Nobody works for DeSantis for long Ron DeSantis is apparently in the process of “re-tooling” his campaign in light of the miserable failure it’s been so far. He’s been burning through money using private planes and using the Four Seasons as his stomping grounds. Now he’s firing staff. None of this comes as any surprise to people who’ve been watching his career from the beginning: [T]he latest staff shakeup isn’t an anomaly within the arc of DeSantis’ career. It’s part of a larger pattern of a politician who has struggled to maintain a core group of trusted advisers or loyal employees. During his five years in Congress, his office had one of the highest turnover rates in the House. No employed member from his victorious 2018 gubernatorial campaign team is working in a senior role on his 2024 presidential race. And things didn’t change when he became governor. In his first term, he fired staffers with enough regularity that some formed an emotional support group, according to a 2021 Politico report.
Uncategorized
SAG-AFTRA, Social Security and solidarity All of us are in a union. The Union of American Taxpayers. Republicans want to take away our benefits the way entertainment companies want to shortchange the writers, actors and crew who create their products. The SAG-AFTRA strike and this from Digby on Sunday brought that home for me: Of course, it’s important to remember that they are completely shameless and will have no problem screaming “liar!” at anyone who suggests they agreed not to cut social security and medicare. But it will still be useful to have this to point out to voters. And, by the way, this fatuous “we’re only cutting it for the young” has never worked in the past and it won’t work in the future. The old people have kids and grand kids to protect and the young aren’t that stupid. Republicans are counting on older Americans not standing in solidarity with the young. Because they wouldn’t. “Everybody in this business is not rich,” said comedian Leslie Jones in an epic Twitter rant about the SAG-AFTRA strike. She was 47 before she made any money in show business.
What will they do now? A Gallup poll relased this month finds shifts in what Americans find “extremely” or “very important” in their lives. In a headline, “America used to have 2 religions: God and money. Only one of them is recruiting followers, and it’s not Jesus,” Forbes’ Chloe Berger reports: Decades ago, money was listed as extremely important to 67% of respondents, whereas religion was only slightly less esteemed, at 65%. Now, money has surged in popularity, described as extremely important to 79% of those surveyed. Religion, on the other hand, has lost traction, as only 58% regarded it as a very important part of their lives. Money increased in value across the board, and was slightly more important for younger generations than baby boomers (increasing by 14% for those aged 18 to 34 and 35 to 54, and only by 10% for those 55 and older). Despite “In God We Trust” appearing on the coins, it’s buying power, not spiritual power, that average Americans value most these days.
Tim Miller with a word for the pundits who think Tim Scott or Nikki Haley are running in a real primary: THERE’S ANOTHER WORLD out there—one that’s better than ours. In this world there are two healthy political parties waging vigorous primary campaigns with vibrant debates between factions and these factions have genuine disagreements over what policies will best serve our fellow Americans. I don’t begrudge anyone aspiring to build such a world. I don’t even begrudge those who have chosen to live in a blissful state of disreality and disconnect from politics entirely, rather than face the Super Not Great world we do live in. But I would expect professional political commentators, and donors shelling out millions in campaign cash, and the political strategists receiving that cash, to live in the real world. Alas this is not the case. Instead we have a heavily capitalized right-wing ecosystem that exists to prop up an imaginary Republican presidential primary so that the participants can feel better about their party identification.
It appears that COVID is not going to be a big issue in the 2024 election and perhaps we should be grateful for that. It was only three years ago that the entire world was in a health crisis the likes of which we hadn’t seen in over a hundred years. In July of 2020 tens of thousands of Americans were dying each day in the first wave of a deadly pandemic and President Donald Trump was all over television alternately telling the people that they could cure themselves with unapproved drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin or telling them that the virus was going away and the economy needed to just open up and carry on as usual. It was a terrifying time and the trauma it caused has been very deep. 1.1 million people have died from COVID in the U.S. so far leaving many more family members and friends dealing with the grief and the loss. It’s only recently that it has felt like the country is getting back to normal with the economy fully recovering and a sense of freedom in our business and social interactions. But we may have changed permanently in some respects and not necessarily for the better.
If Trump wins the WH again, get ready to go backwards Axios reports: A reelected Donald Trump could pull several levers to try and pare back federal policies aimed at speeding the transition to electric vehicles. Why it matters: EVs are becoming more mainstream, but they’re still a small share of U.S. car sales, and President Joe Biden has been keen to juice deployment. Catch up fast: Trump, the GOP frontrunner, released a video late last week that, among other things, bashed EV costs. He vowed to reverse what he called a “ridiculous Green New Deal crusade.” Trump’s seeking auto workers’ votes in competitive states like Michigan, at a time when the United Auto Workers leadership is skittish about EVs. The big picture: It’s hard to see the votes for outright repealing the Democrats’ climate law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, even if Republicans have both chambers of Congress after 2024. Yes, but: Trump would hardly be powerless. Zoom in: His campaign released a list of proposals alongside the video.
Annie Lowrey in the Atlantic had an interesting take on why so many people are unhappy in this booming economy: Dr. Dre on the radio, The Matrix on the big screen, The Sopranos on TV: The year 1999 was wonderful for many reasons, including economic ones. That year, the median household income rose to a record level, a watermark that held for nearly two decades. (The average American family was poorer when Donald Trump was running for office than when Bill Clinton left office.) Wages were growing across the board—all kinds of workers were getting consistent raises. Productivity growth was strong. Wealth inequality was holding steady and far lower than it is today. The poverty rate hit its lowest point in years. I could go on and on with the hard statistics: The share of workers with a college degree was climbing. The homeownership rate was booming. The stock market, booming. Consumer confidence was the highest it has ever been. The share of people employed was the highest it has ever been. Investor optimism was the highest it has ever been.
It’s even worse than we knew Rolling Stone catches up with more Jason Aldean racism: JUST WHEN YOU thought there couldn’t possibly be anymore dog whistles embedded in the Jason Aldean “Try That in a Small Town” saga, an intrepid, sharp-eyed TikTok user has potentially picked out one more. Amazingly, this incident doesn’t involve the song itself, or even its controversial video — part of which was reportedly filmed outside a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, the site of a 1933 lynching (and features a surprising amount of footage from Canada). Rather, it involves a promotional video shared on TikTok. It’s a largely innocuous lyric video with a newspaper theme, but as TikTok user Danny Collins discovered, there’s an actual old newspaper clipping featured in the video — and it’s tied to a Jim Crow-era story about a writer who was harassed for fighting segregation and white supremacy. @dannyfcollins Thank you to my followers who tag me. All I’m saying is lets get real. To everyone supporting Jason Aldean what else do you need to see or hear? Accept accountability and do better.
This is from Axios the font of all beltway CW. It’s about time: Republicans are hammering “Joe Biden’s America” as a land of rising violent crime, surging immigration and out of control inflation, but there’s just one problem: the numbers are starting to move in the opposite direction. The big picture: With 2024 around the corner, the U.S. is making measurable progress in the areas where Biden has been most vulnerable to GOP attacks. Violent crime surged in U.S. cities during the pandemic and ranked as a top concern for voters in the 2022 midterms. Republicans slammed Biden and Democratic leaders for rising crime rates, and many Democrats started embracing a more centrist approach to policing. Homicides were down 9% in the first half of this year over the same period last year, according to a study of 37 major cities from the Council on Criminal Justice. State of play: Violent crime rates are generally down across the board, thought they’re still higher than 2019 levels.
Why small is still beautiful Tripp Narup ran for and lost a state senate seat in red, red Iowa. As a Democrat. Because the last time he’d voted in Iowa’s 9th district there was no one for him to vote for. Narup tells Salon’s Kirk Swearingen that only 17% of voters are registered Democrats in that southwest Iowa district. He tells Salon: After losing spectacularly for the Senate, I have now started a PAC to raise money to support (as yet undetermined) candidates to run for four [state] House seats and one open Senate seat. The plan is to raise $2,000 per candidate as an enticement to get someone to step up and run. Any additional money will be used to run ads pointing out the many sins of our current state senators representatives. Now this may strike you as small potatoes (these are farming districts, after all), but my whole campaign cost less than $6,000 and I paid for a third of it. “Big campaign money” around here is $10,000 or so. (In farm terms, that’s about 7 cows.) Compared to big-city politics, this is quaint and kind of endearing.