was going to be stolen from him. It’s not like he kept it a secret.
He seems happy. They must have had a good take last night.
Ed Kilgore thinks the exposure of Trump’s lies in a trial might just penetrate more of the public’s consciousness. I’m not too optimistic but if it’s even a possibility, it’s a good thing: When indicting a former president of the United States in the middle of his attempt to once again rule, you can’t just think about the laws, in their majestic complexity, that are being violated. Special counsel Jack Smith clearly understands the “court of public opinion” will have the final say on Donald Trump’s conduct, if only because he will pardon himself if the public disregards his malfeasance and returns him to the White House. So in the indictment he secured involving Trump’s efforts to reverse his 2020 election defeat, Smith has pulled together a vast array of evidence on an extraordinary series of events with a reasonably simple theme: Trump’s self-conscious lies about what happened in that election.
Trump’s own words are being used against him. Again. We’ve mostly forgotten about the Manhattan hush money case but it’s chugging along. Here’s the latest: The Manhattan district attorney seeking to jail Donald Trump over his hush money payment to a porn star is seeking to potentially weaponize the same piece of damning evidence that nailed the former president at his rape trial: the deposition where he said stars like him get away with sexual harassment “unfortunately—or fortunately.” It’s now up to a federal judge to decide whether those prosecutors can get a video that shows Trump at his worst: unapologetic about sexual assault, uttering misogynistic comments, and willing to lie to the American public to save his own skin. It’s a testament to the breadth of Trump’s legal problems that we’re witnessing the collision of two totally separate cases: a civil defamation case about rape and a criminal case about a cover-up. And it all comes down to a closed-door question-and-answer session Trump had on Oct. 19, 2022.
JV Last at the Bulwark points to a column by Noah Smith, a centrist (ish) economist who just can’t find a good reason to say that the Biden economy is terrible: [H]ere’s economist Noah Smith struggling not to praise Biden—and failing—in a post titled: “If this is a bad economy, please tell me what a good economy would look like.” Here’s Noah again: Smith goes on to give detailed explanations of the employment, inflation, and real income indicators—go read the whole thing—before trying to put Biden’s accomplishment in perspective: While we’re all doing back flips to account for the public’s unrelenting negativity (*cough* the media *cough*) the numbers don’t lie.
Remember this? The Republicans and Fox News are talking about virtually nothing but this story that Hunter Biden put his father on the phone during some dinner parties with his clients. Of course that was influence peddling and it’s always been as shady as it is ubiquitous among wealthy elites. But please. Nobody on the planet ever did it more blatantly than Trump. He refused to divest himself of his international business while he was president and his sons ran the thing! His White House advisor son-in-law delivered to powerful interests in the middle east in exchange for 2 billion dollars to be paid out upon his departure from government. There has never been a more corrupt president in US history. Not even close. Here’s that India story from 2018 in case you forgot: Donald Trump Jr. arrived in India on Tuesday for a week-long visit, and his trip has already revealed a couple of things. First, it’s clear that the Trump administration is still embroiled in huge conflicts of interest. And second, it’s evident that the Trump brand, though toxic at home, commands surprising power in the world’s second most populous country.
He’s not happy…
An old GOP hand on Ron DeSantis Oh my: Last year, longtime Republican strategist Ed Rollins was leading the Ready for Ron PAC, and announcing his plans to help DeSantis — then an undeclared 2024 candidate — take on Trump in the primary. A longtime Trump supporter, Rollins wanted to turn the page on the twice-impeached former president, and he thought DeSantis was the candidate to do it. But in just a few months, that hope vanished. Today, Rollins says he is “not involved” anymore in the pro-DeSantis efforts. “I don’t think it’s the campaign’s fault at all; it’s his,” Rollins tells Rolling Stone. “I think he’s been a very flawed candidate. I know some of the people around him, and some of them are good, talented people. But every time he opens his mouth, he has a tendency to — shall we say — think out-loud, and he clearly doesn’t understand the game. … When you get into these culture wars the way that he has, the vast majority of people don’t understand what they are.