Chaos and Fear Are the Calling Cards of Democracy’s Enemies

Headlines lie, billionaires like things that way

politics media

Last week was all about the first big campaign swing for Vice President Kamala Harris and running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. The new Democratic ticket barnstormed through five battleground states on a get-to-know-us tour. Hurricane Debbie caused two southern stops to be canceled.

The crowds were loud, proud, and seemingly ready to take on the hard work it will take to decisively defeat the Trumpanistas. Smart politics for Democrats means winning big up and down the ballot, from County Supervisor to the Chief Executive.

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Eds. Note: I’m back! I had a lovely few days off, including trips to Chicago, Minneapolis, and Santa Barbara, including visiting the Museum of Science and Industry, the Mall of America, and enjoyed a memorable performance by Jon Batiste.

Now, on to business. It’s going to be a twofer Tuesday, starting with a piece on the state of the race for president, and finishing the day with a Project 2025 deep dive on MAGA plans for the Department of Transportation.

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A squeaker of a victory poses yet another kind of threat, one darker in the short term than an outright GOP victory. I see no advantage at present to airing threats on this possibility from the right; they’ve made their case for stealing the election clear enough for everybody to see,  

The race is past v. future, and Kamala Harris represents the future. Bullying Biden over his age-related performances has blown for the Trump campaign in the wake of an often incoherent press conference packed with 162 lies, misrepresentations, and unfounded boasts.

Campaigning for the future has taken on a decidedly brighter tone with the first week of campaigning. The word “Joy” keeps coming up. Here’s a snip from Washington Post on the ground campaign coverage: 

• Among Democratic voters, the enthusiasm is palpable. Tammy Hanley, 53, a special-education teacher from Anchorage, was visiting family in Minnesota and changed her return flight to be able to attend Harris’s Wednesday rally in Eau Claire, Wis.

• “I’m going to cry when I see her,” Hanley said. “I feel so much more hopeful about the future. Everyone is feeling more hopeful.”

• Hanley laughed as she likened the Democratic and Republican tickets to “unicorn sparkles versus puke.” As she finished eating one of the doughnuts that volunteers were handing out to attendees entering the Harris-Walz rally, Hanley added that the Republican side felt chock-full of “the-world-is-doomed rallies,” whereas the Democrats were now offering “doughnut rallies.”

The latest round of polling shows voter interest in broader topics like the economy, a woman’s right to choose, and immigration. A Financial Times/Univ. of Michigan survey shows Harris beating out Trump on the economy, a remarkable turnaround. The Trump campaign’s crime and (Chinese) commie themes are not resonating, and his openness about quashing bipartisan immigration legislation has given Dems an effective foil.

In the face of all this encouraging news, here comes the buzzkill.

As precursor to some not nice words I have to say about the establishment-minded media, I think a quote from United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain is in order, via John Queally at Common Dreams:

• The UAW has endorsed the Democratic presidential ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Meeting with the candidates earlier this week at a local union hall in Wayne, Michigan, Fain said, "To me, this election is real simple. It's about one question, a question we've made famous in the labor movement: Which side are you on?"

• "On one side, we've got a billionaire who serves himself and his billionaire buddies. He lies, cheats, and steals his way to the top. He is the lapdog of the billionaire class," said Fain. "On the other side, we've got a badass woman who has stood on the picket line with working-class people. Kamala Harris is a champion of the working class."

I know the idea of class war isn’t baked into the contemporary American consciousness, but if you want a reason why so many mainstream media outlets offer mealy-mouthed critiques chock full of softening adjectives about Trump, the financial and power aspirations of their owners are the only obvious answer.

Politico, a long-time center right axis, has expanded its “two-sides” (sans moral judgment) coverage since being purchased by a European right wing billionaire. Now, three weeks into a campaign still in its get-to-know us phases, and based on three years of governance, the biggest issue in politics is supposedly the lack of a platform.

• What she hasn’t done yet is settle on a plan for governing, except in the broadest of strokes. Her stump speech has framed the campaign as a “fight for the future” without saying much about what precisely that future would entail. There’s no 100-day agenda, let alone a detailed tax policy white paper.

• Say what you will about Trump’s, um, uneven interest in policymaking, his Republican allies have been laying the groundwork for a return to power for months. Top congressional leaders have plotted their first moves, including how they might use the fast-track reconciliation process to pass tax cuts, regulation rollbacks and more. (That’s to say nothing of the now-renounced Project 2025.)

The Washington Post, owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, has editorialized about the dire crisis embodied by Vice President Harris not yet coming crawling to them begging for an interview.

Republican JD Vance is trying to pull the old switcheroo by accusing Democrats of bullying by name-calling; you know, saying things like weird…

Here’s Katie Cheung at Jezebel:

• The line that Democrats are “schoolyard bullies” engaging in mean “name-calling” is especially rich coming from the ostensibly tough, salt-of-the-earth, non-PC Republican presidential ticket, helmed by none other than Donald Trump. For the last decade now, name-calling has been central to Trump’s political ethos. Think: Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, or, during the 2016 presidential primary, “Little Marco” and “Lyin’ Ted.” Trump has mocked and impersonated people with disabilities, accused Megyn Kelly of being on her period for asking him a question about his misogyny, and otherwise attacked political opponents’ appearances. Vance’s attempt to criticize Democrats for their supposed nastiness holds even less weight considering Democrats are calling him “weird” for wanting to ban abortion and terrorize LGBTQ children.

Heather Cox Richardson in Letters from an American:

• On Sunday he did the rounds of the morning talk shows, where on CNN he complained that Democrats are bullying him by calling the MAGA Republicans “weird.” Political journalist Brian Tyler Cohen promptly answered: “Crooked Hillary, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Sleepy Joe, Coco Chow, Lyin Ted, Ron DeSanctimonious, Birdbrain Nikki Haley, Old Crow McConnell, Gavin Newscum, Pencil Neck Schiff, Pocahontas, Cryin Chuck, and Kamabla would all like a word.”

• Republicans have made punching down a key part of their rhetoric since at least the 1980s, and Vance’s frustration that the tables have turned feels a bit as if someone is finally standing up to the schoolyard bully. 

Meanwhile, well known apologists for Trump, covering the MAGA ideological spectrum from Peter Navarro to Kevin McCarthy, are pleading for a more issues-based campaign.

That ain’t going to happen, based on the Republican candidate’s slurred words in a conversation with Elon Musk on Monday night. When the campaign was asked by HuffPost White House journalist S.V. Dáte about Trump’s inability to articulate, it answered: “Must be your sh*tty hearing. Get your ears checked out.” 

Trump’s softening toward the South African-born misogynist’s industrial enterprise, along with his near-pornographic descriptions of desecrating Alaska’s arctic, were made-for-TikTok sound bites for those portraying this presidential contest as an auction for billionaires.

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Another issue affecting (presumably) both presidential campaigns has arisen, with news that the Trump campaign has been hacked. Who dun it? Who cares!

It’s soooo ironic that access to the GOP standard-bearer’s campaign was, according to CNN, enabled by the bad guys hacking dirty-trickster Roger Stone’s email account. Thus far, not much of scandal value has been released by the hackers, likely because the real workings of the campaign are being directed by the Really Fine Mind at the top of the ticket, the guy who reportedly doesn’t know how to use email. 

The point that needs to be taken here is that every foreign power with the technical ability to do so is using social media to induce chaos into the political processes of the preeminent democracy on the planet, For starters, if you’re interested, see all the never-heard-of-before entities on Xitter promising “just the facts” coverage. It’s amazing how many of these outlets are appearing faster than breeding rabbits.

Chaos and fear are the calling cards of democracy’s enemies; goodwill and joy are its antidotes. The lesson to be learned in terms of modern-day politics is that it’s possible to run a campaign with a smile on your face and a song in your heart, even as you decry your opponent’s platform.

Harris/Waltz have united their party, bringing in much of the previously discouraged anti-Trump coalition. In three weeks time, they’ve also raised half a billion dollars and signed up thousands of volunteers.

I’m impressed. My hopes post-election day are tempered by history and encouraged by what is happening in the labor movement. Progressive accomplishments will not just fall from a coconut tree; the work must be ongoing.

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Monday News You Should Read

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Good news: Not all journalism outlets suck by Mark Jacob at Stop The Presses.

• Despite Donald Trump’s obvious connections with Project 2025, he has tried to distance himself from the effort since it attracted negative attention. Politico helped in this downplaying effort with its recent story that called Project 2025 a “shoestring operation” and a “mirage.” It is neither.

• People who dismiss fears about a potential Trump dictatorship like to note that the worst didn’t happen during his previous term in office. But it wasn’t for lack of trying. Trump faced pushback by civil servants and was hampered by his own mistakes. And – reality check – he tried to overturn a fair election. His intentions were clear. Project 2025 wants the right wing to keep fine-tuning its attacks on democracy. 

• Over this past weekend – just a week after Politico’s story – we learned that the Project 2025 “mirage” came with alarming training videos. ProPublica and the Documented investigative journalism project got ahold of the videos and published their contents. 

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Cruelty Culture Infects the Olympics by Jill Filipovic

• The only decent reaction to the heinous and dehumanizing attacks on Khelif is disgust (or rage or sadness). But I’ve also felt my heart pull for her in response to even the more reasonable questions about sports, gender, biology, and competitive advantage. Here’s a girl who has worked her whole life for this, and even if you strip out the bigotry and instead focus on the scientific inquiry, it’s hard not to feel for a talented athlete who has trained hard and sacrificed much, only to see her eligibility questioned — as if she somehow cheated, rather than simply competing in the body she was born with.

• But at the highest levels, the goal of athletic competition is not to honor each competitor’s desire to compete. It’s to make the competition competitive, which means keeping the playing field as level as possible. What should that mean for intersex and trans athletes? I don’t know, and I suspect the answer starts with “it depends” and then gets very very long.

• I know for sure, though, that the conservative and other bigots who are deeming Khelif a man and who seem to be thoroughly enjoying her public humiliation aren’t really in it for their love of sport or their desire to protect women’s athletics.

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Speaking Plainly About Who Is Robbing You by Hamilton Nolan at How Things Work

• The next time you get tempted to bow to the politesse of “We may disagree but we must all respect one another,” please remember this. This is the bulk of what happens in politics. Interest groups looking out for their own interests. All interests are not equally righteous. For example, one interest may be “Skim money away from regular people’s savings by posing as advisers who will help them,” and one opposing interest may be “Protect people from being ripped off.” There is a right and wrong answer here. 

• It is not so much that the politicians on the other side of this issue think differently about the path to economic prosperity for all; it is that they are corrupt. They are okay allowing you to be ripped off because the continuation of that grift can be in their own personal interests. Again, we all benefit from speaking plainly about this. Acquiescing to speak about things in bullshit word salad is a primary reason why this corruption can continue for so long.

• Should this make you cynical? No, it should make you demand campaign finance reform. In order to stop this mechanism we must cut off the flow of money from the Ripoff Industries to the politicians. Until then, this goes on and on and on. Campaign finance reform. It’s a term that makes everyone go to sleep. But it is the answer here. I’ll write more about it here one day, and you must promise not to fall asleep.