With just two weeks to go until Election Day, billionaire Trump-backer Elon Musk is encouraging people to post about anything they suspect might be voter fraud on his social media platform X.
Continue reading “Musk Encourages People To Post About Voter Fraud, Playing Into Conspiracy Theories”Is the Freedom Caucus on the Ropes?
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.
Continue reading “Is the Freedom Caucus on the Ropes?”Enough Already With The Endless Insistence On Fake Bipartisanship
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
An Unprecedented Bipartisan Effort
One of the persistent conceits of the fuzzy, supposedly non-ideological DC establishment – a conceit shared by way too many political editors – is that everyone in public life should work harder at just getting along. And nothing says getting along like ostentatious flourishes of bipartisanship: the back-slapping, fake-sincere, hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie that feels about as authentic as a politician’s smile.
And so it is that in an election year when democracy is on the ballot, when fair and free elections are under threat, and when, we continue to see encomiums to bipartisan gestures and feel-good reach-across-the-aisle vibes as a political and policy end unto itself. Meanwhile, staring us right in the face, is a most unprecedented demonstration of bipartisanship, putting country over party, and linking arms despite deep political differences into order to stave off an existential political threat.
Kamala Harris was joined Monday for three sit-down public conversations with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) in three different swing states, by any measure a remarkable turn that shows a tectonic shift in American politics. The coalition of anti-Trump allies that spans Cheney to AOC marks a commitment to democratic principles that supersedes smaller partisan differences in the face of the Trump threat.
Kamala Harris: We cannot despair. We cannot despair. The nature of a democracy is such that I think there's a duality. On the one hand, there's an incredible strength when our democracy is intact. An incredible strength in what it does to protect the freedoms and rights of its… pic.twitter.com/kpLsnbWq4v
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 21, 2024
By campaigning with Cheney, Harris wasn’t just touting her bipartisan bona fides but making an active and deliberate effort to coax other disillusioned Republicans, especially GOP women, into her camp for this election. Cheney even went so far as to laud Harris’ positions on abortion and tell anti-abortion Republicans that Trump not only isn’t a reliable ally but has overreached with his anti-abortion policies.
Even as the Republican Party veered hard to the right, became anti-democratic, and descended into cultish devotion to Trump, the centrist-moderate conceit that bipartisanship should carry the day has persisted, a form of denialism that allows people already possessing power of one kind or another to hold themselves above the fray, fancy themselves as bigger than ideology and petty partisanship, and avoid actually taking any sort of policy risk or moral accounting of themselves.
They refuse to see actual bipartisanship even when it’s staring them right in the face.
On The Ground
- WaPo: Trump flips stance on making voting easier after storm batters North Carolina
- NYT: With two weeks until Election Day, more than 17 million people have already cast their ballots.
- WSJ: Republicans Eat Into Democrats’ Early Voting Advantage
By The Numbers
- TPM’s Josh Marshall: Are Right-Wing Pollsters Flooding the Zone?
- WSJ: The Pollsters Blew It in 2020. Will They Be Wrong Again in 2024?
- NYT: Two Theories for Why the Polls Failed in 2020, and What It Means for 2024
2024 Ephemera
- WaPo: A Visual Guide To The 7 Battleground States
- The Guardian: Trump ground game faces new fraud claims as video shows door-knock hack
- Neil Makhija: You’re Being Lied To About Voter Fraud. Here’s the Truth.
Senate In The Balance
- PA-Sen: The Cook Political Report moved the race from “lean Democrat” to “toss-up” as the race between Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) and David McCormick (R) has tightened.
- NE-Sen: With union leader Dan Osborn, an independent, putting a scare into Sen. Deb Fischer (R), the Cook Political Report has shifted the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.”
- Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), 91, is laying plans to assume the chair of the Judiciary Committee if Republicans take the Senate majority, amidst rumblings that he’s not up to the task, Punchbowl reports.
Epic Debunker
NYT: The Many Links Between Project 2025 and Trump’s World
What Trump II Could Look Like
- David Dayen: A Second Trump Administration Would Be a Carnival of Corruption and Greed
- WaPo: Donald Trump is gunning to undermine the independence of the Federal reserve.
- CBS News: Trump’s Social Security plan would hasten insolvency, lead to bigger benefits cuts, analysis finds
Election Threats Watch
- AZ: Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor of failing to perform her duty as an election officer for refusing to certify the 2020 election results.
- PA: A Philadelphia man was charged with the threatening to kill an unidentified state political party official who was recruiting poll watchers for the Nov. 5 election.
- Wired: Russian Propaganda Unit Appears to Be Behind Spread of False Tim Walz Sexual Abuse Claims
Straight From The Top!
Former DeSantis administration lawyer says in a sworn affidavit that the anti-abortion-rights pressure campaign to keep Florida TV stations from running pro-Amendment 4 ads originated from the governor’s office.
No, The Civil War Couldn’t Have Been ‘Settled’
Paul Krugman: “Trump’s most disturbing remark over the past few days may have been his unprompted comment about Abraham Lincoln.”
Good Life Advice
Sykes: Lindsey Graham was on TV saying what are you NeverTrump Republicans doing.. There’s a lot of people disillusioned with the Republican Party but they’re afraid of paying the price. What do you say to them?
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 22, 2024
Cheney: Well, don’t listen to Lindsey Graham. It’s good life advice… pic.twitter.com/noaaVyBfDz
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The One Place Where The Trump Campaign Wants More Mail-In Voting
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helene’s devastation in North Carolina, the Trump campaign is advocating for expanded access to the polls in the state, including less strict mail-in voting procedures — a set of policies that, only four years ago, Trump used to spread conspiracy theories about the results.
Continue reading “The One Place Where The Trump Campaign Wants More Mail-In Voting”Former Trump Critics Offer Befuddling, Dodgy Defense Of Use Of Military Against Rivals
Last week I wrote about the ways in which Donald Trump’s Republican allies were struggling to defend the former president after he suggested that the military should be deployed to go after his political rivals. As a party built largely on its support for the troops, the mischaracterization of the military’s role would typically be considered blasphemous on its face.
Continue reading “Former Trump Critics Offer Befuddling, Dodgy Defense Of Use Of Military Against Rivals”Ex-Health Dept Lawyer Says DeSantis’ Office Directed Him To Send Letters Threatening TV Stations
A former Florida Department of Health attorney said in a sworn affidavit that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) office’s top deputies drafted the letters threatening TV stations with criminal prosecution for airing ads that advocated for the passage of an abortion rights ballot measure, and directed him to send them to the stations.
Continue reading “Ex-Health Dept Lawyer Says DeSantis’ Office Directed Him To Send Letters Threatening TV Stations”Josh’s Ongoing Dissertation on Ground Game Studies
We’ve spoken a number of times about the Republican ground game, or Get Out The Vote efforts. Just to review again, the Trump campaign made the decision to take GOTV operations away from the RNC and outsource it to a series of pro-Trump super PACs. The question now is: did the gamble pay off? Have the super PACs been able to field a solid ground operation or perhaps create one even better than the one the RNC would have created?
Continue reading “Josh’s Ongoing Dissertation on Ground Game Studies”State And National Republicans Appeal Ruling Striking Down Several Georgia Election Rules
Georgia Republicans along with the Republican National Committee are appealing a recent decision by a Fulton County judge, which struck down several election rules approved by the MAGA-controlled state election board that have the potential to delay election certification in the state.
Continue reading “State And National Republicans Appeal Ruling Striking Down Several Georgia Election Rules “Are Right-Wing Pollsters Flooding the Zone?
I get this question a lot: are right-wing pollsters flooding the zone? So I thought I would answer it generally in a single post.
Are they? Yes, they definitely are. But there are some important caveats and qualifiers to know to make sense of the whole story.
Just to review the basics: There are a series of Republican or right-wing pollsters who are overtly partisan, use questionable or floating methodologies and pretty clearly release polls not as a predictive enterprise but to produce friendly numbers for Republican candidates. The worst offenders are places like Rasmussen, Trafalgar, InsiderAdvantage. We know this from a mix of a lack of transparency about methodology, general behavior that betrays a goal of shaping election perceptions and outcomes rather than measuring public opinion, and extreme “house effects” — the tendency to favor a particular party’s candidates over the other’s relative to what most pollsters are finding — that support their agenda. After those, there’s a larger penumbra of often less-known pollsters who don’t appear to be as flagrant, but generally seem to be in the same category.
Continue reading “Are Right-Wing Pollsters Flooding the Zone?”The Trump Value Meal: Extra Buffoonery With A Side Of Fascism
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
How To Explain Trump To Future Generations
Because we don’t have enough to worry about at the moment, I sometimes fret that future generations may only see the madcap buffoonery of Donald Trump and his MAGA sidekicks and wonder what all the fuss was about.
That guy was an existential threat to American democracy? That guy actually won once and narrowly lost a second time? That guy was nominated for president three times by the Republican Party and was neck-and-neck to win his third bid for the White House?
With the election in its final stretch run, the past 72 hours have been a grand tour of Trump buffoonery. Remarkably, the examples that jump out most to me don’t include any that might be directly ascribed to his aging, diminished cognitive function, or his reported “exhaustion.” These are the kinds of things in style and tone you could have heard from Trump 2016 or Trump 2020 (though it’s true that his disinhibition seems generally worse now):
- Trump comparing the Jan. 6 rioters to the Japanese-Americans interred during World War II;
- Trump calling Kamala Harris a “shit vice president”;
- Trump lamenting that serial sex abuser Harvey Weinstein got “schlonged”;
- Trump extolling the size of the late golfing great Arnold Palmer’s manhood.
Here’s your visual rundown of Trump’s latest rampage of buffoonery:
holy shit snl 😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/4IPYG47vGx
— Adam Parkhomenko (@AdamParkhomenko) October 20, 2024
What has only become obvious over the past decade (to those of us who haven’t professionally studied fascism in Europe in the 1930s) is that the buffoonery and the fascism go hand in hand. They are inseparable. The buffoonery doesn’t make the fascism less dangerous, and the fascism doesn’t make the buffoonery less ridiculous. Both are spectacles in their own way, delighting willing audiences with their bombast, transgressiveness, and appeal to base emotions.
It’s only when we try to analyze the buffoonery and the fascism separately that we make the mistake of treating them as different impulses in apparent conflict, rather than similar dynamics acting in unison. Trump’s adoring audiences – so often derided as unsophisticated marks – have no trouble seeing the buffoonery and the fascism as part of the same set piece. They don’t see a tension there.
The Tenor Of Our Times
- WaPo: Trump repeats ‘enemy from within’ comment, targeting Pelosi and Schiff
- HuffPost: Christina Bobb, a top election lawyer for the RNC, said last week that she’s hoping for a “cleansing in our nation” and that “we can clean out the filth.”
- NYT: Trump Ratchets Up Threats on the Media
We Are Not Taking Mass Deportations Seriously Enough
Timothy Snyder: “The deep purpose of a mass deportation is to establish a new sort of politics, a politics of us-and-them, which means (at first) everyone else against the Latinos. In this new regime, the government just stokes the fears and encourages the denunciations, and we expect little more of it.”
UPDATE: Election Threats
- Politico: ‘The center of the storm’: Arizona’s election chief prepares for a disinformation battle
- WSJ: ‘It Feels Very Dystopian.’ Republican County Officials Brace for Election Deniers—Again
- Politico: The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway
Just Go Ahead And Give Dominion Your Money Now
Mediaite: “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) claimed Friday during an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that Dominion Voting Systems software was ‘switching’ votes in her district from Republican candidates to Democratic Party candidates.”
MUST READ
TPM’s Hunter Walker: The Biggest Mystery Of January 6 Remains Unsolved
All Musk, All The Time
With America on the brink of some newfangled high-tech oligarchic fascism, the deep involvement of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, in the campaign to elect Donald Trump stands out as a warning sign of the country’s deep structural corruption independent of MAGAism:
- NYT: U.S. Agencies Fund, and Fight With, Elon Musk. A Trump Presidency Could Give Him Power Over Them.
WSJ: Elon Musk Offers $1 Million Daily Prize for Signing His Petition - Brian Beutler: The Rotten World Elon Musk Is Trying To Force On Us
- Chris Geidner: Even the Fifth Circuit is questioning Judge Reed O’Connor — and Elon Musk
- Open Secrets: Pro-Trump dark money network tied to Elon Musk behind fake pro-Harris campaign scheme
- TPM’s Josh Marshall: Elon Musk’s Fake Sites and Fake Texts Impersonating the Harris Campaign
- Chris Hayes: “It is the grossest, most cynical ploy in an election cycle that’s rotten with cynical ploys”:
Still Remarkable
Democrats will never be bipartisan enough to satisfy the demands of DC political journalists, but I’m not sure what more they can do after this this election cycle. Kamala Harris’ embrace of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) isn’t a one-off thing. Check out Harris’ plans for today (emphasis mine):
Democrat Kamala Harris … touches down in three Midwestern battleground states on Monday to hold moderated conversations with Republican Liz Cheney. … Their conversations will be moderated by a conservative radio host and a GOP strategist.
By The Numbers
- A new WaPo-Schar School poll of likely voters in the battleground states shows:
- PA: Harris 49%, Trump 47%
- GA: Harris 51%, Trump 47%
- MI: Harris 49%, Trump 47%
- WI: Harris 50%, Trump 47%
- NV: Harris 48%, Trump 48%
- AZ: Trump 49%, Harris 46%
- NC: Trump 50%, Harris 47%
- Harris sets record for biggest fund-raising quarter ever, enabling her to outspend Trump 3.5-1 in September.
2024 Ephemera
- MT-Sen: Montana ranger questions Senate hopeful Sheehy’s bullet wound
- NE-Sen: A Tattooed Union Leader Is Threatening to Topple a Republican Senator in a Deep-Red State
- NYT: Jill Stein Won’t Stop. No Matter Who Asks.
Bipartisan Report Details Secret Service Failures
The July assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, was “preventable and should not have happened,” according to a preliminary report by a House bipartisan task force.
Good Read
WaPo: The CIA analyst who triggered Trump’s first impeachment asks: Was it worth it?
Trump Prosecution Watch
- Jan. 6 case: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed the appendices to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s mammoth brief on presidential immunity, but they were heavily redacted and offered only a smidge of new information.
- NYT: For Trump, a Lifetime of Scandals Heads Toward a Moment of Judgment
- Mitch McConnell, speaking of Trump and Jan. 6 (but saying this only in private and then endorsing Trump’s re-election bid): “If he hasn’t committed indictable offenses, I don’t know what one is.”
What’s Causing The Recent Spike in Global Temperatures?
Elizabeth Kolbert talks with NASA’s top climate scientist about the insanely steep rise in global temperatures in 2023 and science’s struggle to explain it.
Truth
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