(Update: Right after I posted this, NBC reported thet RFK the Lesser is dropping out and endorsing Trump. This is not a surprise, and I doubt it will make much difference, but we’ll see.)
(Update: “Special Counsel Jack Smith has decided against seeking a major hearing to present evidence in the election-interference case against Donald Trump before voters go to the polls Nov. 5, according to people familiar with the matter,” it says here.)
Wowzers. I don’t think the DNC convention could have gone any better than it did. If Harris-Walz don’t get a bounce from that, the laws of physics must be suspended. As of this morning it’s still a toss-up race, though. Let’s give it three or four days.
I’m also waiting to see the television ratings for last night compared to the last night of the RNC. For the first three nights the DNC’s television rating blew the RNC’s out of the water. And for those who did tune in to see Trump’s acceptance speech, I believe the most charitable review I read of it was that it was an “unhinged mess.”
The convention has been criticized for not inviting a pro-Palestinian speaker on the stage. I heard somewhere that there were concerns a pro-Palestinian speaker might say something that would muck up the cease-fire talks. Although the cease-fire talks aren’t going anywhere, that I can tell, at the moment.
I suppose you’ve heard the unconfirmed story that Trump called Netanyahu to ask him to not make any deals before the election. Both Trump and Netanyahu deny it happened, which of course has no bearing on whether it did or not. I’d be more surprised if it didn’t happen than if it did. It sounds like something Trump would do. But if it gets closer to November and Trump is losing, Bibi might want to think about making a deal while Joe Biden is still president.
There is also some grumbling in right-wing commentary that Harris didn’t provide enough details about her plans. (Like Trump ever provided details?) Obviously Harris was avoiding a wonky policy speech. And one right-wing blogger complained that Harris actually spent part of her acceptance speech talking about her personal background. From the transcript, it appears Trump spent at least a third of his nearly endless acceptance speech talking about being (maybe) grazed in the ear.
So, roughly, we’ve got two months and a couple of weeks until the election. Besides the great convention, one of the most hopeful signs, to me, is that Trump seems to be utterly melting down. He doesn’t know how to just take a deep breath and rethink his strategy. Now he’s on defense, and he’s being reactive instead of proactive. During Harris’s speech he was furiously posting in ALL CAPS on Truth Social in howling rage. He called in to Fox News, so agitated that he was punching numbers on the phone while talking. And Fox News had to cut him off. So then he called Newsmax, which apparently let him continue as long as he wanted.
Trump is calling into Fox, lying, saying Harris is “going to give a tax increase of 4 to 5 times what people and companies are paying right now,” and he seems to be accidentally pressing buttons on his phone while he speaks pic.twitter.com/5Wb4qSZ3C5
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 23, 2024
At WaPo, Ban Balz writes that Kamala Harris has put Trump in a box, and he’s struggling to break out.
As Harris has glided through the past month, Trump has taken to social media or to friendly media interviews in hopes of setting the terms of the conversation, but that has backfired. He has tried invective, exaggeration and lies, something that in the past he used to shift the focus, sometimes to distract from his own problems, at other times to draw attention away from a rival. It hasn’t done what he hoped.
The former president has tried counterprogramming to force the media to look his way this week. It should have been obvious to him that this would be Harris’s week in the same way that the Republican convention was his. The only news Democrats made during his convention was that pressure on President Joe Biden to quit his reelection bid was ramping up. Trump has learned, perhaps painfully, that at this moment, fewer are listening to him. In short, nothing seems to be working the way it once did.
That could change, and obviously major media will continue to cover his campaign. But as I keep saying his act is old and tired, and if he wants to be the center of attention the way he was in 2016 he’s going to have to do something new. And I don’t think he can.
In other Trump news, see Trump’s businesses are raking in millions of dollars from Republican political campaigns – including his own at CNN.
A person is almost tempted to credit divine intervention for that convention. The truth is a cohesive and competent team put it together. That was fairly apparent on night one. To have it continue and build to the end a near miracle. It helps to have the depth and talent available to pull it off. In all, quite the show of competency. Remember, this was done with some last-minute cast changes in some lead roles. Bravo.
Were I to guess, I'd say that they didn't want a pro-Palestinian speaker because there's nothing *safe* to say about Palestinians in today's political climate. Anything that suggests Israel shouldn't keep blasting away, killing a dozen or more civilians per Hamas-connected enemy, will cause the pro-Israel caucus to scream bloody murder.
The Palestinians deserve a full throated defense. Giving them that during the convention would have risked the ultimate goal of defeating Trump and saving American democracy.
To be brutally honest, I suspect Republican rat fornication in the making of the fate of Palestinian folks to be a Democratic-only priority. There's no pressure campaign on the Republican side at all. While it's true that you shouldn't let your vote be taken for granted, this is a situation in which you can vote for the not-good-enough woman, or the horribly-bad convict. It's like gay marriage bans earlier in the 00s – trying to push a narrative where Democrats aren't good enough, to help win the bigotry vote, which is always larger than people assume.
That's not to say that I think Palestinians allies in America *shouldn't* be making lots of noise, but I think the direction of the noise wouldn't have the same tone ("crap on Democrats for being not-good-enough, while ignoring Republicans who are actively hostile, and would be glad to use WMDs on the Palestinian folks.") if not for Republican rat-fornication.
You may have missed this part of Harris's acceptance speech:
Yes, it was a great convention. Yes, DJT is not coping well. From the clip I saw of Trump calling into Fox, he was/is in complete denial that his lead is gone. How much was bluster and how much he's disconnected from reality is anyone's guess.
From the second update, I'd guess that Jack Smith is proceeding carefully with the goal of a conviction next year. I have no idea what Jack Smith thinks, but I guess he'd prefer the USSC wasn't handing down bad legal opinions to influence the outcome of the election. I'm not sure the USSC wants to protect Trump for his crimes, but they may not want his crimes to prevent a rise to power that would advance their goals. Which begs the question – how much further on the limb of bad decisions will the USSC go to protect Trump AFTER HE'S LOST THE ELECTION?
If Kamila Harris is sworn in, multiple Trump trials will proceed at the state and federal level. If each conviction – state and federal – (2025 & 2026) is overturned by the USSC (I'm making some grand assumptions.) by twisting the US Constitution into a pretzel, the Democrats in Congress will go after the USSC as they legally can. (Again, in a few grand assumptions, I'm predicting Dems take the House, and hold the Senate, suspending the filibuster.)
There's no political benefit to protecting DJT if he's lost the White House. He's a distraction from what the Heritage Foundation wants to accomplish because Trump, after he's defeated, will want the power of the entire Republican Party to align to protect HIM from jail. Which does nothing to advance Project 2025, which is what the puppet masters in the GOP want.
Which takes me back to Jack Smith. Does he hope the USSC will butt out after DJT loses and Harris takes the oath of office in January? If nothing really happens until next year, there's nothing for the USSC to act upon to protect Trump. Nor any pressing reason to interfere conspicuously on Trump's behalf.
I didn't watch five minutes of the GOP convention so I'm not sure if there were repeated requests for the members of the convention to GOTV. From what I read, (which does not make it true), Trump pulled the plug on the GOP ground game when he took over the RNC. I did watch some of the DNC Convention every night. And EVERY night, speakers were pitching like evangelicals to the faithful to go out and find converts who will vote for Harris. This may be the difference in November that Harris will continue to build momentum because of an army of people knocking doors and making phone calls.
I wanted the courts to expose Trump as a criminal this year to prevent his election. Now it looks like voters will have to do it themselves and Trump will face justice after the voters have rejected him.
Last thought, for anyone who made it this far, there's growing evidence that Trump enablers are pulling Trump out of the public view. It happened with the Black Journalists interview – they pulled Trump a half-hour early. There's the scheduled interview Maha mentioned that got cancelled in Detroit. And Fox dumped Trump rather rudely, possibly because the producer on duty at Fox saw the interview as a meltdown in progress. So he ended it. Nothing will shake the cultists but if Trump can't do an interview (in the opinion of his handlers) how's the debate gonna go? The further Trump slides in the polls, the more he's gonna melt down.
Hope’s a big deal. This convention was full of hope. Fear and loathing might work for a while but people always demand some hope. Hillary-hope seemed hollow but this seems pretty real. Hard to put hope into a sour senile who lies all the time, and only keeps promises made to his donors and base. Somebody said Texas polls are rapidly moving into the blue direction.
RFK the lesser is worse than Lindsay Graham. He X-cremented lots of stuff which accurately slammed Trump, even saying his wife would divorce him if he ever supported him, and now he’s busy trying to delete all that in the hopes of being Trump’s next Making Attorneys Get Attorneys victim, or something. What the hell goes wrong with these people? Power corrupts or power reveals, which I dunno.
I agree with the Republican rat-fornication. I've told others in other places to "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good", but strange somebodies always show up to tell me that Kamala's de-prioritizing Palestine in favor of domestic issues means that she would be every bit as bad as Trump as POTUS. That kind of reasoning-repetition would be right up MAGA alley.
If you need a laugh and more insight into the Convention and the antics of the rouge Kennedy, Maureen Dowd delivered a gem in the NYT. It is worth a trip to your local library if you don't have a subscription, a friend that does, or a way around the paywall.
You might even find a hard copy of the NYT if the right wingers haven't had it banned. Here the Library only has the on-line version. If you want a hard copy of anything in this area it is a desert with the exception of USA today (other than local). The Russians seem to be able to saturate the area with misinformation in spite of our desert status. That's because we have so many useful idiots in the area and the Russians have them all networked up.
Opinion | Daffy Donald, Turning Pea Green With Envy – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
His ratings are down, everybody knows it, so sad.
Perfect cartoon!
These things don’t make a difference. The GOP goons want to sew chaos and then send the presidential decision to go through congress which will be a party line vote.
Yes, that's the plan.
For most people the last election is settled, and Biden is the elected president until the next election is settled. The last insurrection is not yet settled, as the system can be delayed and even stopped if necessary. Much responsibility for where it all goes is up to the court of public opinion. This is where Trump and the republican party have pushed it with their delay. The more the court of public opinion sways away from Trump. the less chance Trump has. The less chance the last insurrection planners and enablers have.
This is why races like the one against Ted Cruz are important. More and more the shadow of Ted Cruz looms over the 1/6 insurrection and there is less doubt he was not deeply involved and complicit in that scheme. Collin Allred is running close in the polls and was given a slot at the convention. He is a more than competent messenger as I listened to him. With a little help from the Kamala wave and good work from the court of public opinion Cancun Ted should not feel secure. His wife was all over the state's energy decisions that led to the disaster of the big freeze. Texas has plenty of reasons to send Cruz on a permanent vacation. He is a big mess. A Texas sized mess as they say. Texas won't be all right with Allred, but it is a Texas sized step in the right direction.