POTUS/General Election Thread 2020 + Aftermath

[Montmorency]

A speculative insight on why the Senate Republicans or Mitch McConnell may be refusing to legislate new pandemic relief. The discussion in comments is also very worthwhile.

Best hypothesis I've heard is that many GOP Senators:

1) Expect Trump to lose.

2) Expect the right to react to this the same way it did to Bush II (renewed fervor for conservative purity).

3) Fear a big Covid stimulus would be the new TARP/that they will get primary-ed for it.

Another interesting flashback to the fundamentally Nixonian (at best) character of the Republican party:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics...sappear-again/


From Woodward's book:

Trump was taken with Kim’s flattery, Woodward writes, telling the author pridefully that Kim had addressed him as “Excellency.” Trump remarked that he was awestruck meeting Kim for the first time in 2018 in Singapore, thinking to himself, “Holy shit,” and finding Kim to be “far beyond smart.” Trump also boasted to Woodward that Kim “tells me everything,” including a graphic account of Kim having his uncle killed.

Trump did not share his letters to Kim — “Those are so top secret,” the president said — but Woodward obtained them independently. He writes that Trump sent Kim a copy of the New York Times featuring a picture of the two men on the front page. “Chairman, great picture of you, big time,” Trump wrote on the paper in marker. (Trump falsely boasted to Woodward: “He never smiled before. I’m the only one he smiles with.”)

Look, it's more history for us. Hopefully it's useful to some postdoc when we're dead.

(This kind of stuff demonstrating Trump's diminished mental capacity is why I've never really been able to hate him. Yes, I know he's technically sapient, fully capable of overt lies, and one of the worst people ever, but - he's just so pathetic!)

I'm tired of this Rocky & Bullwinkle Show that we've been subjected to for the last six months. Tired of seeing the latest block tumble from our democracy, while Congress and the rest of the morons on Capital Hill do little or nothing to stop the bleeding. While millions of Americans are out of work, and dying by the thousands due to their incompetence, they check the daily reports on their stock portfolio's. While a megalomaniac president continually prods us down the road of fascism, Congress does nothing. AFAIAC, they are all the same brand as Woodward----capitalists at their worst.

The Trump administration's relentless incompetence, malice, and overt venal lawlessness are a psychic burden and a Promethean wound on the whole country. I can't count how many people have expressed this feeling, like meat boiling off a bone.

None of this means squat. On numerous occasions, Fearless Leader's total lack of respect for American democracy, American law, the American people themselves, and even the office of the presidency, has had little to no consequences. Members of the GOP are so brow-beaten, that they only raise an occasional bleat for fear of being ostracized, and the Dems are nothing more than a weak, pathetic collection of toothless politicians who do nothing to defend the democracy they were elected to uphold.

I wish, per my previous statement, that they were screaming about it more, and maybe somehow teaming up with activists to organize their communities 'outside the system' in anticipation of a long period of popular uprising. But the reality we've all been forced to confront by now is that in terms of institutional power Congress or individual lawmakers just can't impose their will if the executive and judiciary collectively militate against it. Frustrating as it may be to be stuck in the position of crying "DO SOMETHING" at Dem electeds, they are almost helpless in their official capacity if the opposition plays hardball and feels unconstrained by laws or ethics or reason. What power they do still have is largely rhetorical, e.g. "screaming."

This is no mere defense of Capitol Hill Democrats but a reminder that unless we wrangle a revolutionary force that can sweep away Republicans outside the ballot box, we're left to keep taking the punches for the time being. (This isn't to say that Trump hasn't been rebuked by the courts, more often than not he has, but the consistent outcome of the Congressional complaints against Trump has been decisively in favor of executive time and power. Trump can give a damn.)

Biden as President - or more properly his administration's Justice Department - needs to open a few hundred criminal investigations as soon as physically possible though, as that's our only recourse to Republican crimes this side of the decade. Failure to acknowledge and operate on this wound would be a damning mark well beyond his time in office.

As a follow-up, Woodward defending his decision to sit on information contained in his book:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifes...49c_story.html

Admittedly, in this treatment he doesn't answer the narrow question of whether this bit of information was worth going public with given the technical possibility that its dissemination could prompt policy changes.

I'll split the difference and say he should have arranged for the info to be leaked to the NYT. He could have been Deep Wood! Truly a full circle finish, of a sort.

So what meaningful changes do you see in the coming weeks as a result of the fallout from all of this?

It does seem liable to congeal the dwindling of Trump's polling lead among elderly white voters, particularly in Florida.

[Hooahguy]

This is no mere defense of Capitol Hill Democrats but a reminder that unless we wrangle a revolutionary force that can sweep away Republicans outside the ballot box, we're left to keep taking the punches for the time being. (This isn't to say that Trump hasn't been rebuked by the courts, more often than not he has, but the consistent outcome of the Congressional complaints against Trump has been decisively in favor of executive time and power. Trump can give a damn.)

As I have long argued, the GOP needs to be burned to the ground completely. More people seem to be coming around to this point. I mean even Bill Kristol of all people seems to recognize this. This article, by Tom Nichols from yesterday is probably the best summation of why the GOP is beyond saving:

I’m not advocating for voting against the GOP merely to punish Republicans for Trump’s existence in their party. Rather, conservatives must finally accept that at this point Trump and the Republican Party are indistinguishable. Trump and his circle have gutted the old GOP and stuffed its empty husk with the Trump family’s paranoia and corruption.Indeed, the transformation of the GOP into a cult of personality is so complete that the Republicans didn’t even bother presenting a platform at their own convention. Like a group of ciphers at a meeting of SPECTRE, they nodded at whatever Number One told them to do, each of them fearing an extended pinkie finger pressing the button that would electrocute them into political oblivion.
...
Conservatives must also let go of fantasies about saving the “good” Republicans, a list that is virtually nonexistent. (You can’t count Mitt Romney more than once.) The occasional furrowed brow—a specialty of the feckless Susan Collins of Maine—is not enough. The few, like Romney, who have dared grasp at moments of sanity have been pilloried by Trump and other Republicans. In any case, Romney is chained to the GOP caucus, a crew that includes the jabbering Louie Gohmert and calculating Elise Stefanik in the House, and the sniveling Ted Cruz and amoral Mitch McConnell in the Senate.

Biden as President - or more properly his administration's Justice Department - needs to open a few hundred criminal investigations as soon as physically possible though, as that's our only recourse to Republican crimes this side of the decade. Failure to acknowledge and operate on this wound would be a damning mark well beyond his time in office.

Biden himself has said that he won't stand in the way of investigations into the Trump admin, but also said that he wouldn't order investigations either. Rather he would let the Justice Department decide. The rule of law part of me is encouraged by this, but at the same time I'm a little disappointed as the crimes of the current administration need to be explored and punished. I guess it will depend on who is picked for AG.

[Montmorency]

The Wisconsin Supreme Court - yes, that majority - has just ordered Wisconsin to stop mailing absentee ballots. The state had printed more than 2 million ballots, and mailed hundreds of thousands, with a deadline to send them by September 17; they had been prepared for the general E following the April chaos. But their SC halted all that and is considering nullifying all existing ballots.

This was all done at the request of the Green Party presidential candidates who failed to meet the criteria for being included on the ballot.

JFC can we have a reality where not every downballot election is critical to every other election? I'm sick of all the narrative threads!

[Hooahguy]

Well I guess we now have some numbers as to the potential impact of the Woodward tapes plus the Atlantic story about the troops:

Yahoo News/YouGov poll: Biden now leads Trump by 10, 49-39 (was Biden +6 post-RNC)

15% say the Woodward tape makes them less likely to vote for Trump

23% of independents say the Atlantic troops story makes them more likely to vote for Biden

Following the Atlantic story about Trump's comments on the troops, "six percent of 2016 Trump supporters say they have moved toward Biden as a result."

Overall, 8% of Trump 2016 voters have switched to Biden compared to just 1% of Clinton voters to Trump.

The interesting takeaway here seems to be that the Atlantic story seems to have had a bigger impact than the Woodward story.

[ReluctantSamurai]

The interesting takeaway here seems to be that the Atlantic story seems to have had a bigger impact than the Woodward story.

You just don't screw with loyalty to the military. Especially if you've never served....

As damning as the Woodward story is, this is equally damning, if not more so:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...ovid-19-412809

In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency’s reports would undermine President Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by POLITICO and three people familiar with the situation.

CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides’ efforts to change the language in the CDC’s reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon.

But since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.

Caputo and his team have attempted to add caveats to the CDC's findings, including an effort to retroactively change agency reports that they said wrongly inflated the risks of Covid-19 and should have made clear that Americans sickened by the virus may have been infected because of their own behavior, according to the individuals familiar with the situation and emails reviewed by POLITICO.

In one clash, an aide to Caputo berated CDC scientists for attempting to use the reports to "hurt the President" in an Aug. 8 email sent to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other officials that was widely circulated inside the department and obtained by POLITICO.

Alexander also called on Redfield to halt all future MMWR reports until the agency modified its years-old publication process so he could personally review the entire report prior to publication, rather than a brief synopsis. Alexander, an assistant professor of health research at Toronto's McMaster University whom Caputo recruited this spring to be his scientific adviser, added that CDC needed to allow him to make line edits — and demanded an "immediate stop" to the reports in the meantime.

"The reports must be read by someone outside of CDC like myself, and we cannot allow the reporting to go on as it has been, for it is outrageous. Its lunacy," Alexander told Redfield and other officials. "Nothing to go out unless I read and agree with the findings how they CDC, wrote it and I tweak it to ensure it is fair and balanced and 'complete.'"

So not only lying about the threat of SARS-2 in February, but actively suppressing ongoing data transmission that made the Trump Administration look inept.

[Hooahguy]

Less inept and more malicious and deceitful in my opinion.

And re: the military, him entering his most recent rally to Fortunate Son is really something else. Hes the definition of a chickenhawk.

[edyzmedieval]

We're less than 2 months to go and it's getting even nastier.

[ReluctantSamurai]

Oh, it's just warming up

Like this ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuBX50zVY5g

Lincoln Project hits home again:

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/0...-nevada-412990

“But you know the good part?” Trump continued. “Now I can be really vicious. Once I saw that ad, I don’t have to be nice anymore.”

These guys have shown the ability time and time again to get into Fearless Leaders head. People of questionable integrity, but they make killer ads the Dems won't, although they don't have enough funding to air them 'prime-time' on mainstream media. The ability of these ads to influence voters is likely quite limited, but still, it's fun to watch Fearless Leader squirm.