First off, do listen to Sam Elliott tell you why you should vote for Kamala Harris.

Love it. Next, Paul Waldman writes about the media elites who complain that Kamala Harris doesn’t let them interview her enough.

Other than one sit-down she and Tim Walz did with CNN, her campaign has treated the elite media as though they have no particular claim on her time; she has done more local radio and TV interviews than national ones. 

You can read many complaints about Harris’s lack of media accessibility (see here or here or here or here), though reporters seem unconcerned about the fact that Donald Trump does no interviews with them either. He talks to Fox News, other right-wing outlets, and dudebro podcasts, but he does not sit down with major newspapers or television networks, and somehow they don’t seem to mind. But as always, Democrats are held to a higher standard, scolded for failing to uphold the most elevated democratic norms while Republicans’ violation of those norms is taken for granted. 

I started to watch that CNN interview with Dana Bash, but bailed before it was over because the questions were stupid. It was all “gotcha” (Why did you flip flop on fracking?) or bits of right-wing talking points, re-framed as questions. Instead of asking about her energy policies, Bash tries to trip her up by grilling her for changing a position on fracking. As a viewer, I found that annoying and tiresome. If I were the candidate I’d be frustrated also.

Basically, Waldman says, media elites are souring on Harris because she is not coming to them as a supplicant and asking humbly for their attention, and he fears they may collectively find some reason to portray her negatively going forward. So let’s watch for that.

At SF Gate, see Drew Magary, The New York Times is Washed. The writer is annoyed because the NY Times persists in calling the presidential race “deadlocked.”

We’re just over a month away from the presidential election and, if you ask the New York Times, the race between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president/Keystone kriminal Donald Trump remains “deadlocked.” Despite the fact that Trump is losing in Pennsylvania, a state he needs to win, by four points. Despite the fact that polls in North Carolina just turned in Harris’ favor. Despite the fact that a grassroots campaign for Harris, one that numbers in the hundreds of thousands, sprung up the instant her boss ceded his spot in the race to her. Despite the fact that Trump got his ass beat in a nationally televised debate with Harris after repeating, with supreme gusto, the lie that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets. The lie that his own running mate openly said was a lie.

You don’t have to work terribly hard to sum up this race as it stands: Harris is destroying Trump, because Trump is a deranged old s—tbag. See how easy that was?You don’t have to work terribly hard to sum up this race as it stands: Harris is destroying Trump, because Trump is a deranged old s—tbag. See how easy that was?

Well, it is pretty close in the polls.

Someone must have told Trump that he’s losing women’s votes, because now in his speeches and social media “truths” he’s trying to appeal to women. But all he’s doing is being creepy, because that’s who he is. The adjuticated rapist and serial maligner of E. Jean Carroll held a national convention that was said to be all testosterone, all the time. But lately he’s taken to telling women “I am your protector” and if he gets another term they’d be so much happier. And it’s creepy. Even Jonathan Chait thinks so.

The Trump pitch begins with a winking acknowledgment that he is losing among female voters. (He calls his deficit among female voters “fake news” but proceeds to follow the premise anyway.) Then Trump makes a normal, or normalish, pitch that his administration will deliver lower crime, inflation, and illegal immigration. Then the pitch gets very weird.

Trump casts himself as a kind of husband to America’s women. “I am your protector,” he declares repeatedly. He presents himself as the solution to all the problems he imagines they are having in their personal lives:

You will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared. You will no longer be in danger. You’re not gonna be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected, and I will be your protector. Women will be happy, healthy, confident, and free. You will no longer be thinking about abortion.

He has no idea what women’s actual concerns are, obviously. But yeah, this is creepy.

Trump’s “you will no longer be thinking about abortion” is, clearly, an attempt to tell us what to think. He’s stressed because he’s getting a clue that the abortion issue could cost him the election. So he’s trying to exert his authority by ordering us not to think about it.

Bill Kristol — yeah, it’s Bill Kristol — co-authored a piece at the Bulwark that is downright feminist — When The Predator Says He’s Your Protector: Trump’s latest appeal to women is the essence of paternalism. And it’s not just Trump.

Trump’s handpicked Ohio Republican Senate nominee, Bernie Moreno, at a town hall in Warren County last Friday night, deplored the fact that some women choose to vote on the issue of abortion rights. Indeed, he continued, “It’s a little crazy, especially for women past 50. I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”

So Moreno, like Trump, likes to tell women what issues they should care about. He’s even got this one conveniently broken down by women’s age.

Of course, in his MAGA-male way, Moreno can’t seem to imagine anyone caring about anything for any reason other than the narrowest self-interest. Could women past 50 care about their daughters? Or about younger women in general? Or about personal freedom?

Not in Moreno’s world.

In Moreno’s world, and Trump’s, men act in their self-interest, and women are not to think for themselves.

Rightie men as a whole cannot hear what women say. It’s like their brains blank out as soon as they hear a feminine voice. Which is one reason I got a kick out of the Sam Elliott video.