Actually there's a number of t-shirts, but THIS one just "pops" don't it!!!
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| I think that's Biden's aviator sunglasses y'all |
So it's on sale at Etsy. Click on that link. No excuses. GO. BUY IT! IT EVEN COMES IN CHAMBRAY!!!
...that's "light blue" to you peeps.
BALLZ TO THE WALZ, AMERICA!
LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO! GET THE VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS!
Suck it, trump. Back to the couch for you, Vance.
I said this earlier about the importance of making a Vice Presidential pick for your campaign: Your pick sets the tone.
So the tone Kamala Harris set for the Democratic Party by selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate is this:
BALLZ TO THE WALZ, BABY.
What? It's a perfectly cromulent phrase from my youth as a suburban white punk. It means to "go all out," to blitz, to push forward with great force, to fight and not stop until the fight is done. Learned it in middle school, said it through high school, and then didn't really say it much in college because the study load was a bit fatiguing.
I am awaiting the inevitable t-shirt from Etsy, by the by.
The Balloon Juice community is all aflutter, as are my folks from the TNC Horde. To get a sense of why, here's Russell Berman at the Atlantic (paywalled) to explain it some:
In the realm of presidential politics, progressives have become accustomed to disappointment. Joe Biden wasn’t their first (or second) choice in 2020. Nor, for that matter, was Kamala Harris. And Democratic nominees typically pick moderates for their running mates. So when Harris announced Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her choice for vice president this morning, progressives experienced an unusual feeling: elation...
Progressives had latched onto Walz’s dark-horse candidacy over the past two weeks, seeing him as a more appealing option, both ideologically and politically, than Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, whom many believed to be the front-runner. Walz, a former teacher and high-school football coach, impressed liberals with his governing success in Minnesota, where he’s signed legislation enacting paid family leave, expanding the child-tax credit, protecting abortion rights, and lowering the cost of insulin. More recently—and perhaps more important—he charmed them with his folksy takedowns on cable news of Donald Trump and J. D. Vance.
“He’s just plainspoken and direct, and he’s very funny,” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served with Walz in the House, told me. “He’s got the common touch, and I think it’s an ingenious choice.”
In Walz, progressives believe they have found a Democrat who can connect with rural and white working-class voters in the crucial battlegrounds of the Midwest without compromising on the party’s policy platform. “He’s the anti-elite candidate. He comes across as the Everyman,” Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of the progressive group Our Revolution, told me this morning. He called Walz “a perfect counterbalance” to Harris, whom Republicans have tried to portray as, in his words, “an out-of-touch California elite...”
Harris’s announcement drew praise across a wide ideological spectrum, from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. In the final days leading up to the selection, however, the largely behind-the-scenes contest between Walz and Shapiro had become a stand-in for larger Democratic fights that the party’s embrace of Harris had otherwise suppressed. The proxy war dismayed some party allies, who urged progressives to stop their attacks on Shapiro. “It’s a false binary,” Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, told me. She said that although she was “ecstatic” about the choice of Walz, she would have been just as happy if Harris had picked Shapiro or any of the other finalists, including Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky...
Harris' selection of a popular regional governor does more than just help lock in Minnesota: Walz's brand of Democratic politics has the means to appeal across the entire Rust Belt (every state in the Great Lakes region) that can provide the same electoral appeal that Shapiro or Beshear (or Gretchen Whitmer from Michigan) could have provided.
But with Walz you get a little more: Someone with a personal narrative - he and his wife used In-Vitro to have children, for example - in clear opposition to the fearmongering hypocrisy that trump's presidential ticket is offering to voters. He's not only been a soldier - 24 years of National Guard service in the artillery, putting in the years most other political wannabes would shrug off - but also a high school social sciences teacher and football coach. Someone who would be a key figure in any small town community across America.
And while he was a high school football coach - leading his team to the state finals, no less - he took the time to become the faculty advisor of that school's first Gay/Straight Alliance student group. This is one of many reasons why progressives are elated: Walz is Pro-People, has been since even before Obama and Biden stood public for gay marriage.
Where trump's pick of Vance doubled down on trump's open hostility towards immigrants, women, blacks, gays, trans, and young people, Harris' pick of Walz doubled down on getting a candidate who's eager and grinning from ear to ear and willing to work on solving problems instead of making things worse.
Balls to the walls, guys. Let's get the vote out for Dems this year.
Vanz can't dance, but he'll steal your money/
Watch him or he'll rob you blind...
-- John Fogerty, "Vanz Kant Danz"
(and I'm not the only one who thought of this song when JD Vance got picked for trump's Veep)
It's taken me awhile to write about donald trump's Vice Presidential selection of Senator JD Vance for his 2024 ticket, but in the few weeks that Vance has been on that ticket it's become hilariously - and horrifyingly - clear that picking Vance was a bad idea.
Given trump's previous history with his Veep - trying to bully Pence into throwing the election results in 2020 to the point of sending an insurrectionist mob at him - it was a bit sad to see other Republican figures audition themselves on Fox Not-News for the 2024 ticket, but there was nothing you could do dissuade them. DeSantis, Tim Scott, Doug (seriously, North Dakota?) Burgum, all of them made their daily talking head shows to argue their own submission to trump's will; but none of them pandered - attacking Ukraine, praising Russia, showcasing misogyny - like Vance did.
Thing is, when trump picked Vance - or had others pick him, depending on the story - he didn't do a good enough job of finding out if Vance would boost the ticket or not.
For all I've said about the need for Vice Presidents, as long as that office is part of the electoral process it matters that you choose wisely. A Presidential candidate choosing his/her campaign partner is signaling to voters what he/she values as skills for those who will work in their potential administration. If you're a domestic policy guru, tagging someone with foreign policy cred helps win over the voting base (definitely the punditry) that you'll balance out your agenda. If you're a Moderate from the Midwest, it helps to get a more die-hard candidate from another region (South, Pacific, Northeast) to appease the other party factions (and vice versa). And no matter what, you have to make sure the VP choice has their own charisma or credibility (just not too much to outshine the boss) to win over the mainstream media.
In short: Your Veep pick sets the tone.
What trump and his handlers found out real quick post-convention was that Vance - for all that he's known at the state and federal level of politics- is tone-deaf. And more unpopular than anyone - other than several polling services who were firing off emergency flares - realized.
Let's hear it from Nicholas Liu at Salon:
Senator JD Vance, R-Ohio, is making history as Donald Trump's 2024 running mate, but not in the way that the Trump campaign had hoped. According to a CNN survey taken after the Republican National Convention, Vance has an approval rating of -6 points, making him the first vice presidential nominee to enter the general election with a negative rating since 1980.
The average rating for a running mate after a party convention has been +19 points.
"Frankly, I don't really understand the pick, and apparently neither do the American voters," CNN data analyst Harry Enten said on Tuesday's OutFront with Erin Burnett. Vance, he said, is "dragging Trump down..."
With Trump struggling to appeal to moderate women, the former president may rue choosing a man who ran for Senate on a hardline anti-abortion stance, criticized childcare subsidies as "class war against normal people" and suggested that married women would be selfish for divorcing their abusive husbands, saying in 2021 that "one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace" was "making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear...”
Even Vance's purported appeal among white working-class voters appears overstated. He won Ohio in his 2022 Senate election by 6 points; by comparison, Trump won by 8 points in 2020 and Gov. Mike DeWine carried the state in 2022 by 25 points. Among white voters without a college degree, Vance, with a 31-point lead over Democrat Tim Ryan, also lagged behind Trump and DeWine, who won by 36 and 45 points respectively...
I've talked before about how at the state level, a candidate can overcome personal faults to win election all because the partisan nature of local elections make it too easy to win no matter what. Ohio could have run a dead dog for the Senate back in 2022, and that poor mutt could have beaten Tim Ryan by double digits. Vance arguably eked by at 6 percent.
And trump picked a guy with negative popularity at the national level, something that hadn't happened since 1980 (was that Bush the Elder?). For a campaign that's supposed to be tracking every favorable poll to feed trump's vanity, how did they mess that up?
Think back to some of the, ahem, more questionable Veep picks we've seen.
Sarah Palin? She had a positive boost - and genuinely gave McCain and the GOP a healthy poll bounce - coming out of the convention before her appearances and interviews quickly exposed her as a near-illiterate self-absorbed fool before the November election. Joe Lieberman? In terms of polling and voter turnout, Lieberman mattered little to how Gore performed: However, Lieberman's more conservative stances turned off the more progressive Dem voters which hurt the eventual turnout (the same might be said for Hillary's VP pick Kaine). Dan Quayle? The jokes about him started flying the moment he was tabbed, but even then he brought enough positives to the table that his polling wasn't as bad as Vance.
In each of their cases, there were valid reasons at the time for their picks that did help balance the ticket - geographically, demographically, ideologically - even as those picks ended up hurting or negating the overall effort. The same can't be said for Vance: He mimics trump's ideology to a horrifying tee, and he doesn't appeal to the youth demographics of Millennials or Generation X. He only fulfills a geographic necessity by being from a Midwest (Rust Belt) state, and that will get negated by whomever Kamala picks as her running mate (especially if it's a Rust Belt figure like Walz, Beshear, or Shapiro).
Vance is standing on the national stage with little in the way of genuine charisma or likeability. One of the new breed of Culture War Republicans who attack often and impress rarely, he's demonstrated a shocking ability to alienate people in a heartbeat even among his own Far Right audiences. His anti-immigrant and "DEI" stances - and eagerness to attack a biracial opponent like Kamala Harris - are hard to reconcile with the fact Vance married an Indian (Asian) American woman (where Kamala is Jamaican-Indian (Asian) with a similar background). And Vance's views on women? "Misogynistic" is the nicest word you can say about that.
As Paige Oamek at the New Republic notes in her article title, "Everyone Hates JD":
Just when J.D. Vance thought his polling numbers couldn’t get worse, they have.
Vance’s net negative favorability rating was a major topic of discussion during a Tuesday night CNN roundtable. According to this week’s ABC News/IPSOS polling, Donald Trump’s running mate is polling at a staggeringly low minus 15 points.
It's like watching the rushing numbers by UMass' football team get worse every drive they play against Georgia's defense.
During the CNN segment, former South Carolina state Representative Bakari Sellers called Vance “the Sarah Palin of Dan Quayles.” But as Enten pointed out last week, both former vice presidential picks began with positive favorability ratings: Quayle with 15 points and Palin with 26 points.
“He is historically unpopular, even more so than V.P. nominees who of course went on to infamy,” Enten said of the Ohio Republican.
Vance also won’t be saved by his home state or by the Rust Belt, where last week he polled even worse at minus 16 points, according to a CNN/SSRS poll, with 44 percent of people saying they have an unfavorable view of the senator...
When I noted earlier how intraparty dynamics would give Vance a chance to survive in Ohio, now that he's a candidate on the national level that state-level partisanship won't be able to help him (this is what Scott Walker and Jeb Bush and Rick Perry and other milquetoast candidates found out long ago).
Vance is so unlikeable he's vulnerable to that most dreaded of political attacks, the Whisper Campaign.
Someone off in the far corners of social media posted a joke rumor - completely unfounded and without direct evidence - that JD Vance wrote a scene in his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy - by the way the "memoir" turned out to be exaggeration at best and deplorable at worst - having sex with a couch. The joke spread quickly on Twitter to where the AP Newswire had to publish a report calling the story "false"... but then retracted that report because of the slight possibility that Vance could have engaged in that act anyway the editors claimed it wasn't vetted properly.
As Zachary Folk covered at the Daily Beast (paywalled):
The anonymous poster who started the viral—but false—rumor that Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance had sex with a couch said he came up with the smear while shopping at a grocery store. The viral post’s author, who only identified himself as “Rick,” gave his first interview to Business Insider on Tuesday, telling the publication the joke came from “a place of irreverence if not outright disrespect.” The viral tweet has since attracted the attention of late night hosts, Fox News talking heads, and even Vice President Harris’ campaign. Rick said he has since protected his account and changed his Twitter handle to avoid unwanted attention. He also said he did not intend to spread misinformation, but instead simply wanted mock the Republican candidate...
Since then, while the mainstream media tried to keep away from it everyone else went all-in on the "couchfucker" mockery. Why is this joke proving so harmful to Vance?
Because being this unlikeable already didn't provide Vance with enough popular support to laugh off or shrug away the insult. Just looking at Vance - his physical appearance is just on the wrong side of being creepy, his hateful demeanor that just advertises "messed-up psychology," the general vibe of being weird - makes it more believable to the general population that this is a guy who would do something tawdry with your living room sofa.
Any stand-up comedian - or wannabe who did the Open Mic nights in South Florida back in the 1990s, ahem - can tell you this: When the majority of people are laughing at you instead of with you, you're screwed.
Rumors are now swirling that trump has soured on Vance already (don't forget, trump is a Bad Boss who will kick you to the street curb once he thinks you're no longer useful) while other party leaders are discussing how to remove Vance from the ticket. Problem is, replacing a ticket partner at this stage of the election is dicey at best (and that's just the paperwork you need to refill). The last time a Vice Presidential candidate got replaced mid-campaign was Eagleton back in 1972, and all that did was confirm that McGovern's campaign was in utter chaos and led to one of the biggest Electoral College defeats in history (that fact gets diminished with how Nixon's campaign unleashed massive sabotage and trickery against the Democrats when the facts of Watergate went public).
trump can't afford to dump Vance even at this early stage of the final leg of the 2024 election cycle. trump can't afford to keep Vance because the way things are going JD is going to make Sarah Palin look like Margaret Thatcher.
This needs to be a warning to the American voting public at large: trump has no idea how to pick competent people to work for him. The Republicans don't have any competent or quality candidates to choose from anymore. For the LOVE OF GOD, don't vote trump/Vance this 2024, or for any other Republican hack ready and willing to destroy everything America stands for.
And in the meantime, ScotchGard your ottomans!
By appearing for an interview at the NABJ conference in Chicago this Wednesday just to use his time to attack Kamala Harris' ethnicity and mock not only the attendees but every honest American watching at home, trump got exactly what he thinks he wanted: Not only did trump get his fearmongering racist bullshit out there in the national dialogue for his racist voting base to lap up, he got to present himself as a "victim" of a hostile and angry audience so that he can justify further attacks against Kamala Harris as well as everyone supporting her.
As I mentioned in my previous post, trump and his Republican handlers seem to think that attacking their opponent's very existence is a winning move, when history proved that the same tactics applied to Barack Obama never worked at all as he won decisive majorities in 2008 and 2012.
Okay, that's two sentences three sentences on this topic, but it had to be said.
Update: YES I KNOW this is going to be more than one sentence, but the Psy Of Life blogger CalicoJack goes into a more thorough review of trump's racist actions and intent, and it a must-read.
Revolution doesn't have to do with smashing something; it has to do with bringing something forth. If you spend all your time thinking about that which you are attacking, then you are negatively bound to it. You have to find the zeal in yourself and bring that out.
-- Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation
Some thoughts I'm trying to put together over the past week since Biden dropped from the race and threw his support to Kamala Harris.
The quick shift between Biden to Harris was like a seismic turnaround. Where there had been guarded hope among the Biden supporters - shaken by the poor debate performance this June - there is unabashed enthusiasm now among the Democratic and Left-leaning voting base.
Within a day of the announcement that Biden was stepping aside in the campaign and throwing all his support to his Vice President, fundraising for Kamala went through the roof setting records throughout the week (via Aamer Madhani and Bill Barrow at AP News):
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has raised $200 million since she emerged as the likely Democratic presidential nominee last week, an eyepopping haul in her race against the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.
The campaign, which announced its latest fundraising total on Sunday, said the bulk of the donations — 66% — comes from first-time contributors in the 2024 election cycle and were made after President Joe Biden announced his exit from the race and endorsed Harris.
Over 170,000 volunteers have also signed up to help the Harris campaign with phone banking, canvassing and other get-out-the-vote efforts. Election Day is 100 days away.
“The momentum and energy for Vice President Harris is real — and so are the fundamentals of this race: this election will be very close and decided by a small number of voters in just a few states,” Michael Tyler, the campaign’s communications director, wrote in a memo...
Another thing that Biden's announcement did was undercut any momentum trump and the Republicans were hoping to get out of their just-finished convention in Milwaukee (which had turned into a rather dull, alienating affair). Instead of talking about trump's pick of JD Vance for his Veep, instead of talking about trump's bravado over surviving an assassination attempt... The mainstream media had focused on all the increased interest in Kamala (or worse, focused on how bad a pick Vance is turning into. But that's another story...)
As part of the fundraising pace, more and more social-media driven events crowded the attention. A "White Women for Kamala" Zoom call turned out 100,000 viewers and literally broke the chat app. Other Zoom events fed off the momentum of that, leading up to one that even I - and my cats - could partake: White Dudes for Kamala.
Childless Cat Guy ready for #whitedudesforharris pic.twitter.com/ODQCV0RnBa
— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) July 29, 2024
Jeff Bridges showed up! THE DUDE HIMSELF, AND HE ABIDES.
Luke Skywalker showed up. Every Democratic White Male - vying for the Veep spot - showed up. My cat Ocean rested on the sofa - or was trying to protect it from Vance (again, another story) - and watched alongside me.
Even the cats - and the hoomans they own - are excited in the shift towards Kamala as the Democratic standard bearer.
All that said, with all this zeal and raised hopes for the Democratic ticket, the realities of the campaign are still here.
Voter turnout is everything. The good thing about the Kamala Bump is how this excitement will get not only the Democratic base turning up at the polls in November, but also the undecideds and waverers who are no longer distracted by the "Biden's too old" hammering the GOP was inflicting on the national psyche.
This shift has noticeably caught the Republicans off-balance. Everything they've done since 2020 to negate any appeal for Biden has been for nothing. The grandstanding and impeachment threats from the GOP-controlled House since 2023 has turned into a meaningless joke. The one thing the Far Right had as an attack on Joe was his age: Now that becomes a liability for an obviously elderly, cranky, ill-looking, dementia-driven trump.
The Republicans will clearly stay on the attack, but the messaging is going to be so obvious and grating it ought to alienate any remaining Independent and undecided voters they needed to draw in. The wingnut media is already going after Kamala's birth status, trying to rehash the Birther conspiracy nonsense they tried against Obama. But it never worked against Obama in the first place.
They'll also try attacking Harris for her gender, bringing out the worst of the Far Right misogyny already on display with the GOP attacks on abortion rights, birth control, and women's roles in the workplace. They'll try all the stuff they used on Hillary Clinton back in 2016, dragging out all the fearmongering towards feminism they know to use. But Kamala isn't Hillary: Where the Beltway Media spent decades since 1992 turning Hillary into a hated figure on the national stage, Kamala doesn't have that disadvantage. Harris' favorables are already well above the dismal numbers Hillary had that reduced voter turnout for her.
That was the thing in 2016: Clinton won the popular vote, but not by much, and had lost voters in key battleground states to where the Electoral College flipped to trump. Hillary's unpopularity in those states - driven by constant negative reporting by the media - were her undoing.
Kamala Harris doesn't have that disadvantage: For all the noise the GOP can bring to the table, there are no realistic scandals to hit Harris with. Her dating life 20 years ago is already well-known and unrelated to her current situation as a happily-married wife. The Republicans can't effectively go after her history as a state prosecutor or State Attorney General without undermining their own (false) Law And Order ideology. They'll accuse her of being a "San Francisco Socialist" but that doesn't have much appeal outside of the already-rabid MAGA base.
All said, the enthusiasm - the zeal - for the Democratic voter base is truly alit and gaining momentum by the hour.
It's all a question now of getting voter turnout for the Democrats across all 50 states to make any attempts by trump and his cronies to steal the results impossible to pull off.
GET THE VOTE OUT FOR HARRIS, AMERICA. Your cats demand it.
Welp. I got word back from the judges at the FWA Royal Palm Literary panels.
All four submissions I put in for Non-Fiction: Blogging/Article did NOT make the Semifinalist cut this year.
After the high of winning a Gold for last year, striking out this year just hurts.
I wasn't in a good mental place since last week. This isn't helping.
...if y'all can get 500,000 people to buy my ebooks, that would be great.
/sigh
Just need to take a quick break. I may come back and blog pretty soon, but my head and soul are not in good places right now.
So I woke up today to this stuff getting posted in Bluesky Social, but because I haven't figured out how to embed those posts into this blog I went to Twitter (fuck you, Elon, it's not X) to do this:
Aaron Sorkin published an op-ed in NYT this morning that calls on Democrats to nominate a Republican in place of Pres. Biden next month at the convention, specifically Mitt Romney. For real. Don't click on it. Don't read it. I promise you ain't missing anything.
— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) July 21, 2024
Parody has died. pic.twitter.com/Ricu3sjIJE
"I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS" times infinity.
It case the tweet goes bad, I screen-captured:
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| This? This is what you get when you think quoting the HMS Pinafore all the time makes you smart. |
I did read it just to see if it's as bad as Clymer says, and Gods yes it's terrible. Sorkin's idea of a unity candidate is - get this - going for a Republican candidate... Mitt Romney.
MITT FCKING ROMNEY?!
Not only is it offensive to suggest the Democrats have to roll over and take a REPUBLICAN on their ticket, but to go with Romney whose sole objective running - and losing - in 2012 was to get a massive tax cut for the rich. Never mind the reality that Mitt is opposed to most things - unions, abortion rights, immigration reform - that the Democratic voting base supports. It's like these so-called "liberal elites" - the pundits, the "actively engaged" celebrities, who are pulling in six-figure incomes where the rest of us are struggling around $35k a year to survive - don't give a damn about the millions of primary voters who happily re-nominated their incumbent President for a second go.
So here I was for most of the morning, putting this blog article together to tear Sorkin a new one when by 1:00 PM... everything changed.
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024
I had to go off to one side and rant for a couple hours after that bombshell. I've calmed a little, but I'm still at the LIVID stage.
Livid and angry towards the goddamned Beltway media - especially that godforsaken rag the New York Times - that were beating the drums to get Biden to drop out. Angry at the Right-of-Center Democrats like Joe Manchin kneecapping any party unity that was needed for the upcoming convention this August. Well, congratulations you sons of bitches, you got your scalp.
If there is any good news from this announcement, it's that Biden openly supports his Vice President Kamala Harris to take over the campaign for him. Running now on their administration's legacy of job growth, infrastructure investment, debt forgiveness for tens of thousands of Americans, and financial reforms. Harris in particular has been touring the nation campaigning against the Dobbs ruling and the Republicans who are working to deny women their basic rights (not just abortion but their right to divorce, their right to work, their right to get education, their right to live).
But those buzzards are still circling. The likes of David Axelrod are complaining that Harris didn't get "vetted" by the primaries - ignoring that she was part of Biden's ticket at the time, and that she's got years of experience in the Executive branch already - and are demanding "an open convention" where the goddamned special interest factions - backed by billionaires that had been funding this anti-Biden effort - will try their best to return to the "smoke-filled backrooms" of power brokering to force an unpalatable pro-business / anti-tax candidate on the Democratic base.
At a moment when the Democratic Party needs to unite behind a standard bearer - be it Biden or be it Harris - we still have these corrupted factions still looking to sabotage it all and let the likes of trump and his Republican hacks steal their way back into the White House.
Goddamn them.
This is an open call to every Democratic and Independent voter I know. Ignore the haters. Focus on what matters. The Democratic Party is the one thing standing for our American democrat-republic institutions and way of life. We got 81 million people to vote for Biden and Harris in 2020 and we can do that again for Harris and whomever she picks to stand as her Vice President.
We need to stand for women's rights, we need to stand for the good jobs at good wages Biden and the Democrats have brought to us, we need to stand for a future where the uber-rich oligarchs don't decide our fates, we do.
For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY, do NOT vote for that convicted felon and sex offender donald trump. Do NOT vote for the Republican Party that has surrendered to his greed and his Id.
Elections always matter. Get the vote out for Harris and the Democratic Party across every seat across every county across every state.
Do not let Joe Biden down, people. He's counting on US to secure his administration's legacy.
Update: What, NOW Sorkin regrets his bullshit?!?! /rage
Jesus. Even in the moment of donald trump's self-crowning - with an oversized bandage on his ear and every lapdog at his feet - at an overtly racist and sexist RNC, the Democratic Party cannot get out of their own way.
WaterGirl over at Balloon Juice is feeling the same frustration I am about the Dem party leadership buying into the mainstream media freakout and getting caught in more rumor-mongering to force Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 re-election bid:
I am heartsick at the spiraling anxiety, and angry at the own-goals. This madness needs to stop – if not in the media, then at least in Balloon Juice threads that I put up.
So until something changes, this will be my last post related to “Biden, will he or won’t he, should he or shouldn’t he”.
We are wasting so much time and energy on this, at a time when there is so much work to be done. There is so much work to be done. So much work, and so little time.
I’m sure there will still be plenty of Balloon Juice threads where anyone who wants to can continue to endlessly hash this out, with both sides endlessly repeating the same things, over and over, sincere people and trolls, alike. But I’m done. And I’m pretty sure the other side is laughing...
This panic - which echoes a lot of the Dem panic from 2004 when they worried Howard Dean was more vulnerable than John Kerry all because Karl Rove made them second-guess themselves - isn't doing them any favors. It's feeding into the Beltway narrative of "Dems In Disarray" and is going to upset / discourage millions of primary voters who already sided with Biden as their choice.
If anybody is thrilled to the idea of an "open convention" this August, please punch yourself in the face. This 2024 primary season didn't present the party with any strong alternatives to Biden, and such a convention between up-and-comers like Governors Newsom or Whitmer or some third person suddenly flush with questionable dark money will turn bloody and divisive, which once again favors the goddamn trumpsters.
Anybody thinking that things will get easier if Biden steps aside for his Vice President Kamala Harris need to remember just how racist the mainstream media let the Republicans play it when it was Obama as the candidate in 2008 and 2012, and will just as easily allow trump and his cohort to attack Harris over the same goddamn racist dog-whistles bullhorns. And Harris is going to face the same kind of sexism that Hillary faced in 2016, by the same mainstream media that cannot overcome their own misogyny when dealing with "ambitious women" as candidates. You know how many reporters are itching to jump on the stories that came out during 2020 about the bad blood within Harris' primary campaign back then, eager to pull that same shit if she becomes the ticket headliner?
We've gotten 81 million voters to side with Biden in 2020 and a supermajority (90 percent or more) of primary voters to stick with Biden against the likes of Dean Phillips (a conservative congresscritter who got talked into undermining party incumbancy), and yet the Democratic party leadership is getting brow-beaten by a hostile Beltway media desperate to keep their horserace and "Dems in Disarray" narratives going until November.
There's a reason why I've got "Democrats Are Cowards" as a blog label, and you're watching it as it happens. Goddamn them.
Man up. Support Biden, here and NOW. Get the vote out. Get those 81 million voters back. Get every man and woman who supports abortion rights. Get every man and woman who opposes even one tidbit of that hideous Project 2025 agenda. Get every American voting for a unified Democratic Party.
For the LOVE OF GOD. Turning on each other now does not help.
Dear America: I am so sorry I jinxed it.
I wrote this back in February:
We've had other corrupt men in high office before, just that none of them reached the criminal lows that trump has. trump's not facing criminal trials because he's a "great conservative American," he's facing criminal trials now because 40 years of bills over his bullshit are finally coming due.
The civil trials are mostly done, and trump has to pay those dues soon. The criminal trials start March, and the countdown to just even ONE felony conviction begins.
Tick fucking tock, trump.
While the criminal trial regarding hush money and election interference in Manhattan happened and trump answered for that (so far), the other three trials got hit with delays and more delays - trump's favorite legal tactic - to where trump can gamble on lying/cheating/stealing his way into the White House and claim Presidential Immunity (as this corrupt SCOTUS intends it).
And today, trump's run for the Mexican Border for the Presidency got a lot sweeter when his judge Aileen Cannon - there is no other way to describe her - dismissed the Mar-A-Lago classified documents case on the argument that the special counsel overseeing it is unconstitutional (via Carrie Johnson at NPR):
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has dismissed the classified documents case against former President Donald Trump in an order Monday morning over the manner in which special counsel Jack Smith was appointed.
“The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution,” wrote Judge Cannon, who was appointed to the bench by the former president.
Special counsel Jack Smith had contested this argument, and other federal courts had upheld the constitutionality of special counsels.
“None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment…gives the Attorney General broad inferior-officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by Special Counsel Smith," Cannon wrote. "Nor do the Special Counsel’s strained statutory arguments, appeals to inconsistent history, or reliance on out-of-circuit authority persuade otherwise...”
Cannon is using a provision offered by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his Immunity concurrence, something that no other judge or court agreed with... and will require even more appeals back up to the high court before this mess can ever get straightened out. As it is, Thomas' opinion would negate every special counsel matter currently out there at the federal level... including the matter involving Hunter Biden. But hey, this is a deal for trump, so why bother eh?
Going to Marcy Wheeler at her Emptywheel site for comment:
It’s hilarious.
It’s hilarious, because it doesn’t create any delay that Cannon was not pursuing anyway. Indeed, Jack Smith could immediately appeal this and try to get her tossed, so it may hasten things (unless Trump wins!).
It’s hilarious because it is unbelievably hubristic. The only credible future for Judge Cannon now is Trump’s first SCOTUS appointment in a second term.
It’s hilarious because the way she did this, if it were upheld (not an impossibility given how nutty SCOTUS has gotten), it would be even more useful for Hunter Biden than Donald Trump (especially if Trump didn’t win reelection), because the statutes of limitation on Hunter’s alleged crimes have started to expire.
As for Smith appealing, yes he has. This now depends on how quickly the 11th Circuit handles this... and if the appellate court can remove Cannon for her bias and ineptitude.
And it all depends on the American voters coming out in huge numbers to vote for Biden and deny trump any sanctuary from justice.
trump has defeated justice for now, but he ought to - needs to - answer to the law in spite of the conservatives in the judiciary shredding all of it to protect their hold on power. trump is not running to serve the interests of Americans, he is not running for ideology or purpose, he is not running to uphold the public trust. trump is running to save his own ass from jail, and he will burn everything down to avoid that fate.
America cannot survive a criminal in the White House AGAIN.
To the 81 million of us who voted for Biden in 2020, we have a responsibility to return to the ballot and vote for Joe again. And let us bring about 44 million more with us across all 50 states just to make certain of it.
For the LOVE OF GOD AND COUNTRY AND JUSTICE, America. Do not vote trump this year.
Christ on a bike:
Donald Trump appeared to be the target of an assassination attempt as he spoke during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, two law enforcement officials said. The former president, his ear covered in blood from what he said was a gunshot, was quickly pulled away by Secret Service agents and his campaign said he was “fine.”
A local prosecutor said the suspected gunman and at least one attendee are dead. The Secret Service said two spectators were critically injured.
Posting on his Truth Social media site about two and a half hours after the shooting, Trump said a bullet “pierced the upper part of my right ear.”
“I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin,” he said in the post. “Much bleeding took place, so I realized then what was happening.”
The attack, by a shooter who law enforcement officials say was then killed by the Secret Service, was the first attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It comes amid a deeply polarized political atmosphere, just four months from the presidential elections and days before Trump is to be officially named the Republican nominee at his party’s convention... (via Jill Colvin, Julie Carr Smyth, Colleen Long, Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo and Michelle L. Price at AP News)
This is all happening in the moment and it's always too early to speculate even though a number of Far Right agitators on social media are already accusing Biden and "the violent Left" of being behind this shooting.
If there's anything I agree with on social media right now, it's THIS sentiment:
Mom can you come pick me up history is happening and I’m scared
— samuel catlin (@lint_ax) July 13, 2024
Seriously, America. Make this goddamn partisan madness stop.
For all my hatred aimed at donald Shitgibbon trump, the most I want to see done is him facing justice in a jail cell for all the crimes - the tax fraud, business fraud, and sexual assault - he's committed (and the ones he's allegedly done that he still needs to face in trial). Killing trump doesn't solve the reality that a willing and angry MAGA voter base will remain - and become even more angry and violent - and will be eager to turn trump into a martyr. Violence aimed at a group doesn't make that faction change their tone or their minds: It tends to radicalize them further, feeding into a cycle of violence aimed at the ones they blame.
Any form of political violence - street riot, bombing, targeted assassination - becomes self-defeating. I just wrote about what happened at Kent State: because the ROTC building had been fire-bombed, a lot of Americans in the middle class across the political spectrum actually felt the protestors were to blame and deserved to get shot by a panicked National Guard. Violence begets - and excuses - the reactionary violence that follows.
The idea that a Propaganda of the Deed would rally a silent hidden faithful into a mass movement justifying your planned utopia never happens. Assassinating Lincoln didn't win the Civil War for the South; shooting Garfield actually pushed the federal government into genuine civil service reforms; killing McKinley never sparked a Socialist uprising in America; what happened to JFK didn't end the Cold War or change U.S. policy towards Cuba (whatever the hell it was that motivated Oswald (maybe), we still don't know for certain); and shooting Reagan never impressed Jodie Foster (I'm not being flippant here, that's kind of what Hinckley was trying to do).
All that's going to happen now is a family will have to cope with the tragedy of losing a loved one - whoever it was that died at the rally - and the MAGA faithful are going to stir themselves into a frenzy over which conspiracy theories will make them the angriest and more eager to act out.
The political violence we've been trapped in since 2016 - with trump's demagoguery of immigrants and liberals - and accelerated in 2020 - "Stand Back and Stand By" anyone? - remains a downward spiral this 2024. History - chaotic, fear-driven, violent - is happening, and it's not going to stop until more innocent lives are taken.
Talent is a wonderful thing, but it won't carry a quitter.
-- Duma Key, Stephen King
I had to block Stephen King today.
Biden won the primaries in convincing fashion. An overwhelming majority of Democratic voters support him then AND now. But here you are, listening to a panicked biased media having a meltdown over one bad debate. You're not paying attention. And I'm blocking you for this.
— Witty Librarian 2024 (@PaulWartenberg) July 8, 2024
What the hell happened?
Well, that CNN debate I didn't want to watch ended up being a down performance for Biden, which unfortunately flared up all the damn "he's too old" takes between the New York Times and every other media outlet.
It's gotten to where the mainstream media - and then slowly a number of backbencher Democratic congresscritters, and then the avalanche of social media names like King and Rob Reiner - kept calling for Biden - who has already secured the 2024 Democratic nomination - to drop out of the Presidential race "for the good of the country."
Which is, of course, a total bullshit move.
This is after Joe Biden's campaign fund-raised far more than what trump's did. This is while Biden's polling regained their numbers - and upticked in several battleground states - after the immediate aftermath of the debate.
I've complained about this rump media - sitting in judgment of the Democratic Party and never focusing on the public sins of the Republicans - before. They get a narrative going in their own circles - such as this "Biden is now too old and will lose to trump" and there's no shaking it. Worse, they start digging for "sources" to reinforce that narrative using anybody they could claim is "inside the room when it happens" such as a "former senior official" who probably was a six-month intern in the West Wing washroom two years ago. And when they get any facts wrong, these pundits refuse to re-evaluate their mistakes and double-down on the scalp hunting.
Remember in the modern journalism era among the Beltway elites, there is no punishment for being wrong. There may be punishments for the low-level elected figures in the Democratic ranks buying into the media-inflicted panic, but that may have to wait until this election cycle is over.
Everything Biden has been doing the last two weeks post-debate has been to stay on-message and campaigning, even as a group of self-appointed "saviors" in the papers, cable shows, and congressional back rooms dreaming of their own fantasies are trying to kneecap him. They're going so far as to convince the upcoming convention delegates to toss aside Biden's primary victories - where Biden won with full support of the Dem voting base - and force an open convention.
Never mind the chaos and destruction that move would inflict on the entire Democratic Party, weakening themselves by alienating an electoral base fully backing Biden. And all of this much to the delight of both the Republican Party as well as the media elites who push the decades-old "Dems In Disarray" narrative.
While the media and the party leadership distract themselves over this noise, the same Beltway talking heads can avoid discussing more relevant and vital matters, such as the fact that the Republican Party's presidential candidate is a convicted felon and confirmed sex offender. Even as the GOP's platform is coming up before their convention next week, with a horrifying "Project 2025" agenda just barely getting on the radar for the voting public to recoil from it.
This shouldn't be a distraction. This shouldn't even be an issue.
Most Democratic voters may have these concerns, but they've overlooked them to focus on the reality that Joe Biden's administration has been mostly a success for the nation. The Dem voters may worry about Biden's age, but they understand there's an existing system in place - the 25th Amendment, and VP Kamala Harris - that will take care of it.
What worries most Democratic voters I know is the fact of donald trump's entire existence, and the real threat he poses should he get anywhere near the White House again. In spite of the polls which we've learned are skewing too rural (and too Republican) - in spite of all the fearmongering that the mainstream media is spewing for their own enjoyment - there is still a fighting mood with the party base to stick with a candidate in Biden they know beat trump in 2020. They're not about to abandon a good incumbent now.
This is - for anyone who lived through 2016 - the same kind of concern-trolling bullshit we got out of the New York Times and the rest of the Beltway when they freaked out over Hillary's private server and fretted over "but her emails." Back then, they begged for her to step aside for - get this - Biden. This is also the same freakout we got out of the mainstream media when Obama suffered a bad debate night against Romney in 2012, and they begged Obama to step aside for someone better like - get this - Hillary.
The Democratic voters - and the indy voters who sided with Biden in 2020 - need to get past this noise and get the damn vote out. The election still matters: OUR VOTES STILL MATTER. We had 81 million people turn out for Biden and Harris in 2020 and we can do that again this 2024.
This will be a 4th Of July long remembered in Great Britain.
The United Kingdom held their parliamentary elections today, and it turned into a "bloodbath" for the ruling Conservative Party projected to suffer their worst defeat in over two centuries (via Brian Wheeler at BBC News):
Labour is set to win a general election landslide with a majority of 170, according to an exit poll for the BBC, ITV and Sky.
If the forecast is accurate, Sir Keir Starmer will become prime minister with 410 Labour MPs – just short of Tony Blair's 1997 total.
The Conservatives are predicted to slump to 131 MPs, their lowest number ever...
The exit poll, overseen by Sir John Curtice and a team of statisticians, is based on data from voters at about 130 polling stations in England, Scotland and Wales. The poll does not cover Northern Ireland.
At the past five general elections, the exit poll has been accurate to within a range of 1.5 and 7.5 seats...
If the exit poll is correct it will be a remarkable turnaround for the Labour Party, which had its worst post-war election result in 2019, when the Conservatives under Boris Johnson won an 80-seat majority.
The Conservatives may avoid the wipe-out predicted by some opinion polls but they are still set for the worst result in the party's history, losing 241 MPs - a devastating blow after 14 years in government...
I'm not sure how the Tories are going to convince themselves they know what they're doing after a massive shift in voter support like this. They had picked up a major victory in 2019 gaining an 80-seat majority, and by the next election are losing 170 seats. A comparable situation would be like the House Republicans getting their 6-seat majority in 2022 only to have the Democrats flip it to a 60 seat majority in 2024 (one hopes).
I still have not heard any results for the election most watched this night: the turnout between Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Count Binface (okay, there's a few other party candidates as well). Sunak's polling numbers were low enough that he's facing a historic first: First Prime Minister to lose his seat in an election. Most of those predecessors tended to be in safe districts, but in this election cycle almost none of the Conservative seats were safe. (Update: Sunak was able to win his seat, alas. Dammit, Richmond and Northallerton! A Raving Looney candidate was right there! You had one job!)
That's how bad the Tories had performed over the past five years to lose so much support.
It'll take some time for the actual ballots to get counted, but even if the projections are off by their statistical norms, Labour has still won a decisive turnout.
Next will be a question of how Labour is going to fix all the damage - the austerity economics getting out of the Great Recession, the various scandals over their tenure, and of course Brexit - this inept, corrupt Tory leadership has done since 2010.
Happy 4th of July, Brits!
Hope you saved some of the fireworks from Bonfire Night.
Here's George III taking it like a champ in Hamilton:
As a student of history, I encourage others to learn about history as well.
As such, whenever I come across something that may work as a useful resource of knowledge, I examine the offerings and determine if it's worth sharing.
As such, I introduce you - if you haven't met him already - the History Matters Guy.
Created by a UK history professor as a quick video tutorial for students, he'd expanded from rather detailed and long video clips on large parts of European/American/World history to shorter, more focused videos on specific - and oft-times weird - moments that need a bit of clarity.
And like most things British, there is humor involved. Dry, sarcastic, often deep humor. Like this one.
NARRATOR: You had one job.
There's one I like in particular that explained a rather odd situation with Grenada - and a too-brief involvement of U.S. military there.
Not covered in the video: Because of it's Commonwealth status, the US accidentally went to war with the whole Commonwealth by invading Grenada without getting an OK from our allies first. Thatcher let it slide because communism got thumped.
I liked the bit where the poor Governor-General is tied up and wielded like baseball bats by both sides. The professor draws the best "I don't need this" side-eye in the business.
I wonder if the professor is going to come out with a History Matters regarding tonight's UK Parliamentary elections...
Here's one more American-themed history clip for you. THIS WILL BE ON THE AP AMERICAN EXAM (seriously):
(Thanks to James Bissonette, Kelly Moneymaker, Something-something Wolf, Dr. Howard Dr. Fine Dr. Howard, Three-Spinning-Pl..... ow stop hitting me)
Bit of an Update, What Hey: Wouldn't you know it, the History Matters guy released a video about the post-4th situation between the UK and the US, over whether the Brits tried to reclaim the colonies:
You cheeky bastards. Burning down the White House was the plan all along! ...so what was that bit about New Orleans...?
Is
everybody in? Is everybody IN??? The ceremony is about to begin...
--
"Awake," the Doors (Jim Morrison)
Growing up the Tampa Bay area as a suburban white boy meant listening to hard rock n roll. Not "classic rock" which at the time meant the 50s, but "album-oriented rock" that dominated the 60s and 70s.
As such, I was raised on the likes of Led Zeppelin and the Who and Van Halen and Black Sabbath and Cream and Montrose and Creedence and Lynyrd and Hendrix (but also softer sounds like the Beatles and Fleetwood Mac and Moody Blues). Into all of that I also got into a band that had a short history but incredible impact on that era: The Doors.
Forming on the Los Angeles music scene in 1965, the Doors revolved around keyboardist Ray Manzarek and Jim Morrison, someone Ray knew from film school at UCLA. Morrison had confided to Manzarek that - as a wannabe poet - he'd been writing lyrical poems, and sang to him the earliest verses of "Moonlight Drive". Manzarek was convinced right then Morrison could be a singer, and brought along one of his brothers, bassist Patty Sullivan, and drummer John Densmore (whom Ray knew from a meditation group) to form this group named after Adolus Huxley's work The Doors Of Perception.
After a few shifts in the lineup - adding guitarist Robby Krieger to form the lineup we know today - the band recorded demos and worked their way through the clubs, earning a coveted spot as house band at the Whisky A Go Go.
Signed to Elektra Studios by 1966, controversy over their firing from the Whisky in August 1966 - when Morrison went explicit with that particular lyric in "The End" - added to the band's allure for their debut album by 1967.
The band's sound was an eclectic mix of electric blues, jazz, and the emerging psychedelic sound dominating the California scene. Guitarist Krieger was noticeably versatile compared to other guitarists of the era. Drummer Densmore employed effective range and included a lot of Latino (bossa nova) influence that gave the band a distinctive sound that felt like Los Angeles itself. Manzarek proved an adept keyboardist with an organ-type playing that sounded like a harpsichord, and allowed him to mimic bass-playing to where their live shows never needed one (the band did employ a slew of session artists to play bass in the studio).
Topping it all, however, was Morrison. Initially shy as a singer, something about being on the stage unleashed a performer few had ever seen in rock music. While there were other lead singers of bands who would strut or pose - Mick Jagger comes to mind - none of them reached the recklessness Morrison achieved (Jagger later went to him for advice on how to do it). He would cover every inch of the stage, act out scenes from the lyrics with his body, improvise poetry to any instrumental music during a jam. He became a shaman of sorts, seducing audiences with a wink and a snarl.
The band quickly hit it big on the charts - they were the first American band to "go gold" with their first seven albums - and even scored top single hits guaranteeing radio play. As a live act, they became must-see tickets. Morrison's reputation as a "bad boy" of rock n roll brought fame... and interest by law enforcement who were put off by the anti-war and counter-culture lyrics that filled the followup albums.
Morrison himself suffered to his demons. He had a history of disturbing behavior when he got drunk, and as the stresses of celebrity got to him the alcoholism - and other drug use - got worse. It affected recording and made him late for live shows during tours. By 1969, it had gotten so bad he pretty much had a breakdown on stage in Miami, threatening to show his cock (eyewitness testimony and insistence from the surviving band was certain he didn't) and then leading a riot of sorts with the crowd. The subsequent trial for incident exposure and other acts led to a guilty verdict in 1970.
While out on appeal, Morrison rejoined the band in L.A. to record one more album (L.A. Woman) before traveling to Paris in 1971 to get himself straightened out. The band noticed he was working to stay sober during the sessions and seemed in good spirits.
And then Morrison died - with a sizable amount of mystery over what actually happened - and was quickly buried in a Paris cemetery famed for its artists and poets.
The surviving trio - Manzarek, Densmore, and Krieger - recorded two more albums without replacing Morrison at singer, but the efforts were noticeably lackluster with fans and the Doors broke up. After rejoining in 1979 to record new music to back audio readings from Morrison's poetry, that was pretty much it.
The band's influence remains far reaching. Not only codifying the four-man format of a rock band but affecting the electric blues style that remains a staple of bar bands to this day. Musically, the Doors had a hand in popularizing 60s psychedelic rock as well as help merge the Latino rhythm sound - which would co-mingle with the coming funk scene of the 70s - to the L.A. hard rock scene that would remain dominant until the 80s. In some respects, the dark symbolism and anti-authority stances the band took as its persona influenced the burgeoning punk scene.
Morrison's on-stage antics informed the crazy behavior of future frontmen - David Lee Roth comes to mind - and his lyrical style - more freestyle than rhyming, although he could do both - set the standard for poetry in hard rock songs. There are others in rock history with high skill as poets - Bob Dylan is a freaking Nobel laureate, obviously - and others aspire to reach those heights, but Morrison was one who could arguably be Dylan's peer (alongside John Lennon, Joni Mitchell, several others). Morrison himself became the template for the "rock star as tortured artist" imagery we have to this day.
In terms of ranking the Doors albums, I'm going with - in my opinion - weakest works to their most epic, must-have albums. To be fair to the band as a whole, I've included the post-Morrison albums - which I didn't hear as a kid, they were out-of-print until CD re-issues finally happened in the 2010s - so I can share my experience and response.
