I want to go back to something Josh Marshall wrote a couple of days ago, Has Ol’ Man Trump Lost His Touch? No paywall. Here’s the meat of it:
There is a key difference here that is important to understand. Trump’s 2016 campaign’s success stemmed in large part from channeling the cultural and social grievance of middle aged white American men. His 2024 agenda is heavily focused on his personal grievances and doing away with all the restraints on the presidency that hobbled him and led to ego injuries in during his first term — Trump Unbound, as it were.
A big chunk of the voters probably still are not all that focused on the November election and haven’t seen much of Trump recently. He really isn’t the same now.
One of Trump’s 2015/2016 super powers was that he’d come out of American popular culture — the core of it, which is to say, reality TV. These days he sits around Mar-a-Lago, talks to sycophants and prepares for new court dates. You can see a lot of the degeneration in his social media communication on Truth Social. As you know, I considered myself something of an aficionadoof rhythmic ferality of Trump’s 2015–2020 Twitter presence (see “Trump Attack Haiku“). The stuff today on Truth Social is entirely different, a kind of digital equivalent of pressured speech, packing a mix of All-Caps yelling and Trumpian buzzwords into one unstructured blob or loaf of bloated menace. He’s not the same.
Trump went into 2016 with a con man’s instincts for telling people what they wanted to hear. And he lucked out with a Democratic opponent who ran a massively tone deaf campaign. Unlike in 2016, he’s now surrounded with a “cast of ideologues who have created a program for him.” And a lot of that is massively unpopular stuff, like raising the retirement age or cutting Medicare. Plus he’s in a real box on abortion, which he wasn’t in 2016 or 2020.
I’m guessing that about a third of the voters would jump off a 90-foot cliff if Trump told them to, but I do believe there’s a big chunk of people who will find him a much less palatable candidate than he was before, once they start to focus. The challenge, though, is to get them comfortable with voting for Biden. And I think that’s do-able if enough Biden surrogates get out there and get to work. See also Philip Bump, Trump goes on a weird riff about acid — again about Trump’s increasingly hallucinatory rhetoric.
But let’s also step back and look at what Trump is doing to the Republican Party. I read today that Trump’s RNC officially killed the GOP’s mail-in voter effort. Trump still tells the story that fraudulent mail-in votes cost him the 2020 election, which is a crock, and there is data that shows mail-in voting may favor Republican candidates more than Democrats. But Trump and his people seem more interested in throwing legal challenges at voting itself.
This appears to be a realization of the far right’s goal of focusing the Republican Party on election-related “lawfare,” that is legal challenges designed to restrict ballot access and undercut election systems in ways that make it harder to vote. Back in 2022, I reported that this vision was behind right-wing lawyer Harmeet Dhillon’s long-shot bid to become RNC chair. Dhillon insisted that the RNC needed to hire an army of lawyers to lob legal challenges ahead of the 2024 elections.
Nothing screams “We can’t win a majority of voters fairly” like prioritizing legal attacks on voting rights. But that’s precisely what the Trump-branded RNC is preparing to do. Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law and the current RNC co-chair, claimed “massive resources” will go to its so-called election integrity division.
So, head’s up. And of course the Trump family/campaign has taken complete control of the RNC, including the financial part, so Trump will be tapping that money for his own purposes and letting the down-ballot candidates fend for themselves. And see Bess Levin, Over 100 House Republicans Will Skip GOP Retreat Because They Hate Each Other So Much: Report.
CNN reports that “many Republicans plan to skip the [upcoming] House GOP retreat as they grumble about both the location and the idea of spending time with one another.” According to the outlet, fewer than 100 Republicans have said they will attend, meaning more than 119 either have previous engagements or would rather do literally anything else than breathe the same air as their fellow representatives. While some cited reelection races as the reason for their absence, and others have “complained about the venue choice” selected by Speaker Mike Johnson, a number of GOP lawmakers and aides “told CNN they were simply not enthusiastic about the idea of having to huddle with the rest of their party at a time when Republican infighting has prevented them from even passing procedural votes.”
The days when Republicans speak and move as one hive mind are over, I guess.
The rest of the year until November could go a lot of different ways. But one of the ways it could go — not predicting it will, mind you — is that the party itself implodes at some point.
In other news: I’m not always happy with my senator, Chuck Schumer, but he stood up in the Senate today and sent a message to Israel about Bibi Netanyahu. This is better.
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) called for the Israeli government to hold a new election in a speech warning that Israel risks becoming an international “pariah” under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet.
“I believe that holding a new election once the war starts to wind down would give Israelis an opportunity to express their vision for the postwar future,” Schumer said Thursday in a speech on the Senate floor, inremarks that did not set an exact timeline for a new election. Schumer, who opened his speech saying he felt “immense obligation” as a Jewish American to speak, stressed that the outcome of that election would be up to the Israelis — not Americans.
See also Josh Marshall, Schumer on Netanyahu in Context.
More Other News: The hush money trial may be delayed by 30 days. Bleep.
Good for Chuck for speaking up!
But the world can't wait while Bibi draws out the end of the Israeli response so that he can stay in power.
What's left?
A "mop-up operation" in what remains of Gaza??
A mop-up operation involving still more blood being spilled by Palestinian women and children.
And more future terrorists taught to hate Israel, and Jews.
I just can't anymore…
I just can't…
Not too long ago I posted that I kinda' feel sorry for the guy, he's clearly being manipulated by those who don't necessarily have his, or our, best interests at heart. To my experience he's a meth-head experiencing the inevitable result of years of stimulant abuse but that's beside the point: clearly not all the puppies are barking. He's demented and physically failing and I feel a little bit sorry for him. Just a little
As to The Party, lol, I long joked "what if he's a sekret dem bent on destroying the repubs from within?" Not that he's necessarily done anything other than facilitate the repubs destroying themselves from within. He's exposed the belly of the beast and in the long run that may not be a bad thing
I could be wrong, it happens, but it's best to let your enemy to defeat themselves …
"I’m not always happy with my senator, Chuck Schumer, but he stood up in the Senate today and sent a message to Israel about Bibi Netanyahu"
Yes Schumer, Biden, Harris have come around slowly. I guess better late than never unless of course you happen to be one of the tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians sacrificed for Bibi's vengeance campaign. I have always said that justice needed to be done to hold Hama's and it's leaders accountable for Oct 7th but what has transpired is actually just the opposite. If they are indeed as brutal as they act thousands of dead civilians means nothing to them (Israeli or Palestinian). In fact the sheer cruelty of this war has turned the world against Bibi. I'm sure Hamas sees that as a win. I'm not sure what the right course of action should have been but I damn sure knew what Bibi was going to do and that we would eventually be here. Bibi has an easy to understand past. I understand the politics and our unwavering support for Israel but I didn't expect it to take this long before Biden spoke out. It's quite a mess and I predict the next turn will be for the GQP to embrace Bibi and the killing of innocents, setting up yet another fault line for the magats and Stump to exploit. What a fucking mess.
Yes, a complete catastrophe.
I see a couple of things that make it very tricky for the US Govt. Our government has to walk a tight-rope, opposing Net-Yahoo while supporting the Nation of Israel and its people.
Problems: The nations in the Middle East that hate Israel also hate the USA. Some of the moderate-ish Arab nations are sort of neutral toward us because they care more about economics. But clearly there are lots of Middle East nations that wish us harm. We have always supported Israel's right to exist, while not agreeing with everything they do around "disputed" borders (West Bank settlements). But more importantly, we have an intelligence partnership with Israel, without which our ability to deal with Middle East threats to the US would be greatly diminished.
If Net-Yahoo is replaced (hopefully sooner rather than later), and a more moderate Israeli government follows, we can rebuild that intelligence partnership to our mutual benefit. On the other hand, since Net-Yahoo bears all the markings of a member of the international strong-man club, then I fear that if he doesn't get replaced, then we will probably have to assume that the famed Mossad Israeli Intelligence agency will get it's marching orders from a certain large autocratic country north of the black Sea. That would be a very bad thing. If not that extreme, the leadership in Israel might not have good will toward the US.
These are scary times. Autocrats around the world want TFG to get elected in the US.
Teri Kanefield said something similar, with her talent for clarity, a few weeks ago:
He wants to be like Putin. Also:
Except that he's losing his marbles.
Kamala Harris did a campaign event at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota. The talking head who commented, said that Kamala's tired of speaking behind podiums in Washington and wants to get out in the field. She's found an excellent way to fight for the ticket. That psychic I mentioned a few posts ago said that Kamala will become President, at some point Biden will step down.
Glad to hear Chuck Schumer is fighting to get past the impasse in the Middle East, whose name is Netanyahu.
Message to prosecutors in NY and GA: prosecuting Trump is not playing in the minor leagues. It's not playing in the major leagues. It's the frickin' World Series! If a 30-day delay closes the opportunity for an appeal, fine. But ladies and gents, Trump is quite willing and able to spend millions on background checks to find any personal fault he can exploit.
Regarding the proceedings in FL today, it does not look like Judge Loose Cannon will dismiss but why did she bother with a hearing? To facilitate delay? The decision that might do her in is a screw-up in her application of "rules" which will force a lot of stuff including names of Grand Jury members into public view. Smith explained to Cannon that she was wrong in a filing and invited her to reverse which (reportedly) pissed her off. If she holds to the bad decision, it's grounds for Smith to appeal and a good moment to ask the 11th to remove her. But the other thing about Cannon is she takes her sweet time.
A decision on Willis could happen at any moment.
I have not seen much speculation about after the election if/when Trump loses and the trials come up at long last. Trump will be challenging the results – he's laying the groundwork for that in the new RNC with legal hires. I understand Trump is coming out in opposition to early voting. That's an old reliable in screaming election fraud. But Citizen Trump won't have any success turning his election lawsuits into delays of what? three trials. Two? We're talking about prison, I think, and MAGA will come unglued. The GOP ought to realize sometime in 2026 that Trump is doomed to exile or prison. (If Trump decides to leave the country, it won't be the chase of the Ford on a California freeway. Trump owns a plane that can take him non-stop to Moscow.)
If Trump is in exile, the GOP has to move on. There's no way the GOP can bring Trump back into power if he's a fugitive from justice. But if Trump is alive, a whole lot of MAGA will not move on. Everybody who proposes they are the "New Trump" will be attacked by cult loyalists. And the GOP will stay in perpetual civil war until moderates like Liz Cheney rise to power, renounce the cultists, and build a party on principles instead of personality.
The first step is to defeat Trump in November.
"CNN reports that “many Republicans plan to skip the [upcoming] House GOP retreat as they grumble about both the location and the idea of spending time with one another.” "
Or as Charlie Pierce wrote today:
"First of all, the Greenbriar is a class joint, and what is the problem that representatives of the pro-family party have with a "family friendly" facility? After all, "sunny Florida" was not only the "preferred location" for the late Speaker McCarthy, it is also the "preferred location" of many a fine establishment in which young ladies dispense with their raiment."