So the DNC Convention begins tomorrow. I am trusting them to put on a good show to give Harris-Walz a big bump.
There will be protests. Gov. Pritzker has promised the convention will not be a replay of 1968. The protesters will have their voices heard, he said, and police will respect that as long as the protests are peaceful. So good luck, Chicago. Gov. Pritzker is a sensible guy, and I trust he will use good judgment. We can’t always know what police will do, though.
I’m just now catching up on yesterday’s Trump rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which Trump called “North Carolina.” I found a pretty good highlight video. It does show empty seats in the arena, which has a seating capacity of just over 8,000 (I looked it up). I’m not going to hazard a guess as to how many people were there, but it was definitely less than 8,000. And according to many news stories, people were leaving while Trump was still talking (and talking, and talking).
See also some short highlight clips in this Rolling Stone article.
In the usual stew of nonsense one bit stood out for me. This is from the Guardian:
Trump confused some in the audience with what appeared to be a claim that if Harris could become the candidate without a primary election, then so should he because he is so popular among Republicans.
“I said, so why are we having an election? They didn’t have an election. Why are we having an election?” he said.
Trump’s scrambled brain simply can’t make bits of conceptual knowledge say in their proper lanes. Is he confusing the primaries with the general? Has he forgotten that the Republican primaries, which he won, are over? What’s going on there?
There will be another Trump event on Tuesday. Josh Marshall writes,
Trump just announced a “crime and safety” rally for next Tuesday in Howell, Michigan, a town that has been heavily associated with the KKK for decades. Indeed, just late last month White Supremacists marched in the town chanting “We love Hitler. We love Trump.” Some but not all of the reputation comes from the fact that a long time Grand Drago of the Michigan Klan lived there and his farm was a sort of home base for the Klan. (I just found out this afternoon that a good bit of the 1991 documentary Blood in the Face – great doc, by the way – was shot there.)
I’m not sure this is going to be a rally, exactly. He’s supposed to speak at the Livingston County Sheriff’s Office, according to the Detroit Free Press. It could get weird. This event, whatever it is, is part of a “swing-state blitz” meant to draw attention away from the DNC convention. But attention doesn’t seem to be doing Trump much good.
The Zeitgeist has turned on Trump. In less than four weeks he has gone from being the near-inevitable winner to a captal-L Loser. The political press is awash in stories about how the Trump campaign keeps trying to reset, but Trump isn’t cooperating. At this point, the people running Trump’s campaign and Trump himself are barely on the same team. They’re almost canceling each other out.
And I had not remembered this, but before the 2020 general elections lots of headlines were accusing Trump of flailing and failing to reset. Just like now. He appears to have a long-established pattern of falling apart under pressure.
Far-right influencers like Laura Loomer and Nick Fuentes have begun to attack the campaign — although not Trump himself — for being lame and not far enough Right.
Laura Loomer, a far-right activist whom Trump last year called “very special,” said his “weak” surrogates had unraveled his momentum and that his approach “needs to change FAST because we can’t talk about a stolen election for another 4 years,” in an X post that was “liked” more than 8,000 times.
I’m not sure exactly what these people want, other than more racism and misogyny. They might have noticed that Trump is barely talking about policy at all. He’ll briefly brag that he’s going to make China pay us through tariffs, which isn’t how tariffs work. He’s going to do something something to end inflation and to shut down the border, and probably deport several million people. He’s cutting taxes. Usual stuff. He doesn’t seem to be interested in much else. He’d rather talk about how Kamala Harris has been prohibited from laughing. Seriously.
As Trump’s campaign grapples with slumping performance in the polls, the far-right activists argue that it has failed by not adopting harder-right positions on race and immigration. They have also called for the campaign to fire its co-managers, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, blaming them for a lackluster strategy.
Many of the campaign’s hard-right critics said they still stand strongly behind Trump himself. But some of them have vowed to pummel the campaign online and at Trump rallies unless it changes course, presenting a challenge for campaign officials who have worked to publicly disavow or disregard extreme voices for fear they could alienate voters.
MAGA is trying to self-destruct, in other words. Let’s hope they succeed. It’s interesting to me that they believe Trump is this all-powerful being of great knowledge and authority who has lost control of his own campaign. Hmm.
Anyway, now many Republicans, including Lindsey Graham, are admitting Trump could lose. See also Spencer Neale at The American Conservative, It’s Kamala’s to Lose.
Paul Simon probaly would object, but I think Trump’s new theme song (now that he can’t use the Titanic song) should be “Slip Slidin’ Away.”
I'm not sure how Trump will counter-program through the convention without doing rallies. And Trump said he's waiting until after the convention to do… something. The rally in PA was supposed to bolster his slipping support, but Trump rented an 8,000-seat venue? And the other most recent rally was smaller than that. While Harris is packing in 10K and 15K. I hope she pounds Trump with the numbers to demonstrate she has the momentum.
It's unfair, but people don't show up for the home team when they lose. The team on a hot streak can sell out. Turnout in Nov. will be – affected is too weak a word – driven may be too strong – but if the election is a blowout, it will because voters emotionally connect with Harris.
Trump brought back Cory Lendowsky – as far as I can tell, he's there to rein in the professionals who are trying to get Trump on message. When Trump asks the crowd if he can go off the teleprompter, I can see his handlers ripping out handfuls of hair. Where does Trump go when he goes off-message? He compares his looks to Harris' looks. Trump thinks it's a beauty pageant.
Trump and surrogates are going heavy on "price controls" and "communism." Strange, the only president who set prices was a Republican named Nixon. And he went down hard. Trump is saying that investigating price gouging will bring about a 1929 depression. The depression was the result of twelve years of Republican policy that could not give big business enough. We got OUT of the depression with FDR socialism, higher taxes on the rich and laws that allowed government to break up monopolies. Trump has completely reversed historical facts. (Maybe wonkish but true.)
Egg producers were convicted of price-fixing in federal court in 2023 and paid 18 million in damages. This racketeering is real. I think the (mythical) average voter can grasp that monster grocery chains that buy smaller competing chains aren't doing it to lower prices. Back in the time of Nixon and hyperinflation fed by the "wage-price spiral" , falling profits fed increased prices, which caused unions to demand large increases in wages just to keep the same standard of living for employees. I presume the data is there in quarterly earnings (relative to the prior quarter.) But Publix and WalMart are not suffering and have not, certainly not after Covid subsided.
Republicans are defending high prices and huge profits for big business, which puts them on the wrong side of the argument with consumers who feel no love for the monster companies and food producers who are bleeding us into oblivion. I'm sure some advisors are telling Harris to tread lightly because big business can throw unlimited sums into the Republican coffers if she crosses the line.
IMO, if the numbers even partially support the argument that price-gouging contributed to high prices – GO THERE. And when the cost of programs is the only reason the GOP can come up with, the solution should be, tax the rich. Is there a majority who wants to protect the fat cats skinning us alive? (Maybe I am radical and don't know it, but this argument makes sense.)
Trump seems to be demanding that the campaign will descend into the echo chamber of fascist ideas. (Note that Trump praised 'our' 'courageous' Supreme Court. He might have been thinking of the partial victory on immunity, but it could just as easily be the ruling that struck down Roe v Wade. Trump is hugging the fascists in robes too tightly – their popularity is at record lows. Where Trump wasn't making personal attacks, he wasn't advocating anything supported by the majority. The VFW isn't happy with Trump after he dumped on veterans. If stupidity was a crime, Trump would never get out of jail.
"In less than four weeks he has gone from being the near-inevitable winner to a capital-L Loser"
I don't think Stump was ever the "near inevitable winner" any more than I think he is now going to lose for sure. We basically have the same election we had in 2020, Stump has the baggage of J6 and his sexual assault and felony convictions so that should cost him quite a few votes I would think? Harris is considered the incumbent by many so she has the burden of World events and economic conditions. So in mind if things stay the same as today Harris should eek out the win, but it's going to be close maybe as close as Stumps loss in 2020? Stump is certainly more deranged lately than he has been but I always thought he was deranged and somehow 70 million people still voted for him? I saw yesterday Miss Lindsey came out and said Stump needs to pivot to policy and quit the personal attacks? So now the GOP is waiting for him to act "Presidential" sort of like our corporate media did for four years, good luck with that!
Thx; I agree that national and global events are potential problems for Harris. Gaza is the most obvious – and intractable – Foreign Policy hot-spot, but Ukraine could be trouble too. Inflation will probably stay about where it is now (not bad, not great) but it is still an issue which Trump & the GOP will (hypocritically) use against Harris.
I cringe whenever Democrats brag about [always more] new record Stock Market highs, for two reasons: one, what goes up can come down, hard and unpredictably, and two, it plays right into GOP BS that Democrats are "the" Party of "The Elites".
OTOH, Trump really does appear to be slowly losing it. Graham's advice for Trump to focus more on "policy" is just laughable; Trump doesn't want to do that (it would pin him down, and he'd have to do homework). Also, promoting standard GOP policies would alienate more voters than it would attract! Trump chose his lane – Culture War + Warm Fuzzies – but that's starting to wear thin. Some of that is Trump's slow mental decline, and some of that is people getting tired of his schtick (finally!).
I've just read 'Alexis Zorbas' or 'Zorba the Greek' as is guess the English title. It's a raw, gross, archaic world in there, a men's world. And a type of men that nobody today could understand as role models. But the theme of the cold empathy of Buddhism and strange Buddhist escape mechanism of avoiding 'suffering' or 'stress', contrasted with the people fully accepting and living through it, that theme is the strong side of the book.
But that is something else than emotionally being a fan of one fake party in a fake democracy and opposing the other fake party in a fake democracy. 45% of people who are allowed to vote will do so and it may end (manipulated or not) 51 to 49. It may not make that much a difference. It's no good this way or that way.
Just came across Bowie/Metheny with 'This is not America' and John Mellencamp's 'Pink Houses'…yeah, 'Ain't that America…the land of the free…little pink houses for you and me…'.
And the media brings that nonsense even here in Europe. And the leftist self-declared intelligentsija here still wears Hillary t-shirts…at least that would change should the dems win: laughing Kamala t-shirts for leftist brainers…
And them dems and reps got the same views on 90% of what counts for the establishment, so I've read. Just that the reps supporters wouldn't make money on the wars abroad, so they would like to waste the state money on something else…
Didn't I read here last time I've checked, that you were opposing people, even dems supporters, who were asking Biden to quit 'the race'? But you don't remember that now?
I take it you've never formally practiced Buddhism, as you obviously know nothing about it.
"And them dems and reps got the same views on 90% of what counts for the establishment, so I've read."
Please… list the 90% that they agree on. Inquiring minds want to know.
"Or so I've read" is a phrase you can expect from a rightie troll. Because he can't come out with fascism or his actual contempt for democracy. So he comes out to poison the discussion.
It's true that I agonized over Biden's position after the debate. I like him (but it's not a cult worship like the other guy.) Biden's administration has delivered in a lot of ways. But there was serious reason to doubt in the last 100 days if Trump's fire hose of lies, spoken with confidence (and not a single supporting fact) would win over the undecided voters. Harris was an unknown quantity – she's never tried to showboat in the last three years. She's been inspirational, a great speaker, and she conveys a sense of joy and hope, coupled with sound (not perfect) policies.
Mikey, I think you; 'd like to undermine our confidence and support for VP Harris. If so, your post failed miserably. Go back under your bridge.
This:
It’s interesting to me that they believe Trump is this all-powerful being of great knowledge and authority who has lost control of his own campaign.
Couldn't help but laugh when I read this. Ironies and contradictions.
The far right should be happy in one respect. Even though he's being told by the campaign and others in the GOP, Trump is still being Trump, e.g. his full racist, misogynist, bigoted, disrespectful self. He's focused on Harris' race, level insults and insulting lies, demagogue migrants and stereotype blacks on crime. Trump is doing what they want. The problem isn't the campaign as it is the candidate and his insistence on running on far right rhetoric with a heavy dollop of stupid. Doubling down on hate and stupidity isn't going to help.
@Maha: not sure I didn't pratice 'Buddhism', not formally though – you are right. Can you recommend a book that would describe 'Buddhist practice' (I don't think THE Buddhism or THE Buddhist exists) the way you'd find authentic?
@doug: well, I'm not American and writing from Europe. And find it annoying, that the election campaign is present in everyday news even here. On a level like, quoting from today and translated into English: 'Kamala Harris' husband amuses convention with private annectode' as headline.
Here it looks like US politics is going against Europe, esp. the Dems…but all in all anyway, whether it's Dems or Reps.
I don't know about you specifically. I was wondering: did they choose a quasi secular 'practical philosophy' like Buddhism instead of a religion with a belief system. Only to compensate for it with a quasi religious faith in a secular political system?
Do not intent to undermine your ‘confidence’ in Harris, same as I would not like to undermine anybody’s faith in Christ Jesus…
Nihilists. Can't live with you, can't live without you.