Saturday, December 03, 2022

POOR RON DeSANTIS! (updated)

The 2024 Donald Trump presidential campaign is very much in danger of failing, but at a time when even MAGA diehards are wondering whether Trump has had his moment and should give way to the presumably more electable but equally malicious lib-hater Ron DeSantis, along comes Elon Musk with a lifeline for Trump:
Two years after the fact, Elon Musk — Twitter’s megabillionaire new owner — promoted the release of documents showing the company’s internal deliberations about blocking the New York Post’s account over its reporting on Hunter Biden.

The new disclosures, touted as “The Twitter Files,” were posted in a lengthy Twitter thread by investigative reporter and author Matt Taibbi (and retweeted by Musk). It’s based on “thousands of internal documents obtained by sources at Twitter,” according to Taibbi — shared with him, it would appear, with the blessing of Musk....

“Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress the story, removing links and posting warnings that it may be ‘unsafe,'” Taibbi wrote. “They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool hitherto reserved for extreme cases, e.g. child pornography.”
Normal people don't care. Normal people, even if they use Twitter, don't care about the machinations there, although they might be vaguely interested in what that Musk guy is up to. Twitter is not real life. In real life, people care about gas prices. They worry about crime and drug addiction and gun violence and abortion access and education and the sense that the country seems to be splitting apart. But normal people don't care about Hunter Biden's laptop. All through the midterms, when voters were asked what their top concerns were, Hunter Biden's laptop wasn't the answer they gave.

But Republicans care. Republicans aren't normal people. They're rage monsters hyped up on whatever they're fed by the right-wing media apparatus, which now includes Taibbi and Musk. They're deeply political in a way most normal people aren't. So maybe bots are the reason that #TrumpWasRightAboutEverything is trending on Twitter, but fake social media engegement is meant to influence real people, and if this is seen as a story about Trump rather than about evil tech libs, Trump benefits. No social media company has ever muted a story about Ron DeSantis this way. In the victimization sweepstakes, DeSantis loses.

This is just a moment, of course. It'll pass. But we know that House Republicans intend to hold endless hearings on Hunter Biden, and now I assume they'll toss in an inquisition on social media censorship, with this as the bloody shirt.*

Can DeSantis top that? He'll try. But he might not be able to compete with Trump's grievances.

*****

*UPDATE: Yup.


Friday, December 02, 2022

THAT TRUMP FELLOW SEEMS AWFULLY EXTREME ALL OF A SUDDEN!

Say, did you know that Donald Trump thinks the January 6 insurrectionists shouldn't be in prison? Why, I had no idea until I read Peter Baker's latest dispatch in The New York Times:
Former President Donald J. Trump once again made clear on Thursday night exactly where he stands in the conflict between the American justice system and the mob that ransacked the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power nearly two years ago.

He stands with the mob.

Mr. Trump sent a video statement of support to a fund-raiser hosted by a group calling itself the Patriot Freedom Project on behalf of families of those charged with attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “People have been treated unconstitutionally, in my opinion, and very, very unfairly, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it,” he said. The country, he warned, “is going communist.”

The video underscored just how much the former president has aligned himself with forces that used to be outside the mainstream of American politics as he seeks to reclaim the White House through a rematch with President Biden in 2024.
It's nice that Baker noticed this, but I think Trump's attitiude toward the January 6 criminals was fairly clear last month, when he said on Truth Social, "Let them all go now!" Or in mid-September when he called in to a rally held at the D.C. jail.
Trump called Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, who authorities shot and killed during the Capitol riot, to express his support for those being detained at the jail in connection with their involvement on Jan. 6.

“It’s a terrible thing that has happened to a lot of people that are being treated very, very unfairly,” Trump said. “We love Ashli, and it was so horrible what happened to her. That that man shot Ashli is a disgrace.”
Or in early September when he appeared on a right-wing radio show:
Former President Donald Trump said Thursday he will “very, very seriously” consider full pardons for the rioters who breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, if he runs for reelection and wins.

“I will tell you, I will look very, very favorably about full pardons. If I decide to run and if I win, I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons. Full pardons,” Trump said on Wendy Bell Radio Thursday, adding: “We’ll be looking very, very seriously at full pardons because we can’t let that happen. ... And I mean full pardons with an apology to many.”
Or in April, when he spoke at a rally in North Carolina:
... Trump told the crowd: "We will, while we're at it, demand justice for the January 6 prisoners and full protection of their civil rights. Like was received by ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter, who murdered people throughout our country."
Or in January, when he told the crowd at a Texas rally:
"Another thing we'll do, and so many people have been asking me about it, if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly," Trump said to applause. "We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly."
Or in September 2021, when he spoke in their favor:
“Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election,” Trump said in a statement ... adding that the prosecutions have “proven conclusively that we are a two-tiered system of justice.”
Or in February 2021, less than a month after the riot:
“If it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly,” Trump said during a Texas rally over the weekend.

Trump repeated the promise in an interview with Newsmax ... saying, “I would absolutely give them a pardon” and calling the punishment “20 times out of proportion. These people are being persecuted.”
Sorry, Peter -- this isn't a change of strategy. You say that Trump "has embraced extremist elements in American society even more unabashedly than in the past" -- but that's not true.

You also say, "In recent weeks, he has adopted QAnon themes." But here was a Politico story from July 2020:
On July Fourth, before President Donald Trump spoke to the nation from the White House lawn, he spoke indirectly to another community on Twitter: QAnon.

That afternoon, he retweeted 14 tweets from accounts supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory....

Trump’s QAnon-baiting has gone into overdrive in recent months. According to a Media Matters analysis, ever since the pandemic began, Trump has retweeted at least 90 posts from 49 pro-QAnon accounts, often multiple times in the same day.

Those around Trump have followed suit. Eric Trump, the president’s son, recently posted a giant “Q” on Instagram as well as the hashtag version of the community’s slogan: “Where we go one, we go all.” White House deputy communications director Dan Scavino sparked glee on Facebook when he posted a photo with Q symbology in it back in March.
So why is this news? It's just Trump being the same person he's been for years.

WHY KANYE WEST IS LIKE MASS SHOOTINGS

Kanye West appeared on the Alex Jones podcast yesterday and told Jones that he likes Hitler and loves Nazis. A few hours later, he was suspended from Twitter after posting an image of a swastika inside a Star of David (cribbed from a UFO religion called Raƫlism, which uses the symbol), and also after posting an image of a shirtless, pasty, paunchy Musk with Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel, whom West has repeatedly criticized in anti-Semitic ways.

The Washington Post's Philip Bump says, "The GOP’s bet on Kanye West has gone very bad" -- but if you want a contrarian view, I can argue that all this makes high-profile right-wing racists and hatemongers look less hateful by comparison. Musk suspended West. Alex Jones urged him to deny he was pro-Nazi. Donald Trump called him "seriously troubled." Tucker Carlson interviewed West last month and chose not to air his most bigoted pronouncements.

Oh, and it's not hate, really -- it's just mental illness. That's the message from many commenters responding to a Fox story about West:
it's very sad watching the breakdown of Kayne or Ye, i pray he gets the help he needs, he is driving off a cliff, without brakes.. i wish the people in his life would care enough to help him

****

this has happened before, remember when Charlie Sheen was manic? This is Bipolar illness. They don't have the insight to know they even need help. They cause a lot of chaos in their lives and damage like this

****

Ye is seriously mentally ill (bi-polar in the extreme). Public limelight is not where he needs to be. It is hard for those around him to help because he will listen to no one. In a way, being off Twitter is the best for him. It would be equally good it people would just stop interviewing and covering him.

****

Kanye is not well. I hope his thoughts clear and his rationality is restored.

****

Glad someone else sees it, the negative affect, non-linear thoughts, paranoia, etc. Pretty obvious to me.

****

You don't catch mental illness like you catch a cold. Mental illness is genetic. You are born with it. So it's not going to "clear" away like a cold does. And unfortunately, mental illness gets worse the older you get.

****

I don't follow Ye. I don't listen to his rap. I don't buy his clothes. From my limited knowledge of his actions and thoughts, I think he needs to get professional psychological help. He's brilliant enough to be richer than some countries, but his behavior is truly bizarre. I hope he gets help.
You might not see anything objectionable in this, but it's the same Get Out of Jail Free card right-wingers reach for whenever there's a mass shooting or other high-profile attack that seems driven by conservative politics. Clearly they're right about West's mental state, as well as about the mental state of Paul Pelosi's attacker -- but delusions have content, which comes from the outside world. If you're pumping right-wing hate into the societal conversation and a mentally ill person acts on it, you bear quite a bit of responsibility for the results, even if the ill or damaged person isn't in full mental control, and thus isn't fully capable of responsibility.

Mental illness happens, but the processing of directing the mentally ill to bigoted explanations for their discontents is in the control of people we'd mostly regard as sane. They don't get a free pass. But they think they deserved one in the case of Pelosi, and they say they deserve one after every mass shooting. Now they're saying it with Kanye. Don't let them off the hook.

Thursday, December 01, 2022

MY GOLDEN BOY CAN OUTSHINE YOUR GOLDEN BOY!

Five years after he was accused of multiple acts of sexual harassment, Mark Halperin writes a sad little Substack in which he attempts to be the insider savant he was widely seen as at the peak of his career. His posts occasionally show up on the news aggregation site Memeorandum, and when they do I sometimes read them, on the assumption that Halperin probably still has some insider contacts, which means that what he writes might represent conventional wisdom within a certain subgroup of political players.

Today Halperin wrote about the 2024 presidential election. He said this about Glenn Youngkin:
Might run. Might not. Might run and revolutionize the party’s image across a range of important dimensions. Might run and flame out quickly. Like DeSantis, still more myth than man, but has the potential to win the White House less like Trump did and more like George W. Bush did, which would warm the hearts of the Gang of 500 and the Chamber types. Also: despite a few missteps, could bring “nice” back to the GOP brand.
"Gang of 500" is a term Halperin has used for years. It refers to, in his words, "campaign consultants, strategists, pollsters, pundits, and journalists who make up the modern-day political establishment," "the 500 people whose decisions matter to the political news and campaign narrative we get from the major media."

Halperin used to know who mattered. I'm not sure he still does -- but I think at least some of the people he's thinking of continue to be important establishmentarians.

I bring all this up because the battle for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination should be a one-on-one contest between Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump -- but I suspect that there are insiders who think Youngkin, not DeSantis, has the magic touch that will win the White House back for the GOP. I think that's crazy -- nearly everyone in the base loves Trump, DeSantis, or both, and DeSantis could beat Trump head to head, but in a three-way contest with Youngkin as the Establishment dreamboat, Trump is likely to win.

Here's another sign that some established Republicans are looking past DeSantis. Last night, Sewell Chan, the editor of the Texas Tribune, attended a discussion at the LBJ Library featuring right-wing graybeards Karl Rove and George Will. Their subject was "The Future of Conservatism." Chan reported on the discussion in a Twitter thread. One tweet caught my eye:


I'll ignore the absurd notion that voters in 2020 "wanted to blow things up." (We elected Joe Biden, for crissakes.) Notice the prediction that voters two years from now "will want a unifying, humble, moderate candidate." Rove can't be referring to DeSantis, who's all ego and divisiveness. But he could be referring to Youngkin, who isn't really unifying or humble or moderate but has been sold as all of those things.

If Republicans were smart, they'd just sell DeSantis nonstop. Many of them, particularly Rupert Murdoch, are doing that already. But I think a faction of the party intends to do a hard sell for a competing golden boy. If that happens, Youngkin and DeSantis will probably cancel each other out, and Trump will be the nominee.

RON DeSANTIS: HE ISN'T INDIFFERENT IN THE FACE OF BIGOTRY, HE'S JUST SAVVY!

Ron DeSantis intends to run against Donald Trump in 2024, yet he hasn't condemned Trump, or even mildly chastised him, for having dinner with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West. As Jonathan Chait notes, DeSantis's supporters insist that he's just too darn busy doing the people's business to weigh in on matters that have nothing to do with being Florida's governor:
DeSantis’s supporters have greeted the idea that he would issue a pro forma statement denouncing white supremacists with mockery. Tablet’s Noam Blum suggested DeSantis is too busy governing for his spokesperson to issue a statement. “Contrary to how he is characterized in the national media,” sniffed National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, “Ron DeSantis’ personal approval is not required for the list of guests Floridians may invite to dinner.”
Except, of course, he isn't too darn busy to weigh in on matters outside his executive responsibilities:


DeSantis could clear time out of his busy schedule to say something about Trump's dinner. He just doesn't want to make any enemies on the right, and that extends all the way to the unabashedly racist right. We know that.

But I'm not sure every political journalist knows that. Rolling Stone's Asawin Suebsaeng tells us that DeSantis isn't failing a moral test -- he's just being savvy:
According to three people with knowledge of the directives, DeSantis’ lieutenants have told his allies not to attack Trump over the now-notorious dinner....

“In ongoing discussions following his reelection, including this week, I’ve been asked to keep my powder dry,” says Dan Eberhart, a longtime GOP donor — and former big Trump donor — recalling his conversations with Team DeSantis. (Eberhart is now backing DeSantis for 2024). “My understanding is that the DeSantis team doesn’t see upside in kicking off the fight with Trump this early, even if it may be inevitable. Wading into the Fuentes fiasco just isn’t worth it for them. The media will harpoon Trump without Team DeSantis lifting a finger.”

DeSantis’s calculated silence is in line with the Florida governor’s broader strategy for now in challenging — or, to be more precise, not challenging — Trump.... DeSantis ... has generally declined Trump’s attempts to lure him into a very public mud fight.
I hope mainstream and liberal journalists don't continue to defend loathsome behavior by DeSantis because they'd like to see Trump taken down and they see DeSantis as the guy who can get the job done. DeSantis might be strategically avoiding a fight with Trump -- at least until his book comes out in February (I assume he'll announce his candidacy at the end of the book tour) -- but he's also avoiding a fight with white supremacists because he'll want their votes eventually. His savvyness is morally bankrupt.

Wednesday, November 30, 2022

DON'T ASSUME THAT THE EXTREMELY UNLIKABLE RON DeSANTIS IS TOO UNLIKABLE TO WIN

Writing for The Atlantic, Mark Leibovich argues that Ron DeSantis might not be ready for the big leagues, primarily because he's stiff and unlikable:
People who know him better and have watched him longer are skeptical of his ability to take on the former president. DeSantis, they say, is no thoroughbred political athlete. He can be awkward and plodding. And Trump tends to eviscerate guys like that.

“He was standoffish in general,” the Virginia Republican Barbara Comstock, a former House colleague of DeSantis’s, told me.

“A strange no-eye-contact oddball,” Rick Wilson, a Republican media consultant, wrote on Resolute Square.

“I’d rather have teeth pulled without anesthetic than be on a boat with Ron DeSantis,” says Mac Stipanovich, a Tallahassee lobbyist who set sail from the GOP over his revulsion for Trump and his knockoffs. To sum up: DeSantis is not a fun and convivial dude. He prefers to keep his earbuds in. His “Step away from the vehicle” vibes are strong.
Leibovich acknowledges that this might not be a problem for DeSantis ("the GOP ... has shown a persistent tolerance, even inclination, for churlish bastards—just as long as they are churlish toward the right rascals, reprobates, and agents of wokeness"). But he remains skeptical.

In response, I'd say: Do you know who else gave off “Step away from the vehicle” vibes? Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s. When the public is worried about crime and disorder, as it was in that decade when Giuliani won two elections and as portions of it are now despite much lower crime rates, an unpleasant bad cop on a hair trigger sometimes seems like the right electoral choice, especially if the bad cop can be humanized (if barely) by an appealing wife and young children. (DeSantis has young kids, as did Rudy in the '90s; Rudy's then-wife was a fixture on local TV news, and DeSantis's wife also had a TV career, including a stint in local news.)

The national equivalent -- albeit with older children and wife whose time in Hollywood had been brief -- was Richard Nixon, a personality-deficient scold who was elected twice in an era of extreme cultural anxiety. So it can happen.

Leibovich writes:
... Trump will be running DeSantis through his patented dehumanizer machine, which made such mashed mush of his rivals in 2016. Trump’s efficient cartooning of “Low-Energy Jeb,” “Liddle Marco,” and “Lyin’ Ted” left them flailing pathetically.
The difference is that, in 2016, Bush, Rubio, and Cruz weren't trying to be assholes. They didn't understand that the game had changed -- even Cruz thought you had to seem upright and statesmanlike to win the nomination. He didn't try to attack Trump until Trump was already in the process of gutting and filleting him. DeSantis is unlikely to make that mistake. I expect him to campaign as an asshole from Day One.

Leibovich writes:
DeSantis ... can appear needlessly snappish and reactive (earlier this year, he scolded a group of high-school students for wearing masks onstage behind him).
Leibovich knows that the base loved that moment, doesn't he?
One particular interlude during DeSantis’s 2022 campaign bears revisiting. It occurred during a debate with his Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, who attempted to pin down the governor on whether he would commit to serving out his four-year term if reelected. In other words, was DeSantis running for president in 2024 or not? “Yes or no, Ron?” Crist pressed him. DeSantis froze. “It’s a fair question and he won’t tell you,” Crist said, filling the silence.

Finally, a moderator jumped in and reminded the candidates that they were not permitted to ask each other direct questions, allowing DeSantis to regroup. “Well, I know that Charlie is interested in talking about 2024 and Joe Biden,” DeSantis said, delivering what was clearly a rehearsed line. “But I just want to make this very, very clear. The only worn-out old donkey I’m looking to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist.” Cute recovery. But still awkward.

... a fluid politician could have better finessed that exchange. And Trump likely took note and filed this away. “He knew and assessed the weaknesses of DeSantis on the debate stage and in the media space,” Wilson wrote in his Resolute Square essay, concluding that Trump will tear him to pieces. “He smelled blood.”
Crist smelled blood? It must have been his own, because he lost to DeSantis by 19 points.

I wouldn't bet against Trump in this battle, but if he beats DeSantis, it won't be because DeSantis is obnoxious and disagreeable. That might be precisely what voters want.

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

REPUBLICANS DENOUNCE IMAGINARY BIDEN AUTHORITARIANISM WHILE ACCEPTING THE REAL THING FROM DeSANTIS

What's twisting right-wingers' knickers right now? It's this:


Fox News reports:
The House Judiciary GOP tweeted, "Why is the Biden White House scared of the First Amendment and @Elon Musk?"

Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, said Jean-Pierre's comments likely violated the Bill of Rights.

"That statement sounds ominous and is likely a First Amendment violation in and of itself," Shapiro tweeted....

"This is a really weird thing for a White House press secretary to say about a company against which there are no criminal allegations," Isaac Schorr, a National Review reporter, tweeted.

Tim Young, a conservative author and comedian, tweeted, "The White House hates free speech."

Bret Weinstein, an evolutionary biologist and former Evergreen State College professor who rose to prominence in 2017 after he refused to partake in the college's "Day of Absence" for White people, also suggested that the Biden administration overstepped its authority by attempting to censor political speech on a private platform.

... He concluded, "The case for the censorship of claims and facts is simply fatally flawed. There may or may not be things worth barring with TOS. But regulating the flow of ideas based on whether they’re true is insane and dangerous, and the executive [branch] long ago violated the public/private boundary."
But Jean-Pierre never said anything about censorship. She never said anything about the Biden administration taking any action at all. Here's the transcript:
Q: Just a question about Twitter. You know, there’s a researcher at Stanford who says that this is a critical moment, really, in terms of ensuring that Twitter does not become a vector for misinformation. I mean, are you concerned about the — you know, Elon Musk says there’s more and more subscribers coming online. Are you concerned about that? And what tools do you have? Who is it at the White House that is really keeping track of this?

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So, look, this is something that we’re certainly keeping an eye on. And, look, we — you know, we have always been very clear and — that when it comes to social media platforms, it is their responsibility to make sure that when it comes to misinformation, when we — when it comes to the hate that we’re seeing, that they take action, that they continue to take action.

Again, we’re all keeping a close eye on this. We’re all monitoring what’s — what’s currently occurring. And we see — you know, we see it with our own eyes of what you all are reporting and, just for ourselves, what’s happening on Twitter.

But again, social media companies have a responsibility to prevent their platforms from being used by any user to incite violence, especially violence directed at individual communities, as we have been seeing. And the President has been very clear on calling that out. He’ll continue to do that. And we’re going to continue to monitor the situation.
She's saying very clearly that social media companies themselves are responsible for the content that appears on their sites. And when she says the White House is "keeping an eye on" the situation and will "continue to monitor" it, she's taking an opportunity to announce government action and passing it up. She's announcing no action by the administration because the administration doesn't plan to intervene (although the president himself might express an opinion).

And yet all your right-wing relatives will now ominously repeat the phrase "keep an eye on" as if it means "build gulags." The fascist threat here is completely imaginary.

Meanwhile, the possible next president of the United States is arguing for precisely the sort of government intervention the right thinks Biden wants.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis blasted Apple on Tuesday over Elon Musk’s allegations that it has threatened to boot Twitter from its App Store....

... the Republican governor said Musk’s move to reinstate thousands of banned Twitter accounts may have factored into Apple’s alleged moves — and that the company’s response should invite scrutiny from Washington.

“If Apple responds to that by nuking them from the App Store, I think that would be a huge, huge mistake and it would be a rally raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress,” DeSantis said.
Apple controls access to apps on its own phones, but Apple doesn't have a phone monopoly in America -- it has 50% market share in the U.S. phone business, a milestone it reached only this year, after trailing Android for years. Beyond that, you can easily use Twitter on a phone's web browser, without an app. Having access to the app is a matter of convenience. And millions of Americans use Twitter on computers rather than phones. So if the Twitter app disappears from Apple's store, that doesn't mean we suddenly live in North Korea.

In the old days, Republicans told us that regulating businesses is bad. They still think it's bad -- unless what the businesses are doing challenges them in the culture wars, in which case they believe free enterprise is unacceptable and authoritarian repression is warranted. Businesses simply aren't allowed to practice enlightened self-interest if that self-interest can be spun on Fox News as "woke."

No one on the right has a problem with DeSantis urging the government to investigate a business decision Apple hasn't actually made and might not even be considering. But when the Biden administration says it's not taking action against Twitter, that's a sign that it intends to, according to Republicans, and that's fascism. Got it?

PROFILES IN ANTI-TRUMP COURAGE!

Politico reports that the Republican Party wants to learn, grow, and change:
The Republican National Committee is launching a review of the party’s performance in the midterm election and bringing on a team of outside advisers to help guide strategy, as the GOP reckons with its disappointing performance in the election.

... Republicans say the council is designed to bring in new voices to the party and to provide guidance on matters like outreach to minorities and suburban female voters, groups that the GOP has often struggled to win over.
But the party doesn't want to learn, grow, and change too much:
The RNC is tapping nearly a dozen people to serve in what it’s calling a “Republican Party Advisory Council” – a group that includes former Donald Trump White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, evangelical leader Tony Perkins and a pair of Senate candidates who ran this year.
Kellyanne! Well, so much for any possibility that this group will say Donald Trump is one of the party's major problems.

And this list of members isn't encouraging on that subject either:
The list of members includes Alabama Sen.-elect Katie Britt, Texas Rep.-elect Monica De La Cruz and Rep.-elect John James, a Black Republican who hails from McDaniel’s home state of Michigan.

The panel will also include former Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters....
Masters, of course, is the Trump-endorsed sociopath who lost the Arizona Senate race this month. Monica De La Cruz won her House race with Trump's endorsement.

And as for Britt and James, they're two profiles in courage. First, here's what Wikipedia has to say about James and Trump (links deleted):
James supported Ted Cruz in the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries. He later became a Trump supporter, and tweeted in 2018 that, if elected to the Senate, he would back Trump "2,000%." During his 2020 campaign, James accepted Trump's endorsement and campaigned alongside him. James has not been publicly critical of Trump or his actions. During a meeting with Black faith leaders, James was asked whether he disagreed with Trump on anything. James said, "Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding to 'shithole countries' to speaking ill of the dead. I mean, where do you want to start?" In a leaked audio recording of a meeting with African American leaders in Michigan, James was asked why he hadn't publicly criticized Trump. He said he thought it was better to be silent in public in order to gain access to Trump. James said, "Donald Trump doesn't need less Black folks around him, he needs more", and that his goal was "achieving equity and equality for our people, not standing up on Twitter and condemning folks."
Brave Sir John!

As for Britt, she and her husband, ex-NFL player Wesley Britt, demonstrated a similar level of courage when some anti-Trump items were unearthed from Wesley's Twitter feed during the primary campaign:
... the husband of one of Alabama’s leading Senate candidates disavowed, in the strongest terms, the fact that he had “liked” some potentially damaging tweets.

He even implied that someone else must have done the liking of those tweets—possibly at the behest of the “anti-Trump Big Tech backers” of his wife’s opponents....

... a tweet Wesley Britt liked from Sept. 2016 that said “we just watched a man meltdown on live TV” during the Trump-Clinton presidential debate isn’t great for his wife’s political prospects.

Neither is the one Wesley liked in Aug. 2020 that blamed “Trump’s America” for Kyle Rittenhouse’s violence in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

... in May 2021, when the news broke that Katie was about to enter the Senate race, Donald Trump Jr. called Katie Britt “the Alabama Liz Cheney”—meant disparagingly—and Britt liked a tweet with the defensive response: “Stay out of Alabama politics. Katie Boyd Britt is no Liz Cheney. Your dad was a great president but he is not anymore.”

Similarly, in July 2021, President Trump put out a statement saying that Katie Britt was “not in any way qualified and is certainly not what our country needs,” and Katie Britt responded with a video post, saying she “wouldn’t run to somebody else for cover and have someone else fight for me.”

Wesley Britt liked a response to his wife’s statement that said, in a tone meant to reassure Katie, “You knew his idiot ass would chime in at some point.....don’t sweat it.”

But rather than ignore the story, or try to contextualize his thoughts—or even just point out the mildness of these Twitter interactions—Wesley Britt responded by implying he had been a victim of some kind of cyber attack.

“This is an absolute lie—I never liked those tweets,” Wesley Britt said in his statement to 1819 News, which reported the existence of these likes. “Just like Big Tech maliciously and wrongly banned President Trump and helped rig the election against him, I have no doubt that the anti-Trump Big Tech backers of Mike Durant will falsify anything to help him win.”

Wesley Britt went on to insist he had always been a major Trump supporter, going back to his days as a player on the New England Patriots, when he “enjoyed visiting with him in the Patriots locker room.”
Defend my wife against attack by Donald Trump and his son? I would never do that! If it seemed as if I defended my wife, some evil globalist must be responsible!

So if the evidence amassed by this advisory council suggests that Trump is a reason it's difficult to "bring in new voices to the party" and do "outreach to minorities and suburban female voters," I'm sure these folks will fearlessly say so. Their previous courage makes that obvious.

Monday, November 28, 2022

THE GOP'S "NORMAL" CHOICE FOR 2024 ... ISN'T

A week after Donald Trump hosted anti-Semites Nick Fuentes and Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago, many Republicans, whether they dare to admit it publicly or not, are hoping they can keep Trump off the 2024 ticket in favor of that nice, normal Ron DeSantis. But Jonathan Chait is right -- DeSantis is a racist enabler, too:
DeSantis ... has reached out to QAnon supporters and insurrectionists and suggested January 6 was a setup by the FBI. He has denounced Liz Cheney for participating in the January 6 hearings but refused to denounce a gang of Nazis who showed up in Orlando and menaced local Jews. This is a clear signal of whom DeSantis sees as inside the coalition (white supremacists) and who is out (pro-democracy Republicans like Cheney.)

DeSantis’s supporters have greeted the idea that he would issue a pro forma statement denouncing white supremacists with mockery. Tablet’s Noam Blum suggested DeSantis is too busy governing for his spokesperson to issue a statement. “Contrary to how he is characterized in the national media,” sniffed National Review’s Dan McLaughlin, “Ron DeSantis’ personal approval is not required for the list of guests Floridians may invite to dinner.”

These people are not idiots. They understand perfectly well that DeSantis weighs in on national political and culture fights routinely. He is not too busy to attack the white-nationalist right. He wants to maintain its support but quietly.
And Christina Pushaw, DeSantis's former gubernatorial press secretary, who later became the press secretary for his reelection campaign and will almost certainly be his presidential campaign spokesperson, is also racist-adjacent. Here she is stanning for a bigoted Trump appointee named Darren Beattie:



Here's the tweet from Pushaw:



And here are Beattie's January 6 tweets:



Here's the story of that firing:
Darren Beattie, who was a visiting instructor at Duke University before he joined the White House speechwriting team, was fired Friday after a media inquiry about his appearance at the 2016 H.L. Mencken Club conference, where Beattie spoke on a panel alongside Peter Brimelow.

Brimelow, founder of the anti-immigrant website Vdare.com, is a “white nationalist” and “regularly publishes works by white supremacists, anti-Semites, and others on the radical right,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group that tracks extremists.

Earlier this year, Brimelow described himself as a believer in “racial nationalism” who sees the future of the United States “precipitating out on racial lines.”
Trump later appointed Beattie to a board whose work involves preserving Holocaust sites in Europe, a position in which he served until he was removed by President Biden. The Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups protested the appointment. When it was announced, Yahoo News reported,
The appointment comes shortly after Beattie, in comments made on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show, compared supposed efforts to oust President Trump to the “color revolutions” that defeated authoritarian leaders across Eastern Europe. Beattie said those efforts were being engineered by Norm Eisen, an ethics attorney who served in the Obama administration. As he described the case against Eisen, Carlson cut Beattie off, thus concluding the segment.

Beattie has also suggested that George Soros was behind attempts to remove Trump from office, though the financier and philanthropist’s efforts constitute little more than the kind of ordinary political contributions that both sides routinely engage in.
A couple of days ago, Beattie appeared on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast and talked about Sam Bankman-Fried; a clip of that appearance is posted at Beattie's Revolver News under the headline
Darren Beattie blows the lid... SBF’s FTX extremely dark money laundering operation “bigger than Soros”... fueling “Clinton-Underworld Democrat Machine”...
You can watch the clip at the link if you care0, but I think I've made my point: Anyone who thinks Trump is at the racist, conspiratorial fringe but DeSantis represents a return to normality is delusional.

RIGHT-WINGERS THINK THEY'RE LOSING BECAUSE THEY DON'T WIN EVERY TIME

In The Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch writes:
It’s clear that America is having a moment right now, and a deeply troubling one at that. Never in my lifetime — and I watched the tumultuous 1960s, albeit through the eyes of a child — has the hate speech been so open and so over the top, nor has the threat of political bloodshed felt so palpable. Yet it’s important we understand what is really happening ... and why it’s happening now.

The antisemitism, the homophobia, the violence ... this isn’t the American right flexing its muscles out of strength. Quite the opposite. The forces of 400 years of white supremacy culture are like a wounded bear right now — lashing out, and extremely dangerous because its proponents know they are a seriously endangered species.

Is it any wonder that things have gotten so much crazier since Nov. 8, the date of the midterm elections? That was the day that the folks I dubbed in a recent column as “the Biden coalition” — college students who lined up hours to vote, suburban college grads who cared more about democracy than inflation, Black and brown voters who see the racism that still lurks behind the GOP’s pitch to the working class — held together to give Democrats the upper hand in the 2022 midterms. It’s that stunning defeat that’s making the far right so batty....
But the right isn't losing everywhere. Republicans control the Supreme Court. They'll soon run the House of Representatives, and they could easily win back the Senate and the White House in 2024. They still have the majority of governorships. They control the governments of the second- and third-largest states, Texas and Florida. Abortion is banned in twelve states. Their side controls national gun policy, while gun laws are being loosened in state after state (and a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year seems likely to force loosening in blue states as well). They've made police reform politically radioactive and they're well on their way to doing the same for bail reform. They beat back all public health measures intended to limit the spread of COVID, even in blue America. They intimidated Disney. And one of their own just bought Twitter and is working hard to turn it into a haven for conspiratorialism and right-wing intimdation.

But yes, our side has had a number of ballot-box victories since Donald Trump's election. Democracy lives, for now. And the normie culture in America is more accepting and empathetic than the right would like it to be. But our wins are partial and tentative.

Right-wingers aren't enraged because they know they're losing. They're enraged because they think they should have won a total victory by now.

For years they've been told that liberals are a weird, freakish minority limited to cities and college towns -- all real Americans are right-wing. Long before Donald Trump entered politics, they were told that we cheat in every election, hence the need for voter ID laws. (Hugh Hewitt's book If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat was published in 2004.) More recently they were told that all elite Democrats are cannibal pedophiles, and now they're told that we're all "groomers." Doesn't a decent society lock people like that up, or worse? And even the ones who don't believe this literally believe that our electoral cheating is on a massive scale -- there's just no way 81 million people voted for Sleepy Joe Biden! He never had any boat parades! -- and that cheating is aided and abetted by Facebook, George Soros, the Chinese government, and whoever turns up in Hunter Biden's laptop.

So in a way they're angry because they're losing, but only in the sense that they define "losing" as having to live in a country where we have any say at all in how society is run.

They've been told for so long that we're weird, pathetic, Marxist, evil, and satanic that our continued ability to exercise the rights of citizenship seems like a monstrous injustice. If that doesn't change soon, somebody's going to get hurt.

Sunday, November 27, 2022

MAUREEN DOWD'S BROTHER RECITES THE APPROVED GOP ESTABLISHMENT TALKING POINTS. NOTICE WHAT'S NOT INCLUDED.

Once a year, Maureen Dowd lets her right-wing brother Kevin take over her column. In this year's edition, his views of the top 2024 GOP presidential candidates are exactly in alignment with Rupert Murdoch's. Ron DeSantis is the bee's knees:
Republican hopes for 2024 must rest with their new superstar, Ron DeSantis, who won almost 60 percent of the vote in his race to be re-elected governor of Florida, paving the way for four new G.O.P. House members. His handling of Hurricane Ian was only his latest feat, building on his popular defense of parental rights in education, his support of the police and his fight against wokeism.
A Florida governor "handling" a hurricane isn't a "feat"; it's a minimum requirement of the job. If a taxi driver successfully negotiates a left turn, you wouldn't call it a "feat" -- the ability to do that is part of the minimum skill set needed for the job. But Kevin is in love with DeSantis, as all Republicans are expected to be.

Kevin is also totally over Donald Trump. All Reublicans are expected to share this perspective as well, though the GOP Establishment is having a harder time selling it, according to the polls. But Kevin is completely on board with GOP elite opinion:
Donald Trump is radioactive. His insistence on picking candidates based on their loyalty to him cost Republicans control of the Senate in consecutive elections, and his attacks on other Republicans are despicable. Historians will judge his presidency in more generous terms than the media does now, and we will be forever in his debt for saving the country and the Supreme Court from Hillary Clinton, but his effectiveness has passed.

His announcement that he will run again was greeted with resounding silence from Republicans the next day. Rupert Murdoch stripped Trump of the formidable Fox defenses. Trump’s isolation was made plain at his announcement party, where the only member of Congress in sight was Madison Cawthorn, who lost his own primary.

A third Trump run will simply settle old scores with political enemies and the press and ignore the repair work that the G.O.P. needs to be done.
Trump's biggest sin? Not the racism, the deadly downplaying of the pandemic, or the mancrush on Vladimir Putin -- and certainly not January 6. None of those are mentioned. Trump is bad, according to Kevin, primarily because he loses elections for the GOP. (If you ever ask yourself, "What does the GOP stand for?," the answer is "The GOP stands for the GOP winning elections.")

Kevin is happy about GOP gains in the House, and he leads us to believe that it's for policy reasons:
Republicans have won the House and ended the torturous reign of Nancy Pelosi. With that victory come the purse strings, which should put Democratic profligacy on the skids.
He then writes:
Republicans’ first order of business should be ...
Should be what? Proposing a non-"profligate" budget? Nahhh:
Republicans’ first order of business should be impeaching the odious Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, who has presided over the disgraceful situation at the border, wearing incompetence like a badge of honor.
Yeah, that ought to get spending under control!

I told you a few days ago that Mayorkas was more likely to be impeached than Joe Biden, and Kevin is completely on board. As for a Biden impeachment, tellingly, he doesn't even mention the possibility; instead he predicts that Biden will run again in 2024. He's internalized what I believe is the party elite's view, that a Biden impeachment followed by an inevitable acquittal in the Senate would just garner sympathy for him, and might help him get reelected, but a Mayorkas impeachment is lower risk (very few voters have warm feelings regarding Mayorkas, or any feelings at all), and maybe a few Democratic senators, especially the ones up for reelection in 2024 in red or purple states, would vote to convict. Also, allowing a Mayorkas impeachment takes some of the pressure off Kevin McCarthy to greenlight a Biden impeachment.

So yes, I think it's going to happen. I think Kevin Dowd is reciting the party line.