Josh Marshall

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Josh Marshall is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TPM.

Trust, Bewilderment and Billionairedom: Understanding the Backlash Against Bezos

It’s part of the stock in trade of liberal American discourse: threatening or claiming to cancel a subscription to this or that once-revered journalistic institution in response to bad behavior, bad reporting, failing to rise to this or that civic moment. But the rash of cancelations of The Washington Post, in response to the Bezos-driven non-endorsement seems very different, much more sizable in its scope. I should say here I’m not telling anyone to do that. I don’t like telling or pushing people to do things in general. On this whole push I’m genuinely agnostic, neither for or against it. And most importantly, I write in this case simply as an observer, not a cheerleader. But I think the brand damage to the Post may be greater even than people realize and go beyond whatever near-term hit they take on subscriptions. I want to share some thoughts on why I think that is.

A big slice of American is living in a climate of deepening bewilderment. That’s basically Blue America, civic America and the more politicized part of the group I’m describing. This bewilderment is tied to the role of billionaires in public life, the role of Donald Trump in our public life, but it goes beyond both.

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On the Newspaper Non-Endorsements

Let me share a few quick thoughts on newspaper endorsements. This comes after we learned that first the LA Times and now the Washington Post will break with tradition and not endorse a presidential candidate this year.

First, I’m not sure there’s any point these days in newspapers endorsing political candidates, especially presidential candidates. I don’t think much about it either way. But, especially in the case of the Post, this is a bad and cowardly development. We can’t know for certain what went into these decisions. But the most obvious explanation is that they have billionaire owners who, especially in the case of Jeff Bezos, have other business interests which are vulnerable to adverse regulatory and contracting decisions as well as government harassment of other kinds. Those are very real threats and ones that a lawless president has a lot of latitude to exact without much if any real prospect of redress. It’s not a habeas situation. These are just discretionary decisions in most cases.

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Fantasies of Control Prime Badge
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Axios this morning leads with the email subject line: “Dems’ private panic.” And then inside the email “1 big thing: Dems fear they’re blowing it.” In this case I’m not really writing to criticize Axios, which I admittedly, and rightly, often do. Because what they’re describing here is real. This post is agnostic on what the result of the election is going to be. And for what it’s worth, I keep in close touch with numerous high level campaign operatives in the swing states and I do not sense panic or pessimism from them. They all know it could go either way but I don’t think they think they’re losing. My topic is this blame feature of Democrats’ mass psychology, which is strongly echoed in the press, and their tendency to panic and almost always think they’re going to lose unless the available evidence to the contrary is simply overwhelming. But it’s not the “bedwetting” that interests me most. It’s the second version of the headline, that blame feature: “Dems fear they’re blowing it.”

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A Detail in the Data

Wednesday I mentioned Michael McDonald, the professor at the Univeristy of Florida who is an election data guru. Something I noticed in the first days of early voting was that most of the swing states that surfaced gender breakdowns for early voting showed around a ten point spread between men (~45) and woman (~55). There are more women than men and women vote more than men. So the difference didn’t surprise me. But that spread still seemed pretty big. So I asked McDonald whether that was a signal of any sort. He said, no, that’s roughly the spread you see in early voting.

But over the last couple days, both in my exchanges with him and in a few of his tweet updates, something else has come out of this. That ~10 point spread is about what we should expect from other cycles. But we’re also seeing a lot more Republican early voting. All things being equal that high rate of Republican early voting should be compressing that gender divide. But it’s not.

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Some More Ground Operations Tea Leaves

The Times has a piece up this morning which is largely complimentary of Elon Musk’s political operation and Musk himself. It’s a far cry from the range of critical pieces which have been published elsewhere and which I’ve published. It rather confidently reports that Musk’s canvassers are hitting “well over 100,000 doors a day,” for instance, “according to a person with knowledge of the group’s activities.

Needless to say, that’s almost certainly someone from America PAC or someone who works directly for Musk. So the Times appears to be going purely off their say so. Which strikes me as more than a little odd.

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Hot Off The Presses: The Latest in GOP Ground Game Studies Prime Badge
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We have a nice addition to the emerging library of reporting on Republican ground operations from Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect. Cooper actually lives in one of the swingiest parts of Pennsylvania. So he’s not only a very sharp political reporter and commentator, he’s there on the ground as a recipient of the door-knocking and mailering and all the rest — both lab-coated scientist and guinea pig, as it were. So it’s a unique view. The gist matches what I’ve come up with. There just doesn’t seem to be much if any GOP ground operation in the sense of door knocking, dropping off pamphlets or much of anything else. There’s a slew of mailers. And there you’ve got the other issue I’ve been obsessed by: Cooper is a left-leaning Democrat who I’d assume has seldom or ever voted for a Republican. So why is his mailbox bursting with GOP mailers?

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Let’s Talk About What the Early Vote is (Or Isn’t) Telling Us Prime Badge
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Like many people, I’ve been watching the early vote closely to see if I can glean anything predictive about what we’ve seen so far. On balance I’ve seen very little that gives any real indication either way. I want to stress that point because I think it’s the most important point in this entire post: I’ve seen little if anything that gives any real or clear indication who the winner of the election is going to be.

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Reports from the Vote #2

From TPM Reader LP

Waiting 40 minutes in line today to vote on the second day of widespread early voting in Cook County (voting began in late September at certain courthouses; it began yesterday at town halls and more convenient locations). I was voter 891. Yesterday they had over 900 voters, and were hitting 900 again today. People in line were getting teary about how excited they were to vote.

Longest I’ve ever waited in line before this was about 20 minutes for Obama 2008. (Although granted in 2020 we voted by mail!)

Took my 8-year-old daughter with me so she could push the button for Kamala. Lots of other little kids there so I think other parents had the same idea!

Reports From the Vote

From TPM Reader CL

I stopped by the **** in **** PA to drop off my mail-in ballot this evening, around 5:15PM.

I’ve been voting in this fashion since 2020, dropping each primary and general election ballot at our local library every year.

As I drove into the library’s parking lot, I saw the familiar drop box and three volunteers / County Voter Services Department staff at the drop box.

After I parked, I approached the ballot box and was momentarily startled by a man in his mid-20’s with a bulletproof vest, other tactical gear with the word AGENT written on the back of the vest.

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Is the Freedom Caucus on the Ropes? Prime Badge
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One of the many surprising things in the floppy and shambling political career of Colorado’s Lauren Boebert is that she has always been full freak show, a full Freedom Caucus stalwart, despite being from a GOP-leaning swing district. We expect the crazies to be from lopsided Republican districts where they’re never going to face any real price for their antics. But something’s caught my eye over the last week or so. There are actually three members of the Freedom Caucus who appear to have real races on their hands at the moment.

Each race is different, both in how serious a challenge the individual rep faces and in how much evidence we have to suggest they could be in danger. So let me go through all three.

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