Josh Marshall
Even now I never cease to be amazed when we find out years later about some new Trump scandal that despite all the scrum and fury managed to remain secret for all this time. The investigation into the President of Egypt trying to put some cash into Trump’s pockets is yet the latest example. How many stories like this will we only find out about a decade from now, or never?
To stay on track to meet our goal in this year’s TPM Journalism Fund annual drive we need to get to $300,000 by the end of this evening. We’re close. We’re at just over $292,000 $296,928. If you’ve been considering contributing this year, could you take a moment right now? It’s just a quick moment out of your routine and we put every dollar to very good use. Just click right here. Thanks.
Today Donald Trump appeared at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists, attacked the organization, disrespected the journalists interviewing him and then proceeded to claim that Kamala Harris is in fact a fake Black person who only recently decided to become Black. “I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went — she became a Black person,” he said, “I think somebody should look into that too.”
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Blitz 
I have various people I chat with through the day to compare notes about what’s in the news. I can’t remember who the conversation was with or whether it started with me or the other person. But in one of these conversations over the last few days I got to talking about the particular dynamics of a three-month campaign, something totally unheard of and unprecedented in modern American political history. American presidential campaigns last at least 18 months. In some ways they’re perpetual. But there’s nothing in recent American history to compare to what Kamala Harris is doing right now.
The Trump campaign is obviously furious about the switch. Vance called it a sucker punch. They essentially wasted their convention on the wrong candidate. You can understand why they’re mad.
Read MoreKate Riga is on vacation this week. So no podcast this week. We’ll be back next week on the regular schedule.
We are coming up on the end of the second week of this year’s TPM Journalism Fund drive. We’re hoping to get to $300,000 raised by the end of the day. That’s 60% of the way toward our goal. We’re currently at just over $277,000 raised. We know there’s a ton going on. But if you could make today the day you contribute to the drive we would deeply appreciate it. It’s quick and easy. You can take just a moment out of your routine right now and take the plunge. Just click right here. We thank you.
Vance: Kamala Sucker Punched Us and It Was So Not Fair
We’ve talked a lot recently about presidential politics as a series of performances of power. When I coined the phrase “bitch-slap politics” (later revised to “dominance politics”) in 2004, it was in reference to the “swift boat” campaign George W. Bush mobilized against John Kerry. In charge of the campaign was Donald Trump’s current co-campaign head, Chris LaCivita. The truth of those attacks weren’t the point. They were demonstrations of power. Bush was powerful because he could hit Kerry in a demeaning and vicious way and he would not or could not defend himself. This was an element of American political culture which Trump, a decade later, placed at the center of American political culture.
It was in this context that I saw the news, first reported by the Post, that JD Vance, at a private fundraiser, referred to the candidate switch as a “sucker punch.”
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Are You on Team ‘Weird’?
In case you hadn’t noticed, over the course of the first week of the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, when it was hard to know what was real or what was happening, “weird” suddenly became a central part of the story. If this hasn’t locked on your radar yet, this is the gist: It’s hard to know precisely where it started, but Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota has gotten the most attention for pushing and then amplifying it. Quite simply, he said, guys like Trump and Vance are just “weird.” And along with the dominating freight train of Kamala Week One, that message, that identification, seemed to connect in ways that “authoritarian” and “extremist” and “threat to democracy” never quite did. JD Vance is a big supporter of “menstrual surveillance,” he’s got this weird snarling anger at women with no children. It may be bad and wrong, but everyone gets that its just … well, weird.
And look, JD Vance is super weird. But what’s been most interesting to me is that over the last handful of days I’ve had several friends reach out to me and ask, “Where are you on ‘weird’?”
They don’t feel the need for any additional explanation. And they’re right.
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JD Vance, Awkward and Discomfiting Ragelord
One thing that has driven JD Vance’s rising unpopularity is his crusade against people without children. He’s proposed punitive tax policies to punish people who do these “bad” things like not having children and he’s even suggested diluting the voting rights of non-parents.
The odd thing about the tax policy side of this is that the U.S. tax code is actually filled with tax advantages and subsidies for people with kids. And generally speaking no one has much problem with that. There are dependent deductions, a refundable child tax credit, even something as obvious as public schools. Public schools are generally funded by property taxes. And almost everyone pays those, childful and childless alike, either directly or indirectly. Lots of people have kids and U.S. political culture is pretty pro-kid and pro-family (in the narrow sense of the phrase rather than the right-wing Christian sense). So generally it’s uncontroversial, even something politicians go out of their way to support.
Read MoreAs we go into the weekend I want to thank everyone who’s contributed so far to this year’s drive for the TPM Journalism Fund. We hit the half way point to our goal of raising $500,000 early yesterday morning. Even though we’ve gotten a lot more experience at holding these drives they remain nerve-wracking. They amount to a collective trust-fall – hopefully – into the arms of the larger TPM community. So it always feels really good, at many different levels, when you’re there for us. If you have had a moment to contribute yet you can click right here. It’s easy and quick.
We’ve always gained quite a few new members recently. Which is wonderful. And we want to welcome all of you. We’re still trying to understand the precise reasons for it.
One reason seems to be our new membership system in itself, by which I mean the software that runs it. As you know, our business is almost entirely based on membership fees. So a smoothly running system to manage memberships in all its dimensions – processing fees, authenticating users, record keeping and user experience – is mission critical. (Neither the old or the new system ever touch or store your credit cards. For that we use the industry-standard security and fulfillment of Stripe dot com.)
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