‘Nuff said (h/t M.E.) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.
Uncategorized
I’ve written before that I suspect this ongoing discontent with “the economy” actually stood in for something else: It was the age thing. That’s all it was. Oh, and by the way, inflation numbers came in today lower than expected. Sorry Donnie: Whatever that panic was last week seems to have been a bit …. uhm premature. Update: How about this? All that’s changed is that one of the old guys withdrew.
He’s their role model This piece by Josh Kovensky at Talking Points memo is a must read if you hope to understand where the right is going — with or without Trump: The American right’s love affair with Hungary seemingly knows no bounds. Hungarian officials appear at GOP events; CPAC has a Budapest event. Hungarian President Viktor Orbán met with Donald Trump last month, and earned a dilatory shoutout from the Republican candidate at the RNC, where Trump called Hungary a “strong country, run by very powerful, tough leaders — a tough guy.” But if the strength is the draw, then how did Orbán become a strongman? What is it about Orbán that right-wingers are supporting when they say that they like what he’s done in Hungary? TPM spoke with Zsuzsanna Szelényi, a former Hungarian MP who recently wrote a book, Tainted Democracy, about Orbán’s rise to power and the crackdown that followed. Szelényi was once a member of Orbán’s political party, Fidesz, in the early 1990s, before leaving as the party grew more conservative, and eventually founding her own opposition party in 2012.
I’ve noticed an interesting if subtle choice of words in Walz’s commentary. He frequently invokes the phrase “the democracy.” This is noticeable for two reasons. First, since the rise of Trump, liberals and progressives of all stripes have resorted to the phrase “our democracy.” I’ve never liked it. It’s cringey and sanctimonious. It has the air of a fetish, as if democracy were a possession, like a precious ring or family heirloom. Democracy is not a possession; it’s a prospect and a process, a condition to be fought for, perpetually. Second, during the early half of the nineteenth century, democracy was frequently called “the democracy.” As if it were a threatening animal, which it was. It was initially the term […]
MAGA goes back to the drawing board So the whole fake electors and Green Bay Sweep did not work as Trumplandia planned for overturning the will of the voters in 2020. And since the coup plan counted heavily on Republicans holding the vice presidency, and since Congress reformed the 1887 Electoral Count Act in 2022 to prevent a recurrence, the enemies of democracy went back to the drawing board for 2024. Sure, red-state legislators have since erected every new hurdle to voting they could conjure and pass. But what’s a MAGA Republican to do if troublesome citizens still manage to muster enough votes to elect a Democrat and not Donald Trump to the White House in 2024? Monkey-wrench election certification, that’s what. As a Rolling Stone investigation explained, “in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania . . . at least 70 pro-Trump election conspiracists currently working as county election officials” stand ready to question “the validity of elections” and to delay or refuse to certify results as mandated by law.
Now get to work This time next Sunday, I’ll be in Chicago as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention. Don’t expect to see much from me in this space for a few days. At a dinner last night, several people asked if I’m excited. I disappointed them. Not really. I’m more about the business than the hoopla. When returns come in on Election Night and our candidates win, others pump their fists, scream and jump. I go quiet so I can savor the moment and a job well done. To each their own. For now, savor this. Then get to work. And this. “Some are calling our rally the largest in Arizona political campaign history,” the Harris campaign tweeted. “At some point media is going to notice that for once a major political party delivered what people really, really wanted and in doing so, ignited a civic renaissance just in time to save American democracy,” added strategist Rachel Bitecofer. This has got to be ominous for Arizona Republicans, and Republicans elsewhere. But don’t get cocky.
As you have probably heard, Trump mixed up Brown with another Black California politician named Nate Holden who was from LA and had nothing to do with Kamala Harris. He has memory issues.
The Trump campaign says that it was hacked by what they suspect were foreign agents agents. The hacked emails were sent to Politico and The Washington Post which decided not to publish them. You read that right. They received hacked documents from suspect origins which have been authenticated by the campaign itself and they are choosing not to publish. Can you see the problem here? Will Bunch said it so succinctly I have no need to go further: The hot mess that was the political media in 2016 continues to slime America 8 years later In 2016, there was no reasoned debate about the ethics of publishing Russian-hacked documents. Not that it’s not a tough call, morally — but the debate wasn’t even held. The documents were just published without any thought. Only after the election did anyone wonder so much regard was given to the (mostly inconsequential) leaks and so little to shockingly illegal methods to obtain them. So now.. I’d agree Politico and other news media are technically correct to consider the source and the motive before deciding whether or what to publish.
The training videos The Heritage Foundation published their 900 page plan to create a fascist state some time ago. But one of the primary purpose of the project and the Heritage Foundation itself is to train operatives to carry out their plans. This time, in order to hit the ground running, they are already drawing up lists of people to fill all the jobs left open after their planned purge of the Executive Branch and have a full transition and first 100 days battle plan which they have assiduously avoided making public. And they have been “training” people for months, including some of the people at the center of Trump’s inner circle. Pro-Publica got a hold of some of the training videos: ProPublica and Documented obtained more than 14 hours of never-before-published videos from Project 2025’s Presidential Administration Academy, which are intended to train the next conservative administration’s political appointees “to be ready on day one.” Project 2025, the controversial playbook and policy agenda created by the Heritage Foundation and its allies for a future conservative presidential administration, has lost its director.
I’m not one to quote Maureen Dowd but when she’s right, she’s right: From the first time I went on an exploratory political trip with Trump in 1999, he has measured his worth in numbers. His is not an examined life but a quantified life. When I asked him why he thought he could run for president, he cited his ratings on “Larry King Live.” He was at his most animated reeling off his ratings, like Faye Dunaway in “Network,” orgasmically reciting how well her shows were doing. He pronounced himself better than other candidates because of numbers: the number of men who desired his then-girlfriend, Melania Knauss; the number of zoning changes he had maneuvered to get; the number of stories he stacked on his building near the U.N.; the number of times he was mentioned in a Palm Beach newspaper. By his mode of valuation, if his numbers aren’t better than his rivals’, he’s worthless. That’s why Trump is always obsessing on his crowd numbers and accusing the press of lowballing head counts. And that’s why he couldn’t admit he lost the election.