WaPo is now admitting that Trump is facing a backlash for his “you won’t have to vote again” remarks. (I’m out of free WaPo links for the month, but here’s the story on MSN.) Still, WaPo gives itself some wiggle room. It says that Democrats “interpreted” the remarks as a threat to democracy, not that the remarks were a threat to democracy. Some politics expert who was quoted called the remarks “ambiguous.” As in,  “Trump frequently makes these kinds of deliberately ambiguous statements that can be interpreted in multiple ways.”

Let’s review:

Trump: You have to get out and vote. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.. In four years, you won’t have to vote again. pic.twitter.com/DBGcBr3Wht

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 27, 2024

In conclusion, “In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.” That’s right off the video. There’s nothing ambiguous about that. If we take his words literally, he’s clearly saying they’ll “fix” the system so that there will be no more elections.

It’s entirely possible that isn’t what Trump meant, but if that was the case it wasn’t a matter of Trump being “ambiguous” but of Trump “mis-speaking.”

A few days ago Dan Froomkin wrote in Press Watch that media tend to cover Trump as if he is not responsible for what he says.

Reporters who know Donald Trump know that he will respond to Kamala Harris’s candidacy with racist and sexist attacks on her as a woman of color.

In fact, he’s already started.

But the way two New York Times journalists wrote about it on Tuesday, it was as if Trump has no agency –  no responsibility for his own behavior.

The article cast Trump’s racist and misogynistic response to being challenged by a woman of color as inevitable and unpreventable – something like the weather or a natural disaster — rather than as a deliberate choice on his part.

Written by the Times’s two most ardent Trump-whisperers, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the article was headlined: “Trump’s New Rival May Bring Out His Harshest Instincts.”

Note the passive construction – and the use of the word “instincts,” as if Trump has no say in the matter: It’s just Trump being Trump.

That’s letting him off the hook. The headline should have said something like: “Trump Already Engaging in Repugnant Attacks on New Rival”.

There were some comments to the last post saying that news media favor Trump because Trump content bumps ratings/readership, but that actually hasn’t been true for some time. It may still be true for Fox and OAN, but not for “mainstream” media. Most people are tired of his act. Probably even some people who plan to vote for him aren’t that keen on watching him so much. I understand attendance at his rallies is way down, too. And the favoritism isn’t limited to Trump but extended broadly to the Right.

The Washington Post, meanwhile, is blaming the culture wars. Rather than calling out right-wing attacks on Harris as racism, pure and simple, reporter Emmanuel Felton on Monday termed them “racial attacks” and situated them as part of “the broader culture war over corporate diversity and affirmative action programs.”

For Felton, the story is not that the right wing is responding to Harris with grotesque racism, it’s that “America’s fraught racial politics are set to, once again, take center stage.”

The headline on that story was another passive horror, almost putting the onus on Harris rather than on the perpetrators: “Harris’s campaign will have to contend with DEI, culture war attacks”.

I personally think this comes back to the media’s sensitivity to being called “biased.” If you tell the straight-up, unvarnished truth it makes the Right look bad, and then they scream about media bias. So whatever the Right is doing has to be sugar-coated somehow, to appease the gods of both-siderism. And we don’t know how much owners like Jeff Bezos, who owns WaPo, get involved in these news decisions.

But, yeah, at least there’s a backlash. The remarks are getting covered, and I expect Democrats to keep refreshing our memory about them.

As far as the Right is concerned, Trump didn’t say what he said. Here’s the official excuse from the Trump campaign, from the WaPo story linked above —

 Asked to clarify what Trump meant, Steven Cheung, a spokesperson for the campaign, said in a statement on Saturday that the former president “was talking about uniting this country and bringing prosperity to every American, as opposed to the divisive political environment that has sowed so much division and even resulted in an assassination attempt.”

That’s not even in the ball park of what he said. It’s not even in the neighborhood of the ball park. Or the same city, even.

For another reaction from the Right, see Jazz Shaw at Hot Air.

The response was as predictable as it was dishonest and flatly incorrect. Kamala Harris’ campaign immediately characterized the speech as “a vow to end democracy.” The Atlantic said that Trump was, “telegraphing his authoritarian intentions in plain sight.” The New York Times, clearly unable to restrain themselves, declared that Trump is “planning to destroy our democracy” and  he’s going to “fix himself up as dictator.” Another liberal outlet determined that Trump had “said the quiet part out loud.”

Of course, none of that was what Trump actually said and they’re all smart enough to know it.

Of course, it is what Trump actually said, and Jazz Shaw is too ideologically blinkered to admit it. And the quotes he attributed to the New York Times actually did not appear in the New York Times article he linked. He trusts that Hot Air readers won’t bother to check, I guess.

Here’s a story, and a story about a story. Last night in a speech at the Turning Point USA Believers’ Summit in West Palm Beach, Trump said this (as reported in The Hill):

Former President Trump at a Friday event hosted by the conservative Christian organization Turning Point Action urged Christians to vote, saying they wouldn’t have to do it again if they got out there in November and elected him because “everything” would be “fixed.”

“Christians, get out and vote, just this time,” Trump exclaimed to a cheering crowd in West Palm Beach, Fla.

“You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians” he added.

“I love you Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote,” Trump said.

That sounds a tad sinister to me. And this story is viral all over social media. Here’s the headline at Rolling Stone:

Here’s the Rolling Stone story:

After repeating his usual unfounded claims about mail-in voting, Trump launched into an appeal directed at Christian voters. “Christians, get out and vote!” yelled Trump. “Just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine! You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians!” He added, “You gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”

And here’s the video:

Trump: You have to get out and vote. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four years, it will be fixed, it will be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore.. In four years, you won’t have to vote again. pic.twitter.com/DBGcBr3Wht

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 27, 2024

So he said this; there isn’t any question. And he appears to be saying that if he’s elected again he’ll “fix” things to establish some kind of permanent dynasty. Now, I question if he actually knows what he’s saying half the time. But there aren’t a whole lot of ways to interpret this that aren’t really, really threatening.

This is the sort of remark that ought to be picked up and used against him, the way Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” and Barack Obama’s “cling to guns or religion” were used against them. And the Democrats had better start driving this.

At least the New York Times picked this up, although I couldn’t find it on their home page,

The Washington Post, however, brushed off the “no more voting” threat with a brief mention in the third paragraph. Instead, WaPo emphasized Trump’s criticisms of Kamala Harris (she’s a “bum,” apparently). Many of the comments attached to the story complained.

Paul Campos at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

When I first heard about this I assumed somebody was paraphrasing, and saying that Trump was implying to his Christian supporters (Christian in this context might as well be a synonym for neo-fascist) that they wouldn’t have to vote again if they just vote for him this one time.

But of course not: he’s saying this, very literally — although perhaps not “seriously,” because if he were serious it seems the fact that one of the two major party candidates for president is promising his supporters he’s going to install a dictatorship would get some major media coverage. (Oddly, he also appears to say “I’m not Christian” in the midst of his rant).

Yes, “if he were serious it seems the fact that one of the two major party candidates for president is promising his supporters he’s going to install a dictatorship would get some major media coverage.” You’d think. The Democrats need to raise major stink about this. Again, it’s possible Trump didn’t fully understand what he was saying. I question if he knows what planet he’s on half the time. But, then, if he’s babbling nonsense in his speeches (which he is), why isn’t that the story? 

Last month Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic,

Perhaps the greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled was convincing millions of people—and the American media—to treat his lapses into fantasies and gibberish as a normal, meaningful form of oratory. But Trump is not a normal person, and his speeches are not normal political events.

For too long, Trump has gotten away with pretending that his emotional issues are just part of some offbeat New York charm or an expression of his enthusiasm for public performance. But Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks.

We all need to raise a major stink with the major news media. Enough.

Stuff I learned over the past few hours:

The shrapnel theory is back.

The FBI has “some question” about whether Trump was struck by a bullet or by shrapnel, says FBI Director Christopher Wray. This is from ABC News:

“With respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear,” Wray said in response to a question from Chairman Jim Jordan asking whether the FBI has accounted for all bullets fired by the shooter. “It’s conceivable, although as I sit here right now, I don’t know whether that bullet, in addition to causing the grazing, could have also landed somewhere else. But I believe we’ve accounted for all the shots in the cartridges.”

I don’t know if a doctor who might have examined the fresh wound would have been able to tell if it had been caused by a bullet or shrapnel, but this is possibly another reason why Trump won’t release the medical reports. And it looks like the FBI hasn’t seen them, either.

I also notice that he wasn’t wearing the stupid bandage or whatever it was at a rally yesterday, and his ear looks completely normal.

It’s way past time for media to start hounding him about releasing medical information, and not just about the ear. And, indeed, Marcy Wheeler says Trump is asking to be hounded.

Trump has posted on the social media site he has propped up by influence laundering, insisting he was hit by a bullet (though mentioning only glass as an alternative), and then making a claim about his hospital diagnosis.

If Trump is going to make claims about what the hospital report says, then by all means he can ask them to release his records, including the CT scan results, and give a press conference.

Perhaps now — almost two weeks after the attack — journalists will start asking him for those records?

J.D. Vance  is weird.

“Weird” is the adjective I keep seeing attached to the name “J.D. Vance.” This is true even if you don’t believe he has a thing for sofas. See also J.D. Vance didn’t have sex with a couch. But he’s still extremely weird. at Vox. Also, J.D. Vance’s Sad, Strange Politics of Family at the New Yorker.

And it’s looking like J.D. Vance may be the new Sarah Palin, as in a drag on the ticket. Among other things, Vance is a radical anti-abortionist.  If Trump thought his campaign could get away with avoiding the “A” issue, that ain’t gonna happen with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket. Vance also thinks that adoptive parents are not real parents, and only those who have directly passed on their DNA to their own offspring have a legitimate stake in the future of the country. And in Vance World, the primary function of women is to have children.

Further, the guy is light in the credentials department. The Right keeps calling Kamala a “DEI hire” in spite of her impressive resume. Vance was in the Marines, he wrote a book, he worked for some investment firm for a while, he has been a Senator for two years. Neither he nor Trump are qualified to be president, IMO, even though Trump already held the job for four years. He didn’t actually do the job when he had it.

And so, headlines about Republican “buyer’s remorse” about Vance are blossoming like flowers in the spring. I’m also starting to see headlines asking if Vance will be replaced on the ticket. If — I hope when — Trump starts falling further behind Harris in the polls, I wouldn’t be surprised if Vance is bounced.

Don Jr tanking his dad’s campaign with one of the worst veep choices of all time is delicious pic.twitter.com/SwHhkcfR8J

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 25, 2024

Trump is afraid to debate Kamala Harris.

This isn’t really a surprise, except that it shows that he’s still cognizant enough to recognize she’d clean his clock.

“Given the continued political chaos surrounding Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, general election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee,” Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement.

Cheung referenced former president Barack Obama, who has yet to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris, and claimed that there “is a strong sense” in the Democrat Party that Harris “cannot beat President Trump, and they are still holding out for someone ‘better.’”

Barack and Michelle Obama have since endorsed Kamala Harris. Next excuse? The second debate was scheduled by September 10, btw, way past the time the Dem ticket will be formalized.

There’s more evidence Bill Barr is a snake.

Yesterday an Inspector General report was released that said while he was Attorney General, Bill Barr used his office to help the Trump campaign claim voter fraud. Josh KOvensky at TPM:

Senior Trump DOJ officials issued multiple statements weeks before the 2020 election suggesting anti-Trump election fraud in a critical swing state, knowing all the while that no crime had likely been committed and that the main suspect faced a severe mental disability, a DOJ Inspector General report found.

You may recall the widely covered story of nine ballots cast by overseas military voters found in the garbage in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. On its face, the initial reporting seemed to affirm the most intense, right-wing fever dreams of widespread voter fraud.

Then-Attorney General Bill Barr directed DOJ officials to take the virtually unheard of step of releasing details about the investigation – including that several of the ballots contained votes for Trump – even though the case “would likely not be criminally charged,” the report found. …

… Per the report, Barr pumped Trump up with the juiciest details from the Luzerne County incident on Sept. 23, 2020. Several ballots had been found in the garbage, Barr told the President. They were military and, in a remark that was like waving red before a bull, they were pro-Trump. That same day, Trump refused to commit to the transfer of power. The next day, Trump went on a radio station and used the details Barr provided him about the investigation to rile up the public and reinforce Barr’s incorrect conclusions: mail-in ballots were a “horror show,” Trump said, and the DOJ would investigate.

There’s more evidence Trump is a cartoon.

At a rally yesterday Trump seriously suggested the U.S. military should be run by NASCAR drivers and football coaches.

I see that Kamala Harris now has enough pledged delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. And my impression is that Democratic voters are downright giddy with relief. I know I feel a lot better. I was able to watch MSNBC last night with no fear it would be too depressing.

I did not know, until I heard Lawrence O’Donnell say it last night, that only Kamala Harris is in a position to take over the Biden campaign’s war chest. Probably. If someone else were to be nominated, Biden would have had to donate “his” campaign money to a PAC for that candidate or something. Most campaign finance experts think that it should be fine for Harris to just resume the Biden-Harris campaign as the Harris-? campaign, and if anybody files a complaint with the FEC there’s no way the FEC is going to deal with it before the election. There also seems to be no real legal issue with Kamala Harris replacing Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee, no matter how many Republicans line up to say otherwise.

Do see Josh Marshall, The Curious Lure of Writerly Anti-Politics, about the naysayers who even yesterday were still talking about a slower process and a brokered convention. There were concerns the voters would feel party elites were crowning Harris without giving voters a say. Democratic voters responded by donating $100 million to the Harris campaign in the first 24 hours after Biden’s withdrawal announcement. I believe there is a genuine groundswell of support for Kamala Harris, and the elites need to fall in line. Voters realize there is no time to waste.

There is, of course, a certain amount of hand-wringing over a woman nominee. Hillary lost the Electoral College, after all. The difference between Clinton losing but Biden winning is that Biden got a bigger proportion of the male vote, some are saying. But  while I certainly acknowledge that misogyny was big a factor in 2016, I also think that Clinton lost a lot of voters in the Rust Belt because she was Hillary Clinton. This is not something a lot of people in the Democratic Party are willing to acknowledge even today. She and her husband are not exactly famous for being supportive of Unions or for keeping manufacturing jobs in the U.S. Trump narrowly won the Electoral College in 2016 in part because a lot of voters in Rust Belt precincts thought he was listening to them and Clinton wasn’t. And she wasn’t. Clinton did get a lot of Union endorsements, but the rank-and-file had nothing to say about that and preferred Trump.

I don’t think so many prefer Trump this year, however. Probably some do, but a lot of them must realize now that Trump isn’t the friend of labor they thought he would be in 2016. The Rust Belt vote was a lot bluer in 2020 than it was in 2016, and I think Joe Biden worked to persuade union members he was listening to them.

So while I do not doubt there will be bumps we don’t anticipate, I am feeling fairly optimistic about the next few months.

Thanks everybody for chipping in to my fundraiser. I have now paid off all my medical bills and will not ask for any more money, although the fundraiser links will be open for a few more days. And I’m saving up for some furniture. I moved into my apartment a year ago with a bed, a desk, and a bookcase. I’ve added a cardtable and chairs and a couple of standing cabinets, and I have some more bookcases my son is going to put together for me in a couple of days. I think next I’ll go for a sofa. Eventually.

Some news day yesterday, huh? And I had to pick yesterday to meet my kids in the city for dinner and a movie. I was on the train to Grand Central when I heard someone say Biden had dropped out, so I checked my phone, and lo, it was true. And my heart breaks for President Joe Biden, because he didn’t deserve the way his own party has been treating him. But I also think this may be for the best.

So on the train back I checked my phone again and saw all manner of Very Serious People in media calling for an open convention, saying it would be good for the Democratic Party. “Vice President Harris may be the most likely replacement, but a contested convention is good for everyone,” opined the Washington Post editorial board. As of this morning, this Very Serious Opinion had almost 5,000 comments, roughly 99 percent of which said, “Screw you, WaPo. It’s Kamala. Deal with it.”

I think it’s fairly obvious to most of us that we don’t need more weeks of Democratic Party infighting right now. And it’s also obvious to most of us that the Dems didn’t dare pass over a woman of color to nominate one of the usual white guys. I’m seeing a lot of social media comments calling for a “dream ticket” of Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer, in fact. Hey, Trump has the He Man Women Hater’s Club sewn up; why not? And today a lot of headlines are declaring that much of the Dem party is rallying around Kamala. Because most of us want to get on with the campaign to beat Trump.

I understand that the Republicans are dumbstruck; this isn’t what they expected. Trump’s entire campaign was built around tearing down Biden as old, senile, and corrupt. And now they’ll have to start from scratch. Gee, I wonder how Trump will run against a Black woman? Josh Marshall:

Donald Trump and Chris LaCivita are about to hit Kamala Harris with an avalanche of racist and sexist attacks and a ton of slut-shaming. Democrats across the board need to be saying now what we all know, which is that this will bring out the very worst of Trump. Racism and sexism are his brand. Charlottesville is his brand. You can’t just be on the receiving end of this stuff. Trump is about to show the kind of gutter white nationalist and racist pol he is. Force the press and all observers to see this totally predictable move through that prism.

Trump is losing the campaign he wanted to run, the one he and his campaign have spent years planning to run. There’s now going to be a furious race to define Harris first. Of course Trump will go there, and these attacks and those attacks can be very damaging. But Trump the racist bully and gangster is what kills him in the suburbs. It’s what embarrasses people.

Any normal person would have already been embarrassed by Trump, but whatever.

Even more typical of Trump: He’s now demanding a “refund” of money he spent campaigning against Biden.

“So, we are forced to spend time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden, he polls badly after having a terrible debate, and quits the race. Now we have to start all over again,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday night.

“Shouldn’t the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud in that everybody around Joe, including his doctors and the Fake News Media, knew he was not capable of running for, or being, President? Just askin’?”

Dana Milbank:

There is continued grumbling about why Trump won’t release real medical information about his bleeping ear. You know, the one with the conspircuous bandage that he obviously stuck on himself.

Yesterday he released a letter written by Rep. Ronny Jackson, his former White House physician,

Jackson wrote that he has “evaluated and treated” Trump’s wound on his ear daily.  … Jackson stated that Trump sustained a 2 cm wide wound from the track of a bullet “that extended down the cartilaginous surface of the ear.” No sutures were required for Trump’s wound, Jackson said, but “there is still intermittent bleeding requiring a dressing to be in place.” … Along with treating his wound, Jackson wrote, medical staff at the hospital “provided a thorough evaluation for additional injuries that included a CT [scan] of his head.”

The hospital system where Trump was treated declined to weigh in on the contents of the letter.

Of course, the hospital can’t release medical records if Trump doesn’t want them released. But if all they did was evaluate the state of his head, it seems odd why he wouldn’t just go ahead and release them. The only obvious reasons for not doing this are:

(1) The “wound” is just a minor abrasion that is barely visible by now and certainly doesn’t require a maxipad stuck on the side of Trump’s head, or (2) there is something wrong with Trump’s head. Hmmm.

Of course, as part of any exam the hospital would have taken Trump’s blood pressure, which I am betting is in the stratosphere somewhere, and listened to his heart and lungs and probably noted height and weight.

I seriously wish reporters would start hounding Trump to release real medical information about himself, especially considering he’s only three years younger than President Biden, and if he got another term by the end of it he’d be older than Biden is now. If Biden’s frailties are an issue, what about Trump? Who’s to know if he’s nothing but a stroke waiting to happen?

See also Emptywheel.

Speaking of medical records, I decided to do a mini-fundraiser to help pay for an unexpected medical bill. My insurance dumped a big co-pay on me for an echocardiogram I had last month and some smaller co-pays for some other tests. I’m actually doing pretty well, but because of the TIA I had in 2022 I’m being monitored. And I would be happy to release the results of the echocardiogram if I can figure out how to get to them. The doctor just called me and said he didn’t see anything alarming, which is as much as I wanted to know.

So if you can spare some change, here is the gofundme link and here is the PayPal link. Thank you!

Well, the RNC convention is over, so maybe it’s safe to watch MSNBC again. This morning I’ve been plowing through the reviews. One of the best bits of writing about the convention was published yesterday, by Andrew O’Hehir at Salon, Anti-party in a ghost town: Trump’s undead GOP holds an un-convention. Do read it all the way through. O’Hehir describes a party convention that was almost entirely severed from the history of the GOP. And the people who were there seemed weirdly directionless, as if they weren’t quite sure why they’d come. And here’s the meat of it:

The Republican Party under Trump — and someday soon under Vance or some other heir or usurper — isn’t really a party and has no guiding ideology or sense of its own history. My colleague Amanda Marcotte observed this week that the conventional wisdom describing the new GOP as a cult of personality slightly misses the point. She meant that Donald Trump is the funnel through which MAGA energy flows and the wizard who conjured it forth, but he has never truly controlled it. 

If Trump wins this election, he’ll be a lame-duck president in his 80s. More specifically, he’ll be the beloved but decrepit figurehead of the semi-normal popular front of a fascist movement whose darkest and most compelling energies lie elsewhere. Because that’s all the official, above-ground Republican Party is now. Their convention is a deliberately boring dumbshow, listless late-Soviet political theater meant to lull you and me — and most of its actual participants, for that matter — into believing that Trump 2.0 is nothing more than what it says on the box.

By the time of the Reagan Administration the Republicans had learned to turn their televised RNC convention into a slickly produced four-day pep rally, with every campaign button polished brightly and every balloon falling according to script. By contrast, the Dem conventions always seemed a bit disheveled. But I take it this RNC convention was nothing like the old ones.

And then there was Trump’s acceptance speech. I have read there really was supposed to be a plan for Trump to make a “unity” speech and not even mention Joe Biden. He started off well enough, but he couldn’t keep it up. He is what he is. Paul Waldman:

The speech in its written form was what any sane person would have expected: some vague, nakedly insincere words about unity up top, followed by the red-meat speech Trump had always intended to give. But rather than anything resembling a traditional convention speech in form and structure, this was a Trump rally speech, familiar to anyone who has watched one on TV — and an unusually dull one at that. 

Here’s how it works: His aides load a prepared text in the teleprompter, and Trump uses it as a scaffold on which he hangs rambling digressions, familiar jokes, bizarre preoccupations, and commentary on the written words themselves (“So true, so true”). He speaks a few of the written lines, then wanders off like Mr. Magoo, then returns to speak a few more of the lines, and wanders off again. 

It’s hard to overstate how strange it was that Trump used this extraordinary opportunity, with tens of millions of Americans watching, to offer little more than the umpteenth version of the rally speech he has delivered hundreds of times. Did he say to himself, “Oh, I’ve gotta use the Hannibal Lecter joke, that one kills”? Well he did. We didn’t get the riff about sharks and electric boats, but he did describe a fictional event in which he supposedly visited a shipyard in Wisconsin and on the spot redesigned naval destroyers to make the bow more pointy.

This one is also worth reading all the way through. Waldman gets to the marrow of Trump’s appeal through the use of the German word herrenvolk, “master race,” a term the Nazis liked a lot. And he said what Trump is promising is a a herrenvolk democracy, or one in which only one specific ethnic group (guess who?) is allowed to vote and hold office.

Screw your ideals and principles; the true America is in the blood of the people — or at least some people. 

This is why Donald Trump won 62 percent of the votes of rural whites in 2016 and 71 percent in 2020, despite having done precisely nothing in those four years to improve the quality of their lives. This is why he won nearly two-thirds of the votes of whites without college degrees in both elections. You may feel that the economy or the culture has left you behind, Trump and Vance tell them, but you are the realest and truest Americans. It’s in the blood. 

And the rest of you? We’ll allow you to be here, but only on “our terms.” For now.

David Brooks, of all people, said this of Trump’s acceptance speech: “The part after the assassination-attempt story was one of the truly awful and self-indulgent political performances of our time. My brain has been bludgeoned into soporific exhaustion.”

David Frum, the Atlantic:

At the climax of the Republican National Convention last night, former President Donald Trump’s nomination-acceptance speech was a disheveled mess, endless and boring. He spoke for 93 minutes, the longest such speech on record. The runner-up was another Trump speech, in 2016, but that earlier effort had a certain sinister energy to it. This one limped from dull to duller.

Somebody seems to have instructed Trump that he was supposed to have been spiritually transformed by the attempt on his life, so he delivered the opening segment of his address in a dreary monotone, the Trump version of pious solemnity. After that prologue, the speech meandered along bizarre byways to pointless destinations. A few minutes before midnight eastern time, Trump pronounced a heavy “to conclude”—and then kept going for another nine minutes. Perhaps it was the disorienting aftereffect of shock, perhaps the numbing side effect of painkillers.

I thought this was interesting:

The republican national convention cast a bright light on the party of Trump’s weaknesses: its extremism, its cultishness, its lack of welcome to the majority of Americans. The central idea implicit in the vice-presidential nominee’s speech was the superior Americanness of those with seven generations of ancestors buried in U.S. ground over those whose ancestors are buried in other places. The central idea in the presidential nominee’s speech was “me, me, me, me, me” for more than an hour and a half.

Here Frum is just a tad off. Speaking as someone who has more than seven generations of ancesters buried in U.S. ground, I am very aware that Trump himself and a lot of his minions — Stephen Miller, for example — are only second generation or so. I also note that most Black Americans also have many generations of ancestors buried in U.S. soil, never mind native Americans. And Trump has always seemed weirdly unconnected to American history and culture. Norms, like why it’s important to visit veteran cemeteries, have to be explained to him. And I bet he couldn’t recognize the tunes of “My Darling Clementine” or “She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain.” It’s like he’s from Mars. No, the real criteria are not about how long your family has been here, but whether you are White and male.

Trump really ought to be beatable. His record as president (which Frum accurately reviews) was actually dismal. Biden’s is much better. But you can’t tell that to many Americans, because they have so bought into the Trump mystique and so hammered with propaganda about the failures of Biden that if you tell them the truth, they think you are crazy, or just lying.

Regarding the Biden drama, trying to follow it too closely will give you whiplash. The Conventional Wisdom changes by the hour. He’s getting out! No, he’s staying in! And right now Biden’s staunchest defender is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She and Bernie Sanders are standing by their man. The so-called centrists in the Dem party are in meltdown mode and pretty much resigned that Trump will get another term.

The whole country has lost its bleeping mind. I see that the Dump Biden Hysteria is back with a vengeance. Republicans, meanwhile, feel invincible. And through all this, the polls don’t seem to be budging.

I missed this yesterday — How J.D. Vance Won Over Donald Trump. A lot of the Right really didn’t want J.D. Vance. “It was uncertain down to the final hours, with a frantic lobbying effort until the last possible moment by anti-Vance forces, including Rupert Murdoch and his allies, with some of it playing out in public.”

So what made the difference?

When word got back to Tucker Carlson a few weeks ago that Mr. Trump might be wavering on Mr. Vance, he intervened. Mr. Carlson, who was visiting Australia on a speaking tour, phoned Mr. Trump and delivered an apocalyptic warning, according to two people briefed on their conversation. He told Mr. Trump that Mr. Rubio could not be trusted — that he would work against him and would try to lead America into nuclear war. Mr. Carlson, who declined to comment for this article, told Mr. Trump that Mr. Burgum could not be trusted, either.

Mr. Carlson told Mr. Trump in that June phone call that he believed that if he chose a “neocon” as his V.P. — an abbreviation for Republicans who favor using U.S. power to implant democracy abroad — then the U.S. intelligence agencies would have every incentive to assassinate Mr. Trump in order to get their preferred president.Mr. Carlson told Mr. Trump in that June phone call that he believed that if he chose a “neocon” as his V.P. — an abbreviation for Republicans who favor using U.S. power to implant democracy abroad — then the U.S. intelligence agencies would have every incentive to assassinate Mr. Trump in order to get their preferred president.

I may be misjudging Tucker, but I suspect he’s not really stupid enough to believe that. But he knows Trump is stupid enough to belive that. Strange that I seem to remember Tucker being all rah-rah about the neocons back during the Bush II Administration.

Vance has pretty much re-made himself into undistilled MAGA, so exactly what he adds to the ticket but More of the Same is hard to say.

Stormy Weather

I’d heard this elsewhere, but The Atlantic has an article by Zoë Schlanger that says Project 2025 calls for mostly dissolving the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. You know, the people who collect weather data and tell us when hurricanes are coming and such.

NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories,” Project 2025 reads. The proposals roughly amount to two main avenues of attack. First, it suggests that the NWS should eliminate its public-facing forecasts, focus on data gathering, and otherwise “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” which the authors of the plan imply will improve, not limit, forecasts for all Americans. Then, NOAA’s scientific-research arm, which studies things such as Arctic-ice dynamics and how greenhouse gases behave (and which the document calls “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism”), should be aggressively shrunk. “The preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the document says. It further notes that scientific agencies such as NOAA are “vulnerable to obstructionism of an Administration’s aims,” so appointees should be screened to ensure that their views are “wholly in sync” with the president’s.

NOAA is expecting an especially bad hurricane season this year, so this could become a campaign issue. I’d say this idea is nuts, except that it sets up a situation in which weather reports can become a valuable commodity that will make somebody a lot of money.

Did I mention the whole country has lost its bleeping mind? I believe I did.

Loose Cannon has fired. She just dismissed the documents case, on the grounds that Jack Smith’s appointment as special counsel somehow violated the Constitution. I’m reasonably sure it didn’t, and since (as I understand it) no jury had been selected, double jeopardy doesn’t apply. Jack Smith can appeal. This will be viewed as a victory for Trump in the short term, however. Coverage in Washington Post here. More later as it happens.

Vance is the New Pence

I was horrified to learn the RNC convention is starting. In my head it was next week. Oh, well. I promise I will avoid watching any of it.

Several news outlets have now announced that annoying twerp J.D. Vance will be Trump’s running mate.

On Not Being Pathetic

Please, please read this Josh Marshall post, titled On Not Being Pathetic. I agree with it 100 percent. Apparently a portion of the Democratic Party and Dem-friendly “pundits” have decided since the Saturday shooting that they aren’t going to be able to replace Biden, so they are resigned to losing the presidency.  Josh Marshall calls out Jonathan Chait in particular; Chait has been pushing hard for Biden to be replaced, and now apparently he’s decided Trump is going to win, and we might as well just get used to it. But he’s not the only one. Here’s Josh Marshall:

The folks talking to the Capitol Hill sheets didn’t say, we’re dropping the swap Biden idea. They apparently said, well, we’re giving up on presidential race altogether. That is just the kind of toxic loserdom that makes me see red every time. Can’t stand it. I’m agnostic on the replace Biden thing. If the big party players want to do it then do it. And if not then Biden’s the candidate. I go back and forth on which option I think has the better shot at success. What I’m hearing now is that these ringleaders are just going to take a pass on the whole race or have their contribution be giving demoralizing quotes to Politico if they can’t get their way. The truth is we don’t have any time for whining. If members of Congress want to replace Biden on the ticket, they can. They need to get together and do it. If not, then drop the idea and move on. But again there is just no damn time for whining.

The replace Biden effort was slowing down before Saturday, Josh said, mostly because “it was hitting a lot more resistance from regular voters than the people pushing it anticipated.” As I wrote earlier this week, there simply wasn’t a significant shift in the polling. My take is if there really was significant concern that Biden was impaired and not just having a bad night, the party should have acted already and gotten the switch over with. The longer this drags out, the harder it’s going to be for Biden to reassure voters he’s still capable. But apparently not everyone in Washington was all that concerned. So here we are.

And now that Trump managed to survive getting his ear nicked he’s being hailed in even mainstream media as some kind of great man; a man of destiny; a new Napoleon, or something. It’s really sickening. Someone on social media today was praising Trump for “rising up” after being shot, while President Biden sometimes has trouble walking. I never saw him have trouble walking, but apparently there’s a video. I responded that one of our greatest presidents couldn’t walk at all because of polio, and that superior ambulatory skills have nothing to do with the job. But I’m ready to go find a quiet spot in the woods someplace and just scream for an hour or so. This has to be the worst election year ever.