Trump's Conception of Crime

 One of the important things to know about Trump's character is how much he was influenced by lawyer Roy Cohn. Cohn was infamous both as Joe McCarthy's counsel and as a mob lawyer. Trump's entire narrow world view is transactional rather than principled. Principles, in fact, are for suckers. Law do not exist as expressions of communal norms and values, but as things to be skirted whenever they get in your way.

As a result, Trump has engaged in a long career of petty and not so petty business and tax crimes. It's tough to prosecute rich people for complicated fraud and tax crimes, so he's skirted the law for a long time.

His rise to political prominence has put him in the public crosshairs, because politicians are in the public crosshairs. That's the way we as a society restrain our elected officials, and it's properly known as the rule of law. Trump cannot conceive of something like that, so when he is prosecuted and found guilty of crimes, his natural impulse is to say that his opponents are criminals. 

Where Trump and Trumpism have repeatedly foundered has been when needing to meet any sort of burden of proof. Whether it was trying to deny the result of the 2020 election or defending himself against libel, fraud charges, or felony campaign finance crimes, Trump loses when he faces the legal system and a jury of his peers. His only protection is a judiciary that that has slow walked the charges against him or made it difficult to prosecute a president for any crimes of corruption.

The humiliation and real peril of being a convicted felon have increased his appetite for lawlessness. He wants to prosecute his enemies without really caring whether they actually committed crimes. If he was convicted, why not convict Harris of something - charges to be determined at a later date. 

His campaign speeches have become increasingly unhinged and untethered to reality, so we get suggestions like this weekend when he argued that we should have a "Purge" style day of violence, where his brown shirt thugs in law enforcement can assault anyone Trump doesn't like. 

Of all the threats that Trump poses to American democracy, two stand out as being potentially damaging even after he exits the stage. The first is that elections are corrupted by...something. The second is that the adversarial court system with jury trials is somehow rigged by...I dunny, George Soros or something.

If Harris wins and Trump goes to prison or even dies, and we then enter the 2028 election with the legitimacy of our elections and courts undermined by the continuation of the Trumpist Right, then we will remain in a very perilous place even without that fatuous gasbag on the cable news.

ADDED: What Trump benefits from is the bothsides element that allow him to spout actual fascist rhetoric and be able to hide behind the legacy of the Republican Party and America's two party system.

Algorithms For Fascism

 There's a lot of deserved criticism of how the media has completely and utterly failed the American public over the last nine years when it comes to Donald Trump. Some of it is broken down here by DougJ/Pitchbot and James Fallows.

The great paradox, of course, is that journalists will overwhelmingly vote for Harris and they likely would have done the same for Biden. So why does their coverage suck?

First, there's the fear of allowing that bias of coloring their work. If you generally support Democrats you are going to be very guarded about calling Trump in the grips of fascism and cognitive decline. OK, to a point that's fine. Yes, guard against your biases, but sometimes they are right!

There's an argument that it's all about maintaining access to Republican sources. The thing is, that might explain Maggie Haberman or Olivia Nuzzi, it doesn't explain the Times as a whole.

My feeling is that it all comes back to the media landscape and the difficulty of grabbing readership, market share and ad revenues. Reporting - real reporting - is kind of expensive as it's labor intensive. In order to maintain the staff that the Times has - and that most local newspapers do not - you have to get as many "clicks" as possible. That's how you wind up with headlines that "sanewash" Trump's craziness. 

People's outrage over the Times' abdication of calling Trump what Trump is actually drives some sort of engagement. Even if you cancel your subscription, you might still click through a link on social media and that's the model they rely on.

The fundamental insight of Silicon Valley that outrage drives "engagement" just as much as intellectual interest is going to break our democracy if we aren't careful.

Last Thursday, Jonathan Haidt came to speak to the school about social media and phones and the deleterious impact on children, especially girls. I'm about to turn 58, so I can control somewhat my feeds on social media to people I mostly agree with and Moo Deng. Kids can't filter that way and many other can't either. I probably do spend too much time on Twitter, but I really try not to click on or respond to things that are driven by clickbait. 

The news media used to be about seeking big truths and holding power accountable. Now it seems to be about engaging readers via clickbait headlines that often don't match the text of the article. 

One of the points Haidt made was that when we began the internet age in the '90s and early '00s, there was a lot of hopefulness about the democratization of knowledge. But my students sit in class with a lap top open and I ask a question like "What's the GDP of Canada?" and they stare at me blankly, because that's just not what they use computers for and certainly not what they use their phones for.

I'm not convinced "the Internet was a mistake" but I am convinced social media and the engagement algorithms are.

The World Is Holding Its Breath

 The President of Ukraine had to stand next to a Russo-phile Putin apologist and nod along like that idiot was making sense. As Chait notes, Trump's basic framework for understanding war is as a form of business transaction. A hostile takeover, if you will. The idea that Trump could "make a deal" an end the war is only true if "make a deal" means selling out Ukraine and the international standard that invasions and seizing another country's territory are perhaps the most egregious offense outside of genocide.

Speaking of "genocide", we have Israel's strike on Hezbollah, which is both absolutely justified by Hezbollah's actions and a demonstration that Israel really doesn't give a fuck about civilian casualties. The merits of that position - we have to kill some children to kill the really bad guys - would seem to be morally indefensible...but tactically sound. The IDF has kicked the living hell out of those that would do Israel harm. In 1943, no one would've batted an eye at this behavior.

However, the US has been working for almost a full year to prevent the spread of the war into Lebanon. They apparently had assurances from Israel that there wouldn't be anything of this scale, and Israel went ahead and did it anyway. 

Biden's prioritization of good relations with Israel - a misbehaving ally - has been blinkered, especially since Netanyahu seems to be actively working to help elect Trump. If we can somehow get to President Harris, I hope she cuts off aid to Israel as long as it's being led by a man who is both a war criminal and regular criminal.

Anyone paying attention to Trump recently can see how mentally unwell he is. He's making cognitive gaffes that would have caused the press to call for Biden's immediate resignation. He's perseverating on crowd size and other totems of his damaged ego. I have a hunch the internal polling is a lot more dire than the Times/Sienna polls. Trumpists are so invested in their Golden Calf that they can't see it, but I guarantee the rest of the world - unpolluted by Fox News, NewsMaxx and OAN - are looking at this creature and are agog that the fate of the free world is this tenuous. 

Even Trump Is Smarter Than This

 Trump advisor Jason Miller signs off on state "menstrual surveillance."

Even Trump, whose brain is a pudding pop left out in the August sun, knows this is terrible politics.

Hopefully this actual true and awful thing might get Chapelle Roan to make a decision?

This Is Where I Am

 Cheryl Rofer shares some analysis that has been my read on the election even when Biden was running.

It begins by noting that the best predictor of future voting behavior is past voting behavior. Overwhelmingly Trump voters will vote for Trump and Biden voters will vote for Harris. The Wild Card are first time voters. Trump would have to win that group by a LOT to erase Biden's 2020 edge. (We are talking about the popular vote.)

So, the question is: Who are the new voters? I concede that some of them are young voters who remember 2017-2019 rather rosily, because they were - you know - children. However, the dynamic that Harris had brought to the race is a dramatic upswing in young Black women registering to vote for the first time. That was even before Taylor Swift weighed in. 

If we look at the flagging enthusiasm, and - yes - the crowd sizes, it's really, really unclear to me where the "new" Trump voters are coming from. 

AOC's Next Move

 I've been very impressed with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's political chops. She's an excellent communicator and understands that building bridges in Washington is the way to accrue power and influence. Unlike some "Progressives" she will work across ideological and even partisan lines.

As one of the three bright young stars (along with Pete Buttigieg and Wes Moore) of the Democratic Party, the question becomes what her next step should be.

Frankly, I'd love to see her take on the New York governorship and clean up the New York Democratic Party. Democrats in NY are a great example of the poison of holding power for so long that they elect people like Cuomo, Hochul and Eric Adams. It was the dysfunction of the NY Dems that cost us control of the House; they couldn't even do opposition research on George Santos for chrissake. 

If AOC could run a hostile takeover of that state party and state governance, then I really do think she's putting herself on the short list for president one day. You never get to the White House through the House, but if you clean the Augean Stables of Albany, that's a pretty good way to separate yourself from the pack.

The Bad Joe

 Joe Manchin came out and said he couldn't endorse Harris because she wants to gut or completely get rid of the filibuster to reinstate Roe. In the process, he said that the filibuster was the "holy grail of democracy."

This is so profoundly stupid, I don't know what to say. 

I never hated on Manchin, because I understood that he was a critical vote during Biden's razor thin legislating. He represents arguably the Trumpiest state in the union. He's not Sinema, who seemed to glory in performative contrarianism. However, if there is any way that the Republican coalition collapses and we get the trifecta, not having to kowtow to that guy will be a welcome change.

Is This Behavior A "Tell"?

 In poker, "tells" are nonverbal hints as to what your opponent is thinking. We all have them. Trump - as a not terribly sophisticated person - has many of his own. The question is: Is his behavior a "tell" that he knows he's lost?

Trump is endlessly measuring himself against other rich people. He always has the "biggest" and "bestest" stuff and money and so on. His desperate need for external validation is well documented. So what are we to make of the collapse of his Truth Social stock? He was unable to sell off his shares until this week, as early investors wanted to avoid a pump-and-dump stock scam. Now that he's able to sell his shares, the demand for this meme stock will likely collapse. Hell, Twitter isn't worth anything, how can Truth Social be worth anything? How does this loss of (on paper) billions affect Trump?

We are also seeing him increasingly hawking bullshit like Trump crypto currency and Melania's "book". We've already seen the Trump bible and the Trump sneakers. I feel like there's one more desperate product that Trump and his family will foist upon the rubes who still think he's their divine champion. 

One thing Trump is really NOT doing is campaigning. When he does go out amongst the unwashed masses, he says increasingly untethered things like making John Deere pay a 200% tariff, claiming he will be "women's protector" despite being an adjudicated rapist, claiming other countries wouldn't fight without his permission when he was president or claiming that he's actually running against Obama or Biden. Still, he has far fewer events this year than he had in 2016 (obviously in 2020, there were fewer rallies). 

His behavior - hocking cheap bullshit, not campaigning - is not the sign of someone who is vigorously competing for the presidency. It's someone who wants to soak every penny he can out of his flock before his "Sell By" date hits. What's more, his family is a pack of similar creatures who are looking to get as much money as THEY can, too. Does anyone think Lara Trump isn't soaking up every unaccounted for penny at the RNC? They sure aren't spending it on campaign stuff.

I think that there's an excellent chance that if Trump gets his ass handed to him on Election Day - the 2020 result, plus North Carolina and maybe a state like Florida or even Texas - he flees the country  before his sentencing. 

Times/Sienna

 Throughout this cycle, Times/Sienna has been the most Republican friendly "reputable" pollster. There are a host of pollsters who are just objectively terrible (Trafalgar, Atlas, Rasmussen) and designed to skew polling averages. The Times, however, is unlikely to be doing that. It feels instead like they are really, really wary of repeating the polling errors of 2016 and even 2020. 

Every poll has always had a sampling issue and today it has gotten much, much worse. When people actually answered the phone, you could get a good, random sample. Today, who answers a call from an unknown number? So a pollster has to make an educated guess about the composition of the electorate. The Times has taken the position that there are those "shy Trump voters" who need to be sampled more heavily than other pollsters are doing. 

This can lead to some head scratching results. Today's poll has Trump +5 in Arizona. The previous poll had Harris at +5 there. They are suggesting that the result of the debate is a...10 point swing to Trump? Meanwhile, the same pollster has Ruben Gallego's senate run at 49-50% while Trump ranges from 48-50%.  That's a LOT of Trump-Gallego voters in an era of very little ticket splitting. If you look at all the polling from Arizona, it very much looks like a tied race. Arizona is a true toss-up. The Times somehow has a better result for Trump than Trafalgar. That's odd.

Meanwhile, most of the polling from Pennsylvania shows Harris building a steady but narrow lead of about 2 points. Same with Michigan. In Wisconsin, you have results like MassINC and Morning Consult that show Harris up 6 and Emerson showing Trump up 2. That's a significant discrepancy. 

Ultimately, I think the difference very well could be the old school get out the vote operations. We know that Harris has a massive cash advantage. Trump's campaign money comes from oligarch's PACs and they typical funnel money to consultants who make expensive ad buys. Campaigns are won by getting your voters to the polls. The GOP simply does not have that machinery at the moment and voting has begun in some states. 

The hollowing out of the RNC should have very real consequences in this election, if the race really is this close. 

Ukraine Is Still In The Fight

 Adam Silverman puts together these daily updates about the Ukraine war. The most recent developments are surrounding Ukraine's attacks inside Russia. There was the ground offensive into Kursk which - to my surprise - remains active. I had assumed they were simply creating a diversionary attack and would withdraw once Russian troops were diverted from Ukraine, but they are still there.

The other is that Ukraine has hit two massive Russian arms depots inside Russian territory. Even with NATO aid, Russia can generally outgun Ukraine. These strikes destroyed tons of munitions that would otherwise have been brought to bear in Ukraine. 

For much of the war, Ukraine has been limited in its ability to use Western weaponry within Russian territorial boundaries. The fact that those restrictions seem lifted - even if only in part - is a positive development. 

The lack of a Ukrainian ground offensive within Zaporizhia Oblast to sever the land connection between Russia and Crimea has been frustrating, even if the Ukrainians feel that attacking into the teeth of Russian defenses is foolish. Ultimately, Ukraine is going to need to return to 2014 borders at the very least to drive home the folly of Russia's invasion. Perhaps the Kursk and munitions strikes will soften the Russians up enough for Ukraine to get in one more push before winter, but I also don't think Ukraine has the manpower to force the issue.

And so the meatgrinder goes on.

How Many Damned Dominos Are There?

 The end of the week saw sex scandals surrounding Mark Robinson, RFK Jr, Christopher Rufo and possibly Matt Gaetz. The GOP Senate candidate in Wisconsin may have been a money launderer for a Mexican drug cartel. Over 100 Republican national security officials have endorsed Harris, as have a number of former elected Republicans like the Cheneys. As some wag said, because of climate change, the October surprises are blooming in September. One has to wonder what sort of oppo research the Harris campaign is sitting on for October, if this is what's coming out in September.

There simply aren't any good reasons for anyone who isn't a part of Cult 45 to vote for this guy. His statements on policy are increasingly deranged. Yet, you can see the so-called Never Never Trump right contorting themselves into knots rather than confront the fact that the Republican Party has become infested with people like Mark Robinson precisely because it has becomes a cult of personality around Donald Trump.

The only way forward for the GOP is to see the MAGA movement crushed brutally in this election. Lose all the 2020 states, plus maybe Florida, Iowa and even Texas. Lose the House. Fail to retake the Senate, despite a very favorable map. Then and only then can they reconstitute themselves as a Center-Right party. Hell, even JD Vance saw it that way after 2012, but now he's a full-on MAGAt. 

It very much feels like the Trump campaign is in something of a death spiral, using the normal metrics and dynamics of a presidential campaign. It also seems likely that the Democrats are going to have some sort of scandal ready to drop every 4-5 days from now until election day. 

When does the dam break?

The Coddling of the American Mind

 Jonathan Haidt is coming to our school next week, and somehow I landed on his piece the Coddling of the American Mind independently of that visit. I'm generally skeptical of the latest pedagogical fad, because I simply am not that impressed with the sort of scholarship that goes on in education programs. It seems an intensely ideological field with few of the sort of "challenge everything" mindsets you see in other disciplines.

Haidt and Greg Lukianoff are not education professors. Haidt is a social psychologist and Lukianoff a lawyer. They attack the principle that students are so delicate in their feelings that things that might upset them should be avoided. Thus, we get mandates about microaggressions. I remember my microaggression workshop. It was largely helpful in the "don't be as asshole" toolbox that we should all seek to enlarge.

However, we are now being told what language we should not use in written comments. "Suzy appears not to care and has demonstrated little work ethic" is now considered loaded language that contains some sort of "trauma" that we need to shield Suzy from. It might even be considered racist if Suzy is non-White. Suzy's actual engagement with the work is secondary to the need to protect her from language that she might find distressing. 

Last year, when I was gone, the school more or less but a kibosh on discussing the Gazan War. The raw feelings and intensely complicated nature of this conflict has created feelings that many students - here and at universities - simply cannot process effectively. Some of the screaming about this comes from Bad Actors simply looking to leverage their outrage for attention. That's a separate issue. The inability of young people to argue passionately and then when it's over walk away with being traumatized has largely disappeared.

What makes Haidt's argument interesting is that he points out that this approach has NOT led to better mental health outcomes. That, ultimately, is why this sort of "coddling" needs to stop. 

Did Harris Just Win North Carolina?

 North Carolina Lieutenant Governor and GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson was always a freak. His various statements about women not being allowed to vote and so on made him a drag on the Republican ticket.

Then there was the release yesterday of some...hooboy. As Jon Chait said, The Republican Party could have found a more sober-minded candidate than Robinson even if it had confined its recruitment entirely to the NudeAfrica posting community.

It's unclear how much local dynamics are playing out in the presidential race, but it sure seems to me that two things are happening.

- Purple states with GOP control seem to be trending Blue, a potential fallout from Dobbs. The implications for Dobbs for me in Connecticut are few, but it has been an immediate issue in places like Arizona and Wisconsin. North Carolina seems like a state where median voters might be turned off by GOP extremism...especially since the GOP nominated just about the most extreme candidate they could. A self-proclaimed "black Nazi"?!?! 

- Trumpist chaos is contagious. The ascendancy of Trump has been linked in some Republican minds to his steadfast refusal to apologize for anything. This began with the Access Hollywood tape and has continued for 8 years. It's why Vance can't apologize for lying about Haitians in Springfield. The MAGA party never apologizes for anything. As a result, you get nominees like Kari Lake and now Robinson who are just freaking lunatics. Like mentally unwell.

Neither of these are sustainable in the long run. An extremist party is not a viable party in a two party system. It does endanger the entire system, because Republicans are going to win eventually in some places and they have abandoned reason. However, since the GOP is the party of Trump, it's become the party of JD Vance, Mark Robinson and Kari Lake. 

If I'm right and the average normie voter is sick and tired of all the drama, the Robinson story is just another example of where the GOP is right now. It draws attention to the mountainous hypocrisy of GOP politicians who try and leverage anti-trans panic while engaging in sexual transgressions that are honestly even shocking to a jaded old fool like me.

North Carolina was very much in play on Wednesday. What's more, recent polling from the Blue Wall has been pretty good for Harris suggesting that where she's actively campaigning, she's able to improve on her national numbers. My guess is that she will throw more resources into NC, because it's a hedge against a bad result in Pennsylvania. The Robinson story is a national story, but it's a huge local story and that could have an impact on November and the future of the country.

The Conversation

 What's striking about this latest sojourn in Trumpistan is how the attempts on his life have not boosted his popularity. People associate Trump with chaos and - after 1/6 - violence. For his cultists, that's a feature, not a bug. They crave the chaos and the violence, because they think it will never blow back on them. For most people, I truly believe that they just want him to go away.

Similarly, there are some people flogging the story about the lies about Haitian immigrants as being good for Trump, because immigration is his strongest issue. In fact, the story is not about immigrants at this point. It's about Trump's incessant cruelty and Vance's relentless lying. Yes, abortion and democracy are Harris's strongest issues, but I really think the Springfield pogrom is going to erode Trump's standing in immigration, as it reminds people of his cruelty and racism.

Bullshitter v Liar

 Donald Trump is a bullshitter. He does not care about the truth. Ever single human interaction for him is an exercise is backscratching or fist fighting. Do something nice for Trump and Trump will do something nice for you. If you don't, he will try and destroy you. He does not care how an abstract concept of "truth" enters into this. This is why journalists have - sadly and predictably - given up trying to fact check Trump or even subject his statements to scrutiny. That's why he can say, as he did, that the crowd loved him during the debate, when there was no crowd, and the press just rolls with it.

JD Vance, on the other hand, is a liar. He knows what the truth is and has spoken it in the past. However, his avaricious ambition means that there are no rules that he won't violate to slake his thirst for power and adulation. 

The question: Which is worse? is beside the point.

Mush Brain

 Trump held a quasi-town hall in Michigan where he took some questions from Sarah Huckleberry Sanders. The results would be disqualifying in a sane political system. It sort of went like this:

"Dearest Leader, how will you bring down the costs of hamburdlers for White Americans and maybe Brown Americans, if they like you?"

"I will restrict the amount of food in America. I am a savvy business man."

Here's another one:

"Dearest Leader, how will you deal with energy even though America is currently leading the world in energy production?"

"We have Bagram in Alaska. So much oil."

OK, Bagram is an airfield outside Kabul. But seriously, listen to that answer. It's absolute gibberish. Even more so than before, Trump is that stupid kid who didn't do the reading but gets called on in class. He even doubles down on Bagram.

I'm so old, I can remember when Joe Biden was too impaired to run for president.

I had a hunch his mushy, smooth brained idiocy would be amplified by the revivifying of his PTSD from being rushed off the golf course on Sunday. There's such a thing as cognitive load, which is how much your brain can handle in any moment. He's on full tilt right now.

Oh, and needless to say, the Times and Post have no stories on this, because Sean Combs got arrested.

The Pivot To Policy

 The second most meme worthy gaffe of Trump's debate debacle was his "concept of a plan" for health care. In fact, Routh's armed excursion to Trump's golf course was more like the "concept of an assassination attempt."

What happened the other day was that JD Vance - who is deeply marinated in the Far Right reaches of MAGAdom - decided to fill in the details of Trump's "concept" which showed why Trump probably wanted to leave it at a "concept" level.

Basically, Vance wants to end the Obamacare pooling of risk. As Jon Chait explains, this effectively means ending Obamacare, because pooling risk, costs and expenditures is entirely the point of the ACA's markets. "Deregulating" health insurance sounds good as a Reagan-esque sound bite, but it's the de facto end of insurance for millions of Americans. In fact, it's likely to have deleterious impacts on employer based health insurance, too.

There is actually an argument going around that posits that all the talk of Haitians eating pets actually helps Trump by focusing on immigration rather than issues like abortion, where he gets killed. I think, perhaps, it might negate some of his edge on immigration by pointing out how racist and absurd much of his position is.

Still, this is an opportunity to nudge the conversation back to health care, which has a huge advantage for Democrats, and they should do that - perhaps especially at the Congressional level.

The Other Thing

 There's another aspect of the concept of an assassination attempt yesterday that I wanted to address in a separate post.

It sure seemed to me that Trump came out of the first attempt on his life shaken up. He seems low energy. It would be human of him to experience PTSD. Whatever hit his ear - bullet or shrapnel - would have been terrifying. The thing about PTSD is that you can't process the trauma in the moment, so it creeps back into your mind at all sorts of times.

Yesterday could very well trigger more issues with Trump's already erratic mental health.

Think about it. He's a malignant narcissist, which means he craves adoration and despises those who won't adore him. There have now been two attempts on his life. How does that not shake him. Think about how you would feel if you became Twitter or Instagram's "Main Character of the Day" with everyone roasting you to a crisp because of something you posted. Think about how devastating that would be. 

Trump has had people trying to literally not rhetorically kill him.

Ever since his election loss four years ago, Trump has felt like a guy on the ragged edge of psychological collapse. That's why the rally bait in the debate unhinged him. He's just so incredibly thin skinned and his humiliation at the hands of a woman of color whom he had dismissed as a lightweight had to be traumatic. Now this.

Remember, he started the day tweeting out that he hated Taylor Swift. Totally normal stuff. 

He could nuts in the next week.

Come See The Violence Inherent In The System

 What happened yesterday - perhaps less an assassination attempt than the CONCEPT of an assassination attempt - is yet to play out politically. The alleged potential assassin - presuming that was what he was doing, the guy is nuts - does seem more likely to have a political motive than the Butler shooter. The kid in Pennsylvania was looking to kill and die famous, in the manner of Dylan Klebold and Adam Lanza. He was at the very least Right Leaning, if not an outright Republican.

Ryan Routh, the suspect in custody, seems to be more "political" but his politics are a mess. If his Twitter feed is to be believed, he voted for Trump in 2016, then supported Tulsi Gabbard and maybe Elizabeth Warren in 2020. This past winter, he was supportive of Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy. That's...eclectic. 

The through line for me is that he is clearly mentally unwell. His previous history suggests someone with obvious mental health issues. He said he travelled to Ukraine to help organize Afghan fighters to fight for Ukraine. Ummm...what? He seems to be opposed to "the Man" in whatever form that takes for him in any given moment. Who's the outsider? The plucky underdog? 

That's how you support Trump in 2016, but Gabbard and Andrew Yang four years later. It's not ideological, it's about the person who's outside "the System" even if they are ideologically opposites. Once Trump becomes President, he IS the System and needs to be opposed. I would be shocked if Routh wasn't a huge fan of Joe Rogan's and that sort of glib anti-government posturing. I am shocked that wasn't a huge RFK Jr fan.

The fact that the Secret Service actually did a pretty good job yesterday seems lost in the inevitable posturing by Trumpists and others. Routh was a quarter mile away from Trump when he was discovered and didn't get a shot off. There was no dramatic image like in Butler.

How will this play out? I don't think it will have much impact, for the simple reason that the first one didn't exactly upend the race. That attempt was dramatic and TV-ready. The blood trickling down his face, the "fight" moment. That was Trump's best moment in 9 years as a political figure.

And it didn't matter. 

In fact, here's what I think the political fallout from this will be:

- Trump will go berserk trying to fundraise off this. His minions will try and shut down any criticisms of Trump as being incitement. That will fail.

- A lot of people in the middle will look at this and sigh, more drama. Trump is exhausting. It's always something with this guy: indictments, impeachments, insurrections, assassinations attempts. Can't we just move on? 

- We were not that far from Trumpists committing acts of terrorism anyway, so there is going to be something tragic in the next few weeks, I fear. A school or government building will be shot up or bombed. It just feels inevitable. Trumpists will try and bothsides it away, but it won't work.

- In the end, Routh himself will fade quickly from the news, unless there is some other major shoe to drop. Look, this is America. Of course we let a mentally ill man with a criminal record get his hands on an AK47. Will this change America's gun laws? You're hilarious. (Although Democrats should 100% introduce the Protect Donald Trump Gun Safety legislation tomorrow.) We let lunatic slaughter school kids and a few days later we've moved on; Routh never even got off a shot. 

Part of Donald Trump's "appeal" especially in 2016 was as a chaos agent. "I alone can change it." He was the disrupter for a corrupt system. That's why Routh (allegedly) supported him back then. People are tired of the chaos, tired of the dysfunction. Biden's signal "failure" as president was his promise to make politics boring again, without taking the steps to remove Trump from the political stage. Of course he was going to run again; fuck Merrick Garland for dragging his feet.

I don't see this accruing sympathy to Trump, and sadly I think Springfield could get even more scary. 

There Will Be Blood

 Ambulatory 4Chan post, JD Vance, has gone on TV and admitted that he is making up the stories about Haitians in Springfield. This is 100% the fascist playbook. He create blood libels to enflame your gullible followers who then commit violence in his name. This violence is then used as justification for authoritarianism. 

What's strikingly disgusting about this (one of the many things) is that Republicans like Vance and Chris Rufo are looking at the tactics of Nazis as a guidebook and not a cautionary tale. I can actually see how someone could get drawn into Trump's malignant orbit and accidentally mimic fascist tactics, because there's a causative link between ends and means. Once you discover this, you could back away or double down. Trump world always doubles down. But someone like Vance could back away. Yesterday, when asked to condemn the bomb threats in Springfield, Trump refused to do so.

Trump's entire shtick is what Josh Marshall calls "dominance politics," the politics of bullying and dominating.  He just got dominated in his debate with Harris, so he has to "be strong" and "be tough" which means never ever ever backing down on, even if the position is damaging. In Trumpistan, being strong is more important than being right.

However, it seems almost inevitable that someone is going to kill a Haitian. Maybe in Springfield, but Trump and Vance are exporting their attacks to all Haitians. Haiti is an easy target for them, since it only shows up in the news as a failed state, racked by violence. Haiti was Trump's original "shithole country". The individual merits of Haitians with the initiative and drive to come to America and work hard are irrelevant in the face of race theory. With racism, it's their Haitian background that is disqualifying. 

The fundamental question - beyond the November election results in some ways - is that if this happens, if Trump and Vance's rhetoric gets peopled killed, will that finally be a breaking point? 

Look, the Crazification Factor exists. When Alan Keyes ran against Obama and got 27% of the vote (despite being nuts and not from Illinois), that created a baseline of people who will vote for the absolute worst in American politics. What Trump has done is take that 27%, take over the GOP and make them fall in line with the 27% rather than lead them in a superficially plausible direction. 

If Trump/Vance's hate speech gets people killed, it will provide the absolute clearest test yet whether there is any daylight between the 27% and the so-called Adults in the Room. It's a test of whether we - as Americans - will countenance people running the Mein Kampf playbook on American streets.

I'm not pessimistic...but I can't say I'm optimistic either.

Health Care Wastelands And Abortion

 This Atlantic piece is a tough read about how Talibangelical abortion bans in Idaho are stripping the state of OB-GYNs, because they can't practice medicine there without violating either the law or their conscience. Two things.

First, places like Idaho are already on the "left behind" track that has created the conditions that allowed Trump to win in 2016. Actually, the sub-story of the Springfield anti-Haitian panic is the factory owner who said Haitians were the best, because they worked hard, went to church and didn't do drugs, unlike the White residents. The people voting for Trump are the ones who lost a friend or family member or neighbor to opioids or some other death of despair. They've seen the tragedy of being left behind, so when Trump talks about his American Carnage, that does resonate with them. (Or their evangelicals perpetually waiting for the End Times.) They themselves haven't been left behind - most Trumpists are well enough off - but they can see it from their front porch.

Second, I try not to engage politics with my very religious cousin in Texas. She's probably a fans of Libs of Tik Tok and the like. However, she was talking about post-birth abortions, and I couldn't let that slide. The comments were interesting, as I had a couple of people like my comments. More typical were people talking about late term abortions. I tried to focus on the fact that Trump was talking about literal infanticide and that doesn't happen (or is a crime). However, the vehemence on late term abortions was very palpable. They've been fed a steady diet of bullshit about this. Some of the facts are also in that Atlantic piece.

If you are having an abortion in the second half of your pregnancy, it is almost certainly because either A) the fetus will not live and/or B) the mother could die. Trump's vile lie about "post birth abortions" is actually about perinatal hospice, where parents sit with their newborn for the few hours it has to live while the staff give it palliative care so it doesn't suffer. 

Imagine the heartbreaking anguish of that entire situation. Imagine how preventing parents from being able to make their own decisions adds to that anguish. You've painted the nursery, you've picked out a name, your child is going to die shortly after birth. You can abort the fetus - which is indeed a grisly outcome - or you can bear the child - perhaps at great risk to the life and health of the mother. 

How does letting Samuel Alito or Donald Trump control that decision help things?

But ultimately, that might be the point. I can't help but wonder about the overlap between states with really shitty policy portfolios and Republican rule. We've always assumed that Republican rule leads to shitty policies like Idaho's or Mississippi's, and one party rule does tend to lead that way.

The question is whether shitty policies lead to Republican rule? If one party is slavishly devoted to the idea that government is terrible, evil, no-good Satanism, and then you wind up with shitty policies, it becomes a feedback loop.

Extremists

 There are two stories going around that shows how deranged Trumpism has gotten. Or more deranged. It was always nonsensical, but now it's gone of the deep end and the debate has been a big part of the story.

First, we have the most viral moment from the debate: Trump's untethered embrace of Haitians eating people's pets. That has become a staple meme already. Lots of funny videos. Except it's not funny. Haitians are being intimidated and schools are closing in Springfield, OH, as shitbirds like JD Vance continue to push the story. This is part of the bigger dynamic about the violence within the Trumpist movement.

Second and related has been the ascendency of Laura Loomer within Trump's orbit. Loomer is the pure, unbridled and unfiltered Trumpist cultist. Outspokenly racist, a true believer in the conspiracy theories that swirl around that addled, hateful man, Loomer has devoted herself to Trump and now has his ear. The debate debacle is being laid at her feet for getting him onto the cats and dogs nonsense.

People rightly fear that there will be violence this election cycle - as there was on January 6th. Craven idiots like Loomer will stoke Trump's grievances until something snaps - in him or in America. I don't think they will win. They are weird and dysfunctional. But people could die before this orange shitbag shuffles of history's stage.

More, Please

 The Atlantic examines Trump's manifest cognitive decline.

I'm so old myself, I can remember when a candidate's age and acuity were the most important story the news could cover.

Fever Swamps

 Undeniably, the viral moment from Tuesday's debate was the eating cats and dogs nonsense from Trump. It has already become a meme, which is a sure way to predict it's hitting all the corners of the country. The sweaty desperation of MAGA to somehow explain or contextualize his nonsense and claim he "won" a debate where it rhetorically lit the podium on fire and took a dump on the stage is telling.

What's more interesting is the central role that Laura Loomer seems to have played in getting him to embrace his most nakedly racist and unhinged self and how that's creating divisions within Trumpistan. Marjorie Traitor Greene actually called her out for being racist. Part of MAGA's pitch to White voters is that the "Woke Mob" claims everything is racist or sexist when really it's White people being oppressed, but even Greene is like "that's racist." Most likely there's interpersonal shit between the two of them, but still. 

Trump's campaign is at a pivot point after that debate, in much the same way Biden's was after June's tilt. If you're a "normal" GOP strategist or campaign worker at some point you have to consider your own future. If Trump, in his sweaty desperation, goes towards Loomer's baffling nonsense then what little competence surrounding Trump could bail. Harris and Democrats already seem to have a sizable advantage in GOTV efforts, and if MAGA collapses in on its own ridiculousness, that's moment I have been waiting for for eight years.

If we can get enough MAGAts and/or Republicans to stay home in disgust, then maybe Texas and Florida (and their Senate seats) come into play.

Josh Marshall has always said that Trump mastered a form of "dominance politics" over the GOP. Harris made him look the fool, made him look weak and small. That has to eat away at his support, since that dominance is all his support is based on.

Persuasion Vs Mobilization

 There are two basic strategies for winning an election: you persuade the undecideds and/or you mobilize your own partisans. The Harris campaign has decided - wisely - to try both. The mobilization is largely eased by the fact that Democrats hate Trump passionately. There is also the unique situation from June's debate, which demoralized Democrats - a dynamic that was upended by Biden dropping out and Harris coming in hot.

However, the future of American democracy hinges on a few dumb assed Pennsylvanians who apparently haven't made up their mind about Donald Trump. 

Last night's debate was the inverse of the June debate, in that Harris goaded Trump into being his angriest, unhinged self. It got lost in Biden's performance, but people didn't much like Trump in June either. Harris spoke in complete sentences, even complete paragraphs. Trump was mostly incoherent, ranting about stuff only the dark corners of the Right Wing Web fulminates on.

However...

Remember those dipshit undecideds? Well, Hillary Clinton easily won the debates in 2016, and we know how that ended up. The difference, I hope, is that people had largely made up their minds about Clinton and many haven't made up their minds about Harris. Hopefully, those people - unlikely to vote for Trump, but unsure about Harris - had their decisions made for them by seeing the two of them side by side.

Honestly though? It might make more of a difference in November that Taylor Swift endorsed her last night, MAGA will attack her and the Swifties will carry the day.

Over/Under On Tonight's Racism

 The day before the debate, the GOP's leading lights are all yammering about a patently false story about Haitians in Ohio eating house pets (and ducks, which...yeah). I think we can probably agree that Trump will call Harris a Haitian and it will be ignored by the media.

The degree to which Trump will lapse into racism is a really "interesting question" if you're devoid of feeling for the national experiment in democracy and decency. The expectations game is part of the debate process, and I worry that if Trump doesn't actively use the N-word, he will be lauded for his restraint. 

The consensus seems to be that Harris is going to try and get under Trump's skin so that he says something awful. I wish I could believe that if Trump came out and called her a slur it would have an appreciable difference on the election.

Debates

 One of my firmly held beliefs heading into the 2024 election was that debates are terrible ways to decide who should be president and are largely irrelevant.

Heh heh...yeah. Not irrelevant, I guess.

Tomorrow's debate seems like it really should be a Big Deal. The June debate, it should be remembered, was not great for either candidate. Trump was off-putting and weird, and he's gotten less focused since the assassination attempt. That was obscured by Biden's difficulty speaking, but the "dial groups" who turn a knob in a positive or negative direction really didn't like Trump either.

If he comes out and is the low-energy, word salad guy we've seen for two months now, if he's unusually (for him) racist and misogynistic towards Harris, this is really the moment for those (unbelievably) still wavering voters in the middle.

If Trump comes out and steps on his own dick, is an abattoir of the English language, is his cruelest, crudest self, then maybe Harris gets a lead she won't relinquish and that even the Times/Sienna poll can measure, and then I will have to admit that debates maybe do matter.

Tent Size

 The news that not only Liz but Dick Cheney are endorsing Kamala Harris is remarkable for anyone over 35. The elder Cheney served in Nixon's, Reagan's and both Bush Administrations. They join several other Republican politicians in saying, at the very least, that they won't be voting for Donald Trump. Then you have profiles in cowardice like Dubya Bush who won't endorse either candidate, which would normally be a huge deal, but seems unequal to this moment.

There was a meme going around in various forms talking about how the Democratic tent was so big it went from Dick Cheney to AOC or even Ilhan Omar. That's true and it leads me back to my basic fact about this election that seems to fly in the face of polls that show a really tight race.

-Who voted for Joe Biden that is going to switch and vote for Trump?
-Why do polls show a major erosion in Black support for Kamala Harris? 
-Why do polls show a neck and neck race for voters under 35?
-What are we to make of new voter registration?

The Times/Sienna poll - which has always been really bad for Democrats - has Trump with a one point lead. Look, even Harris with a four point lead is too close given how manifestly unfit Trump was and currently is. But the poll has Harris struggling to consolidate Black and youth voters. This, despite a massive surge is registering Black Women to vote since Harris got in the race.

Black women are the base of the Democratic Party, their most reliable demographic - even more that being a registered Democrat. If you take that group and then add a bunch of what we might call Patriot Republicans - the Cheneys, Adam Kinzinger, et al - and add on top of that every single Biden voter from 2020...where are the new Trump voters coming from? 

Biden won 51.3% of the vote to Trump's 46.8%, despite a broad feeling that the pandemic hampered Democratic GOTV efforts - efforts that Harris is going to spend millions on, because she has a massive cash advantage over Trump. If Trump is really tied with Harris, that means that some traditional Democratic voters have abandoned her - despite January 6th, despite Dobbs - and Trump has added voters to his tally. 

The number of Patriot Republicans is likely small. Dick Cheney does not bring a constituency with him. But if you're a "moderate" or "independent" voter who pays marginal attention to politics and Darth Cheney is out there saying the Trump is so awful that he's going to vote for Kamala Harris...that seems significant. Harris is the bipartisan candidate in a country that nominally says it like bipartisanship.

I've held that debates are stupid and don't really move the needle. Obviously the last debate changed everything, as it showed Biden's diminished capacity as a speaker. However, in that debate, people watching it really didn't like Trump either. The focus groups were actually split between who had the worst debate. And then since the shooting, especially, Trump seems "off". 

If Harris runs circles around Trump - which could happen, she's a lawyer, he's a mushy brained walking tantrum with no new things to say - we have to continue to ask: Who has become a Trump voter since 2020? We have evidence that January 6th was a bridge too far for a numerically significant number of Republicans. I haven't seen anything to suggest that there are Democratic leaning voters who want to move to Trump.

You Should Support Talkingpoints Memo

 I link to Josh Marshall a lot here. (If anyone actually reads this thing.) He is, I believe, one of a handful of "pundits" whose insights are really keen. He also does these interesting journalistic deep dives. Right now he's obsessed with the mass GOP mailings that seem to be hitting registered Democrats in swing states. Because he's basically writing op-eds and his small staff is aggregating and reporting on select news stories, he can take these deep dives.

Like most media outlets these days, he depends on subscriptions and you should get one or at least support him.

Climate Catastrophizing

 In the lead-in to his column, Yglesias talks about how climate catastrophizing is a road to illiberalism. He mentions "watermelons" (different than the pro-Palestinian emoji) who are "green on the outside, red on the inside." These are people who want to "solve" climate change by ending capitalism.

I think that's a pretty interesting insight. When California says it wants to ban ICE vehicles, there's an element of unreality to it. We have an entire infrastructure set up to service ICE cars, but we do not have the grid to support everyone driving EVs. The solution, in my mind, is hybrids. If we mandated that every vehicle was to be a hybrid, that would both have a major impact on emissions, drive down the price of gasoline and provide a glide path to eventual EV fleets. 

I can't help but wonder how many EV Acolytes are really invested in destroying the "power" of Exxon Mobil. Hating petrochemical companies is performative leftism, because they do, in fact, suck. However, your feelings about Exxon or extractive companies or capitalism all seem tangential to the goal of simply reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

The New School Year

 After a year's sabbatical, we start classes today. It feels simultaneously familiar and strange. The same can be said for the horrific rite of passage for America's school children: another shooting. What's becoming especially tragic is that law enforcement are being tipped off about these kids who ring alarm bells among peers and teachers. There's this graph from the Post:

Police identified the suspect as Colt Gray, a student who attracted the attention of federal investigators more than a year ago, when they began receiving anonymous tips about someone threatening a school shooting.

The FBI referred the reports to local authorities, whose investigations led them to interview Gray and his father. The father told police that he had hunting guns in the house, but that his son did not have unsupervised access to them. Gray denied making the online threats, the FBI said, but officials still alerted area schools about him.

The problem these LEOs have is that Republicans - both in the courts and in the legislature - have stripped them of the ability to actually do anything about the easy access to guns Americans have, even emotionally disturbed ones. The father said he had "hunting guns" which in the twisted world of modern gun ownership includes AR-style weapons of war. Even if the local LEOs had known about the AR style guns, there's nothing they could have likely done about it.

I'm weirdly more optimistic about the world than a lot of people I know. I think Harris wins and it might not be close. I think Democrats win the House. The Senate is tough, but I'm not giving up hope yet. 

I am not optimistic about guns. I see no reason to be. After Sandy Hook, why should I be?

Things Are Getting Interesting

 A little over a week ago, Pavel Durov, the founder of the Russian-adjacent Telegram, was arrested in France.

Today, a Russian aligned media company, Tenet, was indicted for trying to screw with our elections. Basically, they were paying right wing online assholes to troll and foment discord on Trump's behalf. 

It's worth noting that today the co-chairs of Trump's campaign sent a memo to campaign staff warning them not to leak (the email was leaked). That sounds like some pretty damaging story is on their horizon.

Did Durov flip and give Western intelligence agencies access to things like Russian efforts to influence elections in the West? Impossible to say, but the timing is pretty interesting. On the other hand, if you were the Biden campaign and now the Harris campaign, if you had a bunch of this damaging intel around, why release it in June when it get lost in the discourse over Biden's age? 

There is absolutely a timeline where Trump's campaign gets dragged into Russian influencing scandals, Trump gets sentenced in the NY campaign finance case and some other yet unknown shoe or shoes drop over the course of the next four weeks.

Everyone knows Trump is a selfish asshole, even his acolytes. (I did see a clip from his "interview" with Sean Hannity, and they panned to the crowd and there were a conspicuous number of people sitting there with their arms crossed. I think his act is wearing thin with them, too.) What you want is a steady barrage of new accusations and endorsements from people like, you know, Liz Freaking Cheney. I really do believe they have a George Bush endorsement in the can somewhere, ready to go.

Trump's campaign has decided, I think accurately, that the only way they can win is to make people hate and distrust Harris. It worked eight years ago, but that was after 25 years of working to define Hillary Clinton as the anti-Christ. If every accusation of Harris not being able to prove that she worked at a McDonalds is balanced by one where Trump campaign officials were coordinating with freaking Moscow, that strategy is going to be hard to pull off.

What In The Chicken Fried Fuck Is Going On Here?

 I saw this and wondered, "Has the universe gone completely insane?" If you can't access Twitter, it's Trump hawking Trump collectible trading cards. Or what about Lara Trump, the ostensible head of the RNC, releasing a "music video" - if we were to define music loosely.

Trump, meanwhile, has a single public event this week - one of his Klan Bakes on Saturday. Hell, Joe Biden - who dropped out of the race because he was too old to campaign effectively - has more campaign events than Trump. His recent interviews are incredibly low energy affairs. His rallies are tired re-hashings of his old stuff. 

There are three theories of Trump's campaign.

The first is that he is simply too old and feeble-minded to run for president effectively. This was largely ignored by the media in favor pointing out Biden's age, but for whatever reason, only a few outlets are looking at Trump's seemingly manifest physical and cognitive decline.

The second is that he has legit PTSD from the assassination attempt. This could be making him clinically depressed. He certainly sounds depressed in some of his few interviews. "Going through the motions" is a pretty standard way to operate in the grips of depression.

The third is that he really isn't trying to win. The conspiratorial version of this is that he has a coup all set up and ready to go. I'm very, very skeptical that he has the strategic planning for this, and it wouldn't account for his lethargy. He would be boastful and braggadocios like the 2016 Trump. 

If this is true, my feeling is that he might be about to flee the country. He's about to be sentenced for his NY felonies; he's slipping in the polls; if he loses many of the other charges will go to trial; if he loses the Supreme Court will likely wash their hands of him; he keeps talking about Hannibal Lecter (which appears to be about asylum); he's been lauding Maduro in Venezuela - which has no extradition treaty with the US; he's raising a bunch of sketchy money.

The most deeply hilarious result would be if Trump gets sentenced to prison for his NY crimes - which are the least of his crimes, but still crimes - he craters during the debate and the polls move against him, and so right before reporting to prison or after filing his appeal, Trump simply flies off to Venezuela with all the RNC's cash.

It's too poetic to actually happen, too writerly. The grifter that slowly took over the GOP becomes the instrument of its demise feels like a morality play rather than living history. Much more likely is that he's in real decline and the PTSD from the shooting has pushed him into a spiral.

Still, I'm rooting for him fleeing the country. I think that would be hilarious.

How Broken Is The Constition?

 Paul Campos flags and analyzes a piece about how the Constitution is so dysfunctional it's leading us towards authoritarianism. Having recently read a phenomenal book on John Marshall Harlan, it strikes me that Arthur Schlesinger's "cycles of reform" might be at play here. Certain epochs tilt right or left, but eventually progress is made.

Where my faith in that cycle breaks down is obviously in a Supreme Court as "lawless" as any in history and the specific presence of Donald Trump in our national electoral politics. In calling the Court "lawless" what I mean, at any rate, is a Court unbound by precedent or even the text of laws. How does one mend a system when you have an undemocratic body able to destroy reform for shits and giggles?

There are some obvious if fraught work-arounds to the current lawlessness of the Supreme Court, however, they require working majorities in both houses and a Senate majority ready to move beyond the filibuster. Let's say we get a complete implosion from Trump and Democrats win a landslide and have a 53 seat Senate majority. That slim majority ends or modifies the filibuster so that Court reform can pass, including ethics reform and perhaps even an expansion of the Court. That latter part opens a nasty can of worms for win Republicans retake the reins of government, but the alternative is to somehow strip the Court of some elements of judicial review - which is itself fraught.

Ultimately, the anti-democratic nature of the Constitution - seen most clearly in the Senate, the Electoral College and the tenure of judges - was intended by the Framers. You might be able to work around the Electoral College with the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, but that would be held hostage to the current lawlessness of the Courts. We did see the Court change its ways under the threat of "court packing" by FDR, but again, that's a fairly extreme measure. 

The Senate is largely unfixable without a Constitutional amendment and that's simply an impossibility right now. The Electoral College feeds off that same dynamic and population dispersal problem. 

You can help the situation by giving Washington DC two Senate seats (I'm more skeptical of Puerto Rico than most). It's prohibited in the Constitution to award Senate seats disproportionate to population, because the biggest hurdle ratification faced was allegiance to state governments and suspicions of other states - even neighboring states. New Hampshire never ratifies if it worried that Massachusetts or Virginia might swamp its sovereignty with one-man; one-vote.

In my perfect world the Senate would be a proportionally elected body that does not represents states at all. That's arguably the most anachronistic aspect of the Constitution. States are local administrative units that can account for regional differences. Mississippi does not to spend money on snow plows. They are not petty republics being bound together in an experiment of republican governance, the way they were in 1787. Making the Senate majoritarian (as opposed to super-majoritarian) addresses only part of that problem. You have to complete the divorce of the Senate from state governance that began with the 17th Amendment.

If you make the Senate more representative of the popular will, then the next issue is the electoral college. Simply subtracting the Senate seats from the Electoral votes of states like Wyoming and Vermont does tilt the field a bit more towards majority rule, but I don't think it would have prevented the 2000 or 2016 elections from unfolding the way they did.

In both 2000 and 2016, neither candidate got 50%+1 of the popular vote. The idea that the Electoral College solves this issue as opposed to exacerbates it is crazy. Some states have moved towards a majority (as opposed to a plurality) requirement for their elections. This is why we had the run-off Senate elections in Georgia in 2020. I doubt, though, that fixing this will be possible without another amendment. Georgia, for instance, cannot require a majority to award its electoral votes.

Sadly or not, the clearest way out of this morass is the collapse of Trumpism, but also McConnellism. Mitch McConnell and Newt Gingrich combined to create legislative chokeholds by creating parliamentary levels of party voting (Gingrich) and exploiting the rules of Senate (McConnell). When Democrats had a Senate supermajority they were still wedded to the "Old Senate". I think that mindset is largely dead. 

Basically, the cure for what ails our democracy might be more democracy. The Court, though, remains a real problem - a lawless supermajority of jurists appointed by people who did not win the popular vote.

People Seem To Like Kamala Harris

 Obsessively watching the polls can be nerve wracking, especially when a bunch of GOP leaning polls like Rasmussen or Trafalgar come out and screw up the polling averages. There are other things to look at besides the polls.

One thing is how people feel about the economy. Those numbers have been trending in a positive direction for a while now. That's really helpful for Harris, as people have a distorted view of Trump's role the long recovery from 2008. As we move into the post-inflationary landscape, if people feel better about the economy, that helps Harris a lot.

Josh Marshall notes something else that's important to the "horse race" polling but imperfectly captured by it. Harris' favorability numbers have soared since Biden dropped out and she became the nominee. This is fairly unprecedented in contemporary politics. What's more, those numbers keep going up. At first, she consolidated her standing with Democrats, especially those despairing about Biden's age. But her favorability keeps going up as she cements herself with independents and even some "soft" Republicans. 

This is remarkable in the highly polarized age we live in, but it also shows that the GOP attacks on Harris really haven't landed. They had a window of about two weeks to re-define Harris once she became the nominee and they botched it. She and her team have done a great job, but the Trump camp simply hasn't been able to land a punch on Harris or Walz for that matter.

This is interesting, because the news media have been howling about Harris's lack of interviews, yet her strategy is clearly working. She's defining herself without having to play the Gotcha Game with vapid journalists. 

It's also interesting, because it does suggest that those dipshit "undecideds" who dither and waffle all fall before landing on a decision may be way more favorably disposed towards Harris. That's the genius of "we're not going back". People really have had enough of Trump.

I saw a decent pollster today with a poll that had Harris up a few points, but Trump was getting 23% of the Black vote. When you see shit like that...I dunno. Tough to say what the implications of that subset being crazy says about the entire sample. There's no reason for Trump to be pulling historic numbers among Black voters. 

We have two big events coming up: the debate and Trump's sentencing. I really think Harris has an opportunity to stick a hose in the mouth of Trump's drowning campaign during the debate. People don't like Donald Trump outside of his cult. I think she has a real chance to put a pin in this race.

Today's Disqualifying Event

 This did happen the other day, but again, this sort of shit should disqualify someone running to be president.

Basically, someone climbed the riser to "get at" the press section at a Trump Rally/Klan Bake, but they were stopped and hauled off by security. So far, whatever.

If you can access the video, Trump says "That's OK, that's beautiful, he's on our side."

There has been a stark failure of the political media to address the increasingly visible violence in rhetoric and action within Cult 45. Aaron Rupar talks about "sane washing" where reporters impose some sanity on Trump's statements and actions. It's also the bias towards coherence, whereby they try to take his word salads and impose some form if meaning onto nonsense. Or they simply ignore it like the Hannibal Lecter or electric boar gibberish.

At this point, I wonder what would've happened if security hadn't intervened in time and that guy had managed to attack a reporter while Trump cheered them on. How would prestige media have covered that? Would THAT form of violence finally break through?