At least, that’s what it appears former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway is doing in her attempts to goad ex-President Trump into participating in another debate against Vice President Kamala Harris before the election.
Continue reading “Key Trump Ally Paves Way For Another Debate Just In Case Vance Faceplants”Thoughts on Iran/Israel Conflict
This is a fast moving situation. I’m not a military expert. Watch the military experts for military updates. But some thoughts come to mind. First, it seems unimaginable that Israel won’t retaliate in force directly against Iran. That’s just a fait accompli. It was frankly surprising that the response in April was so limited. But there’s a difference between a show a strength to reestablish deterrence on the one hand and actual strategic gains on the other. It seems to me that the big strategic gain is the one that Israel is in the midst of and what prompted Iran’s missile attack today in the first place. That is, in essence: dismantling or at least seriously degrading the capacity of the Hezbollah militia and rocket capacity. Hezbollah is not solely creature of Iran. But that’s what makes it such a military force. It’s there to be a forward arm of Iran, a source of deterrence vis a vis Israel as well as being part of a longer term strategy of encircling Israel and killing it through a death of a thousand cuts. The biggest gains seem possible against Hezbollah more than in Iran. The exception is Iran’s nuclear plants. Those are of course heavily reinforced. And attacking them in force directly would be a further escalation. But Michael Oren, the former Knesset member and former Israeli Ambassador to U.S., was on CNN this afternoon and he focused on the fact that the killing of Hassan Nasrallah shows Israel has the ability to cut through multiple layers of reinforced concrete. Oren isn’t currently in government. But that message seemed very clear.
What’s Going on With Trump’s Outsourced GOTV Effort?
Over recent weeks I’ve tried to share with you a series of questions about the campaign or features of the campaign that could mean the difference between victory and defeat. Most of these aren’t cases where you say “this campaign has to do this” or “this campaign has to do that.” They’re mysteries to me at least at a deeper level. The one I’d like to discuss today I’ve mentioned a few times in earlier posts.
Remember back in the spring the Trump campaign and really the Trump family did a sort of forced takeover of the RNC and as part of that move they closed down the RNC’s Get Out The Vote or field operations and decided to outsource that work to a series of super PACs of which Elon Musk’s America PAC and the Turning Point USA’s PAC are the biggest? This wasn’t totally out of the blue or not totally without some rationale behind it. The FEC recently made a ruling that gave campaigns and parties greater ability to coordinate with super PACs on GOTV work. So there’s some logic to that. But it’s not obvious on that basis why you’d shut down the RNC’s GOTV operations. So questions about that move have hovered over this. Was this just dumb? Is there some financial interest at work? Is it just part of asserting total control over the party apparatus? Or is it actually just a good idea, allowing the unlimited dollars of these PACs to up the party’s game? The weight of logic and some evidence points to some mix of the first few answers. But it’s been hard to totally rule out the last one.
Continue reading “What’s Going on With Trump’s Outsourced GOTV Effort?”Electoral Politics Are A Terrible Prism For Natural Disasters
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
A Flood Of Dumb
The storm-ravaged people of southern Appalachia are too busy cleaning up, digging out, and trying to find small moments of normalcy to keep themselves sane to notice much of the national political conversation. That is a small blessing amidst the carnage in their lives.
Natural disasters have become another of our stale campaign tropes. It dates back in my mind to President George H.W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. His son’s feeble response to Hurricane Katrina was a political disaster that didn’t sink his second term all by itself but served to bring home in a clear and convincing way the incompetence and ineptitude of the Iraq invasion. What could be explained away in Baghdad could not be waved away in New Orleans. But those few historic instances have become tired set pieces that political editors pull out of the file when the next big disaster strikes, and that doesn’t do anyone any good.
Disaster response is one of those under-appreciated core government functions that requires years of planning, consistent funding, unsexy contingencies for communications, mutual aid, and the pre-positioning of assets — none of which is noticed or appreciated until disaster strikes. It is a chronic frustration of emergency managers that their warnings aren’t heeded, their resources are limited, and their communities often end up in reactive postures rather than proactively planning for the inevitable disaster.
In recent decades, manmade climate change and population growth have combined to turbocharge weather-related disasters, adding another layer of complexity, and additional political baggage to the grinding job of preparing for and mitigating natural disasters. (Some of you will object to the term “natural disaster” but let’s save that conversation for another day.) Perhaps at no time in human history has preparation and mitigation for weather disasters been more urgently required, but the stranglehold that climate-change-denying Republicans continue to have on politics makes that very difficult.
Hurricane Helene’s deluge was without precedent in western North Carolina, but it is reminiscent of past storms with far-reaching inland effects, carrying echoes, for instance, of 1972’s Hurricane Agnes. But science tell us that a warming atmosphere can hold more water and warming oceans fuel stronger storms. It will only get worse in the coming decades. Election year jousting over the immediate response until the TV cameras turn away is only the most glaring example of our short-sightedness.
Moronic
While southern Appalachia struggles to begin its long-term recovery from Hurricane Helene, Donald Trump was running around Georgia making idiotic comments like this one:
"Nobody thought this would be happening" — Trump, who denies climate change during each of his speeches, on Hurricane Helene pic.twitter.com/aqCRc9V9i1
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 30, 2024
The hurricane seasons runs through the end of November. The climatological peak of hurricane season falls around Sept 10. Helene made landfall on Sept. 26, smack in the middle of what is historically the busiest stretch of the hurricane season.
One Bright Spot
CNN’s Brian Stelter has a lovely piece on how local radio has become a lifeline for the people of western North Carolina in the aftermath of the historic flooding.
Tester And Sheehy Debate In Must-Win Race
The crucial, though increasingly tough for Dems, Montana Senate race entered its stretch run with a candidate debate last night, the highlight of which was this exchange in the closing minutes:
Tester: If you really feel this way about Native Americans, you ought to apologize for the statement you made about them
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 1, 2024
Sheehy: I come from the military, we make insensitive jokes pic.twitter.com/soQ7DuGc4l
2024 Ephemera
- Politico: Republicans are starting to raise alarms about Trump’s ground game
- NYT: Trump Allies Bombard the Courts, Setting Stage for Post-Election Fight
- TPM: Georgia Dems Sue Kemp To Compel Him To Hold Hearing On Rogue Election Board
- NPR: Justice Department sues Alabama, claiming it purged voters too close to the election
Trump Golf Course Gunman Pleads Not Guilty
Ryan Routh entered a not guilty plea in federal court in West Palm Beach on the federal charges against him for last month’s attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Judge Blocks Georgia’s Six-Week Abortion Ban
Access to abortion in Georgia was at least temporarily expanded when a state trial judge blocked a six-week ban, reverting the state to the previous 22-week ban. Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney ruled that the six-week abortion ban violated the state Constitution. The case is expected to reach the Georgia Supreme Court for a final determination on the six-week ban’s constitutionality.
Health Care Access Threatened By GOP Win In November
When democracy is at stake, some of the usual campaign issues fade from relevance, but this election presents a major fork in the road on national health care policy since the two parties are miles apart on things as basic as Obamacare, Medicare, and Medicaid. Here’s just one example.
Dockworkers Strike Along East And Gulf Coasts
WSJ: “Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents 45,000 dockworkers at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports, began picketing early Tuesday at cargo terminals that handle more than half of American import and export volumes as the contract with port employers expired.”
Happy 100th!
When he went into hospice care months ago, it seemed unlikely that former President Jimmy Carter would live to see his 100th birthday. But he continues to defy expectations and set his own course. He was born on this date in 1924.
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Israel’s Thrust into South Lebanon
Wars are not only bloody and murderous endeavors, they are also unpredictable. The specter of former forays into Lebanon looms over Israel’s current one: easy to get in, harder to get out. After the stunning assassination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, as well as most of the secondary leadership of the organization over the last three weeks, we’re hearing voices in Israel and the U.S. talking predictably about a “new Middle East.” Meanwhile others in the international community and the U.S. talk about these new developments as an “escalation” out of nowhere — Israel looking for a new war, basically.
This is complicated stuff, like everything which happens in this region and especially everything tied to Israel, the Palestinians, and the states surrounding both. But I wanted to share some thoughts on why this escalation and Israel’s fight with Hezbollah are qualitatively different from anything that is happening in Gaza.
Continue reading “Israel’s Thrust into South Lebanon”Happy 100th Birthday, Jimmy Carter
Today is Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday. The 39th president has lived a remarkable and extraordinarily unique life over the course of a century: from serving in the Navy, to running his family’s peanut farm in Georgia, to his years in the White House, to the decades of humanitarian and philanthropic work that followed, there is no figure who rivals Carter.
In honor of Carter’s milestone birthday, let’s enjoy some photos of the former president’s life and accomplishments.
One-year-old James Earl Carter
Jimmy Carter graduates from the US Naval Academy
Jimmy Carter on his family’s peanut farm in Georgia
Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford in their first televised presidential debate, 1976
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, 1976
President Carter at Camp David, 1978
Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan debate, 1980
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter work for Habitat for Humanity, 1988
Jimmy Carter and Willie Nelson, 1985
Jimmy Carter and his hand-made chess set, 1993
Jimmy Carter holds up his Nobel Peace Prize, 2002
The Carters working with Habitat for Humanity, 2003
Jimmy Carter discusses his cancer diagnosis, 2015
Jimmy Carter at the funeral of Rosalynn Carter 2023
Plains Peanut Festival celebrates the birthday of the former president
Georgia Judge’s Abortion Decision Will Reverberate Across The South, Albeit Temporarily
Fulton County Superior Judge Robert McBurney issued an order Monday striking down the state’s six-week abortion ban and allowing the procedure to be performed again in the state up until 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Continue reading “Georgia Judge’s Abortion Decision Will Reverberate Across The South, Albeit Temporarily”Georgia Dems Sue Kemp To Compel Him To Hold Hearing On Rogue Election Board
Several Georgia Democrats sued GOP Gov. Brian Kemp over his failure to hold a hearing on the three Trump-endorsed members of the Georgia Election Board after state Democrats filed formal ethics complaints against some of the members.
Continue reading “Georgia Dems Sue Kemp To Compel Him To Hold Hearing On Rogue Election Board”Dems’ Pivot to Texas and Florida
After days of hints at it, Democrats are now making a serious foray into Florida and Texas in a last-ditch effort to hold on to their Senate majority. Before calling it “last-ditch,” I wondered what to call it. Is that too pessimistic? Too optimistic? I’m really not sure. You know the background. Democrats went into this cycle with an almost historically bad map. One seat in West Virginia was, by universal agreement, hopeless. Beyond that preordained loss, Democrats had incumbents up in a several of the swing states and new candidates trying to hold existing seats in other swing states. On the other side of the ledger there were no obvious pick-up opportunities. Starting from those inauspicious beginnings, the Democrats’ map has held up remarkably well. In all but one case, Senate Democratic candidates go into the last month of the campaign either favorites or strong contenders. That one exception is Montana, where Jon Tester is now a decided underdog. Which brings us to Florida and Texas.
Are these races really plausible?
Continue reading “Dems’ Pivot to Texas and Florida”Trump’s Obsession With Violence Becomes More Explicit
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
‘One Really Violent Day’
With five weeks until the election, and early voting underway, Donald Trump has returned to the themes that most animate him: ones grounded in race and racial violence.
In a campaign appearance Friday in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where the outcome of the 2024 election may very well be decided, Trump launched into a disjointed attack on crime, long a Republican code word for Black. But the dream sequence he narrated about unlawfully using violence preemptively as a deterrent to more crime was clear as a bell:
Crime and immigration as racist code words are not new in general or specifically to Trump. He has fallen back on them over and over, as other rhetorical devices come and go. As has been observed repeatedly over the past decade, Trump seems to have a visceral personal reaction to the prospect of violence, especially as a means of cleansing or rejuvenating, a baptismal violence fantasy that he indulges when the going gets tough.
The violence of Trump’s fantasies take many forms – police brutality, vigilantism, pro-wrestling theatrics – but in every form they serve as a projection of strength for a fundamentally weak, craven, and damaged man.
Trump Cranks Up Attacks On Immigrants
In related news, Trump’s racist anti-immigrant rhetoric has deepened and darkened as the race has tightened and Election Day approaches. While xenophobia has always been part and parcel of Trumpism, the combination of finding little traction elsewhere and Kamala Harris’ own biracial status has left blatant racist appeals as Trump’s last campaign grasp:
- WSJ: Trump Amps Up Rhetoric to Keep Immigration at Center of Election
- NYT: Trump’s Answer to Harris’s Border Trip Is To Call Her ‘Mentally Disabled’
- CNN: To attack Harris, Trump falsely describes new stats on immigrants and homicide
- WaPo: Trump lambastes immigrants using false homicide claims
Springfield Still Reeling From Attack On Haitian Immigrants
- Politico: Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine confronts Trump’s lies.
- NYT: An Ohio Businessman Faces Death Threats for Praising His Haitian Workers
Rule Of Law Watch
- WSJ: Trump Plans Massive Shake-Up of Justice Department
- Politico Magazine: Exactly How Trump Could Prosecute His Political Enemies
The Battle To Control The Senate
- WSJ: Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund plans to spend $67.5 million on TV, radio and digital ads to flip Democratic Senate seats in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin
- Politico: Ted Cruz rebrands for a tight race in Texas
2024 Ephemera
- VP debate: CBS News, the host of the debate, has abdicated its fact-checking responsibilities, in a concession to the Trump-Vance ticket.
- New York Times/Siena College polls: Harris leads Trump among likely voters in Michigan 48%-47% and in Wisconsin 49%-47%.
- Never Trumper: Former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), mostly recently the U.S. ambassador to Turkey under Biden, endorsed Kamala Harris.
Feds Bring Charges In Iran Hack Of Trump Campaign
Three Iranian nationals were indicted in federal court in Washington, D.C., for their alleged roles in the hack-and-leak attack against the Trump campaign.
Still Fighting Impeachment I At Ukraine’s Expense
An astonishing moment, really:
Can’t Ignore
Outside of Morning Memo’s usual jurisdiction, but the weekend developments in Lebanon are too momentous not to mention:
- Israeli airstrike on Friday killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in a southern suburb of Beirut.
- Israeli special forces have been reportedly operating within southern Lebanon ahead of a potential ground invasion that could come as soon as this week.
Southern Appalachia Faces A Long Recovery From Helene
The death toll from Hurricane Helene rose past 100, more than a third of those deaths in and around Asheville in crippled western North Carolina, where historic rainfall caused catastrophic damage to human infrastructure.
Kris Kristofferson, 1936-2024
Kris Kristofferson’s many remarkable incarnations – from youthful accomplishments like Rhodes Scholar and Army helicopter pilot to his creative output as a songwriter and musician to his substantial career as an actor – made him the embodiment of certain eras of American pop culture, especially the 1970s.
I have an offbeat amalgam of mental snapshots of him: flying helicopters offshore for the oil and gas industry from my hometown while he wrote “Me and Bobby McGee,” which Janis Joplin would make famous posthumously; the trucker in the Sam Peckinpah movie based on the novelty song “Convoy” that defined the big rig craze of the 1970s; a member of the supergroup The Highwaymen in the 1980s along with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings; his fabled confrontation with Toby Keith backstage at Nelson’s 70th birthday party in 2009, that Ethan Hawke famously described and that Kristofferson himself said he had no memory of.
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