That they are doing this now, of all times, is just outrageous With No Labels launching into high gear, with Joe Manchin playing ‘will-he-or-won’t-he”, it appears that we are going to be dealing with this garbage whether we like it or not. Dan Pfeiffer had a good piece on this : No Labels is officially launching its effort to throw the election to Donald Trump. On Sunday, the centrist group released its policy agenda, which was credulously covered by the New York Times and others. Yesterday, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin and Jon Huntsman Jr., the former Republican Governor of Utah, headlined a high profile town hall in the battleground state of New Hampshire. No Labels raised tens of millions of dollars from billionaires who support Donald Trump on the ballot all across the country. I have written before about how a No Labels candidacy could easily tip the election to Trump, but their policy agenda and yesterday’s event highlight the absolute disingenuous grift at the center of No Labels as an organization and centrism as a political strategy.
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I’m sure you’ve heard by now that RFK Jr made a preposterous claim over the weekend about COVID being a bioweapon designed to spare Jews and Chinese people which has created quite the brouhaha. His family has spoken out against him (again) and he’s tried unsuccessfully to dance his way out of it. (It’s on video.) Joe Perticone at the Bulwark points out that he’s still got some important friends, however: But Kennedy is not without supporters and defenders, and if it seems like most of them are coming from a certain political corner, it’s because that’s exactly what’s happening. The plurality of Kennedy’s maximum contribution donations are coming from Republicans, many of his media appearances are in the conservative space, and he’s about to receive his biggest megaphone yet—from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). This Thursday, Kennedy is scheduled to testify at a hearing hosted by the House Judiciary Committee’s select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government.
If he loses the primary don’t ever think he’ll take his ball and go home I wish I understood what all these Republicans running for president hope to get out of it. It can’t be that they actually believe they are going to win. We know that Donald Trump will never accept that he lost so he will proclaim that the winner stole it from him and many of his followers will believe him and they’ll stay home handing the election to Joe Biden. Remember, he even claimed that Ted Cruz stole the Iowa caucuses in 2016. After first conceding the race he turned around and tweeted: “Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he illegally stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong any [sic] why he got more votes than anticipated. Bad!” He removed the word “illegally” but then followed it up with: He let that go when he started winning primaries but once he got the nomination he famously declared that he would only accept the results of the general election if he won. He did win but he still wasn’t satisfied because he lost the popular vote so within a couple of weeks he was declaring that it was the result of voter fraud.
Philip Bump with a smart take on the DeSantis campaign “retooling” There was California Gov. Pete Wilson in September 1995, who, the Associated Press reported at the time, was heading “into the fall with a new plan to cut costs but without veteran strategist George Gorton” as he sought the Republican presidential nomination. He’d drop out soon after. In June 1999, it was Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) who, according to the Houston Chronicle, “scaled back his [presidential] campaign operation” because of “the difficulties of raising money in a crowded Republican field.” He was out by August. In June 2003, it was Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) who needed to figure out “how to build on the campaign’s fundraising successes while cutting costs,” as the National Journal wrote. He made it to February of the following year. It seems as though there’s a candidate like this in every cycle, the one who jumps into the presidential race only to quickly overextend themselves, demanding a scaling-back of staff even before winter. In 2011 it was Jon Huntsman Jr. In 2015, Jeb Bush. In 2019, Kamala D.
JV Last made an excellent point about the upcoming presidential election: The 2024 election has no modern precedent and this unprecedented difference (1) Is not properly appreciated, and (2) Explains why the race has been so stable. This thing is so obvious that you’re going to dismiss it out of hand. But I want you to work through it with me: No one living has seen an election in which two presidents have run against one another. And that changes everything. Let me explain. What is the fundamental hurdle that every presidential candidate has to overcome? When the voter looks at the candidate, she asks, Can he do the job? That’s it. That’s the big question. And the answer is binary: Voters have to imagine each candidate as the chief executive and decide either, Yes, this person is a plausible president, or No, this person is not up to the office. One of the (many) advantages an incumbent president has is that he has proven that he can do the job. This sword has two edges: An incumbent’s presidential record can be attacked. Some voters may like it. Some may not.
I think you know… No surprise here: A Popular Information analysis of @RobertKennedyJr’s first FEC filing reveals the lion’s share of Kennedy’s biggest donors have PREVIOUSLY DONATED ONLY TO REPUBLICANS Follow along for details. Through 6/30, Kennedy’s campaign has collected the maximum, $6,600, from 96 individuals. 37 individuals have previously only donated to Republican candidates for federal office. Only 19 have a history of consistently supporting Dem candidates Mark Dickson, a Californian who amassed a fortune in the aerospace industry, has donated more than 450K to federal candidates since 2015 The total includes $400,000 to Trump Victory Dickson has NEVER supported a Democrat running for office Until he maxed out to Kennedy Keith Sheldon, a retired car dealership executive from Argyle, Texas, has consistently backed Trump, maxing out in 2016 and 2020. He also donated $2.9K to Herschel Walker. And thousands to House GOP candidates. But nothing to Dems. Until he maxed out to Kennedy. Kennedy has dozens of maxed out donors with similar giving histories. And a much smaller number with a history of donating to Dems.
I know why: sabotaging the Democratic Party is his raison d’etre This No Labels gambit is such utter bullshit I’m hard pressed not to just start screaming into the void. I’ve been watching Joe Lieberman take a wrecking ball to the Democratic Party for decades now and he’s not done yet. In this article in the Atlantic, he insists that he doesn’t want Trump to be the nominee and that he just wants to provide a “moderate” “centrist” option since that’s what he believes everyone in America really wants. But he’s very hard pressed to answer why he is determined to threaten his old friend Joe Biden: Lieberman is clear about his distaste for Trump, but he’s hazier on the question of why—or even whether—Biden has fallen short. He’s said repeatedly that if the choice came down to Biden or Trump, he’d vote for the Democrat, and he speaks affectionately of a man he first met nearly 40 years ago and with whom he served for 20 years in the Senate. Yet he’s still hunting for a better option.
They no longer have any need or desire to be statesmen And, as with everything else, it’s a long, slow evolution that’s been accelerated at warp speed by the presence of Donald Trump in American politics: There are 26 Republican governors. Three of them showed up here this week at the annual summer meeting of the National Governors Association. And of those three, one left after the first night, and another had little choice but to attend — his chairship of the group began at the conclusion of this year’s gathering. Striding the Hard Rock Cafe casino stage like a megachurch pastor, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox used his maiden speech as NGA chair to implore his fellow governors to make the organization a model of robust yet civil debate. “If we’re ever going to find our better angels again, it has to start with us setting the example of how to disagree better,” Cox said. But it’s hard to do much disagreeing, or have a conversation at all, when nobody is listening: Fewer than a half-dozen governors were still in attendance for his remarks Friday, the session’s closing day, and they were all Democrats.
Can he be any more obvious? Is there even one of his supporters who cringes when he transparently sucks up like this? Former President Trump praised the judge overseeing his classified documents case as his legal team seeks a postponement of his trial in Florida. Trump’s motion for a continuance of the trial, filed last Monday, awaits a decision by Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of the former president who presided over his initial challenge to the FBI search of his Florida home. Asked on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News whether he believes the judge will grant the motion, Trump said he did not know. “I know it’s a very highly respected judge. A very smart judge, and a very strong judge,” Trump said. When host Maria Bartiromo noted that Trump appointed the judge in the case, Trump said, “I did, and I’m very proud to have appointed her.” “But she’s very smart and very strong, and loves our country,” Trump said.