There was nothing worth your time to see in Dallas last night.
Nothing at all.
It was all the usual lies.
Told to all the usual, goggle-eyed homunculi.
In a half-empty barn.
By a rapidly decomposing degenerate monster.
Nothing to see here.
The public was offered a $5,000-per-adult, Trump-branded bribe if Republicans
keep the congress. Wildly illegal and as nonexistent as your Trump DOGE check and your Trump tariff rebate.
Great new health care system will be up and running in a matter of weeks,
The last two years have, of course, been the greatest two years in the history
of creation.
Oh, and we're all still baby-killing Commies.
Also Fetterman showed up because there were cameras to prance in front of and it would piss off Democrats, and what else has he got.
Nothing to see here.
The same, old, tired lies about “We won the presidency three times.”
And the United States now has “the lowest drug prices in the world.”
And Iowa gasoline was “$1.85” before he launched the Iran war.
And “Food prices and almost every other item are rapidly going down.”
And “Over $20 trillion” has been invested in the United States during his
second term.
And, the topper, “Every single promise I made you as a candidate, I've
delivered on. I've delivered on everything.”
Nothing to see here but the loudmouth at the end of the bar, getting louder and
more grandiose as the clock counts down to closing time. And while a few
waterheads and barflies who he's been promising free drinks all night are
still hanging in there, listening attentively, the rest of the bar has mostly
cleared out.
If Mussolini had given a long, rambling speech in February of 1945 about his
amazing successes, awesome, single-handed victories and Italy's bright future,
the tone of it would have sounded a lot like this.
You might remember that eventually, Mussolini tried to flee disguised as a German soldier.
Didn't work out.
So we probably all should be keeping a weather eye out
for an orange slob, dressed in a "Free Mumia" tee-shirt and blond wig, trying
to sneak away in a catering truck with a sack full of cash and his FIFA "peace
prize".
If you don't know what "Harold...call me" signified in 2006, ask your older
sibling.
20 years ago, the Republican party was every bit as racist as they are
today. Leadership just hid it better and, with the assistance of the
legacy media, managed to get away with it. Along with all the other
poisonous tools in the GOP toolbox -- Conservative fundamentalism, xenophobia,
homophobia, anti-choice, anti-civil rights and so on -- racism won elections
for terrible people with terrible ideas. Or, to put it more clearly,
without all the hate and paranoia that Conservative media kept whipping up on
the Right, not only could Republicans never win another election, there was a
decent chance in some places they'd fall to third place behind a Green
candidate, or a Libertarian candidate, or an out-and-proud racist.
See, the Republican party was and is every bit a coalition party -- a "Big
Tent" party -- as the Democrats, but the Republican coalition is made up of
the worst people in America, held together by a common, generalized hatred of
the government (except when they run it), a whole assload of whiny grievances,
and anything that smacks of "the Left". And "the Left" is anyone Hate
Radio and Fox News tells them is "the Left" on any given day.
That mob of bigots and imbeciles is what Republicans seeking higher office
have to work with, which is why they spent huge amounts of cash hiring
scumbags like Rick Wilson. To do the filthy job of appealing to the mob
by proxy so as not to get their hands dirty. And the key to this shell
game was to keep the bigots and imbeciles corralled within the Fox News/Hate
Radio ecosystem (and never let them within a mile of the legacy media) while
trotting the candidate out on safe spaces like Meet the Press or
Face the Nation where they could mouth all the usual platitudes and
never get any push-back.
In 2006, the problems began when the streams got crossed, because back then it
was still possible for Democrats to run on calling out Republican racism and
corruption when it broke into the open --
-- and have that put the Republican candidate on the back foot for the rest of
the campaign.
That, and this... (VoteVets ad):
Democrats could run on being unabashedly in favor of medical science:
And the premier Hate Radio scumbag (and de facto leader of the Republican Party)
reacted exactly as you would expect:
In Purple-but-trending-Red-fast Montana, Democrat Jon Tester could squeak
out a narrow victory over incumbent Republican Senator Conrad Burns by a
margin of 0.87%, or 3,562 votes out of 406,505 cast. Tester ran as
"that neighbor you trust even if your politics are different" and was aided
by the wider "Blue Wave" trend across the country.
Then along came Barack Obama, and the bigots and imbeciles were no longer
content to sit in the cheap seats, hoping that whatever mug the party bosses
offered them would make good on all the promises that Hate Radio was
making.
They kicked down the doors and came storming out into the public square, and
the reaction from the legacy media was to squeeze their eyes shut even
harder and pretend that none of this was what it very much was.
First, they rolled out their oldest and most reliable deflection tactic:
Both Sides Do It. What follows are from the July 25, 2010 Meet the
Press transcript, interspersed with some remarks of my own made at the time.
DAVID BROOKS:
So we were trained in a certain way. A different sort of media, squabble
culture, has come up on the left and the right, which, which
decides their--they build audience by destroying other people. They don't
know anything about policy, they don't care about government, they just
want that squabble.
See! See! The Right AND the Left do it!
The Right AND the Left “don't know anything about policy". The Right AND the
Left
“don't care about government”.
Not one statistic.
Not one correlation.
Not one fact.
Not one blurry security camera video of what might have been the shadow cast
by a fact.
Not one artist's sketch of what some witnesses believe a fact might look
like.
Not one of fact's neighbors telling the evening news that "Fact was kind of
a loner who kept pretty much to himself."
Nothing.
To his credit, E.J. Dionne tried hard to push back:
DIONNE:
Look, there is a concerted conservative campaign on part of the movement,
a minority of the movement…to use race to split people. Glenn Beck says
Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." J. Christian Adams, a
Republican activist pushing this new Black Panthers story, says the Obama
Justice Department is motivated by a "lawless hostility toward equal
enforcement of the law." Now, there are people playing with this racial
politics out there. I am not saying, the NAACP certainly isn't saying that
this is the whole conservative movement…or most of the conservative
movement or most of the tea party. But it's a part of this strategy, and
people should condemn it.
Got that? Dionne shows up with actual, representative quotes from real
Conservative leaders with real media and electoral power.
So how will that clear, well-documented and devastating argument be rebutted
by America's Most Reasonable of Conservatives? He who took the trouble to
enunciate “If Your Mother Says She Loves You, Check it Out” as his Golden
Journalistic Rule just moments ago?
Exactly how you'd think:
BROOKS:
There are liberals who call conservatives racist as a matter of tactics,
too.
Really? Who? Name some. Quote some.
Nothing. Just...both sides.
Then comes deflector tactic number two: the anecdotal and
highly-suspect "eyewitness account".
BROOKS:
Listen, I was out jogging. You wouldn't know it to look at me. I was out
jogging in the mall. I was at a tea party rally, tea party rally. Also
there was a group called the back--Black Family Reunion, celebration of
African-American culture. I watched these two groups intermingle, sitting
at the same table, eating, watching concerts together. Among most of those
people there was a fantastic atmosphere of just getting along on a, on a
warm Sunday afternoon.
Got that? David Fucking Brooks -- easily the most ubiquitous "Reasonable"
Conservative spokesman in America -- absolutely will not touch that question
[of racism in Republican politics] with a 10-foot Gallup Poll. Instead, he
airily asserts that, somehow, Glenn Beck and J. Christian Adams don’t
methodically play on the fear, racism and paranoia of millions of Pig People
for personal and partisan gain...because he saw some people getting along on
the Mall in D.C. once.
Thus ends our brief excursion to 2010 and the wild lengths the legacy media
was willing to go to to pretend the GOP was something which it very much was
not.
So what changed? Meet the Press is still garbage. Brooks and his
dozens of imitators are still overpaid hacks peddling Both Sides
claptrap. Hate Radio and Fox News are still what they always
were. So what changed?
What changed was the Republican party's approach to the concept of
"shame".
Conservatism was built on an ethos of never, ever apologizing for
anything. As I've mentioned many times on this blog, on the
Right, the only acceptable way to admit you were wrong is to cop to not
being conservative enough. Republican policies that go horrendously
awry are never the problem -- the problem is always that they weren't
implemented aggressively enough. Remember, Conservatism can never
fail, it can only be failed.
And inevitably, this Conservative culture of ignorant, belligerent certitude
ran smack into Republican policies and rhetoric for which any decent human
being should feel ashamed. So, faced with a choice between chucking
the policies and the hateful, racist rhetoric, or cauterizing their
conscience and killing any sense of shame...the base, in their millions,
chose the latter.
They had already been thoroughly humiliated when their fanatical allegiance
to George W. Bush very publicly blew up in their faces. Pile on top of
that the intolerable existence of a Black Democrat in the White House and
they were ready to follow any demagogue, no matter how shitty and corrupt he
may be, to the ends of the Earth as long as he promised them they would not
only never again have to be ashamed of the cowardly racist morons that they
were, but under his regime, their bigotry and stupidity would be celebrated
so hard that the Liberal tears would never end.
And that is how +70 million Americans came to finally, happily divest
themselves of the virtues that make for a decent human being.
And since that was their choice -- and we believe in personal choice -- in
doing so they have relieved us of any obligation to treat them as decent
human beings.
They have worked hard over the course of many decades to make themselves
contemptible.
The least we can do is honor their decision by treating them with
contempt.
And in just this past week, we find four prime examples from prominent
recently-former Republicans looking back past the "Danger! Do Not
Enter!" Forbidden Zone barrier of 2016 and noting just how long ago it should
have been clear to anyone that they were building a Doomsday machine with no
off switch.
Tim Miller knew. And, looking back, it's clear now that Scarborough
either knew it and won't admit it, or didn't know it because he's a fucking
lump.
And credit to Miller for cutting Squint off at the "McCain wuz a maverick"
pass. Yeah, sure, but he tapped Sarah Palin as his VP, because Palin was
the one that got the base to stand up and salute.
... Here's what Rich Lowry had to say: "Palin too projects through the
screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when
Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch
and said, 'Hey, I think she just winked at me.' And her smile. By the
end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it
was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and
ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that
can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man,
she's got it."
Post-debate, Hannity gushed about how attractive Palin was. At Palin
rallies, you can buy buttons about how "hot" their VP is, etc. And yet
they called Biden sexist for saying Palin was more attractive than he
was? They called Campbell Brown sexist for wanting an example of Sarah
Palin's foreign policy experience.
Palin employed sex appeal in the debate in a display unbecoming of a
44-year-old mother of 5 and a candidate for one of the highest offices
in the land. As a woman, I was embarrassed and sickened. And that is why
republicans think she "won" the debate--because she employed cutesiness,
recited all her rehearsed lines, and didn't answer any questions she did
not want to ask. Often, she just out-and-out lied...
And let's be clear: McCain knew exactly what he was doing when he took on
Palin. It was political Viagra for a limp campaign, and came from the
same, clear-eyed, ruthless understanding of exactly who the GOP base really
was, that his visit to Liberty University to kiss Jerry Falwell's poxy ass
came from. The same Jerry Falwell that McCain had publicly slammed
as an "agent of intolerance" who represented the "outer reaches of American
politics" just eight years earlier.
You will also remember that reliable Conservative stalactite Kathleen Parker,
had her bump-it blown back by the response from her loyal readers to her
column suggest that Palin wasn't up to snuff. From the long-gone
Firedoglake:
Kathleen Parker Shocked To Find Her Party’s Full Of “Vicious”,
“Threatening”, Delusional Wingnuts
By: Blue Texan Wednesday October 1, 2008
Parker, who
last week called for Palin to step down, now finds herself the target of a
Wingnut Two Minutes of Hate.
"Allow me to introduce myself. I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother
should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I
should "off" myself. ... "After 20 years of column writing, I'm familiar with angry mail. But the
past few days have produced responses of a different order. Not just
angry, but vicious and threatening.
Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member,
who has been observing American politics from the trenches:
"These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and
Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race
baiter, should all be lined up and shot."
Suck it up, Kathleen. You've been tossing red meat to a caged rabid animal for
two decades. No sympathy when it finally bites you. Now, she whines:
...when we decide that a person is a traitor and should die for having an
opinion different from one's own, we cross into territory that puts all
freedoms at risk.
I'm truly speechless.
You will also remember The Most Ubiquitous Conservative Writer in the Solar
System, wiping his brow in relief, because now that Palin was fading like a
bad dream, everything was looking great for the future of David Brooks'
Republican party. This was mere months before Donald Trump oozed down
the escalator. And you all know what happened next.
Next up we have Stuart Steven saying straight out that he was wrong, wrong,
wrong about the Republican party. That all the terrible things that
"people" [he means "Liberals" but still can't say it] said about the GOP
turned out to be true.
Then we have Stevens' fellow Lincoln Square colleague, Rick Wilson, (get
better colleagues, Stuart) who was flown to England and feted by the UK's
Quiet Riot podcast so that he could drink their mead, eat their bully beef and
lie about his origin story. From the podcast:
I've done this longer than any other Republican leader. I did
this starting in 2015. I was the founder of the never Trump movement.
Yeah. I've run the Lincoln Project now. Over 10 years now.
Like hell he was. The "Never Trump" name and concept were just a
hashtag on Twitter in early 2016 that cropped up during the Republican
presidential primaries. Then, thanks to glowing, round-the-clock
coverage by MSNBC, goofs like Charlie Sykes and Bill Kristol became the public
face of a tiny number of Republicans who were freaked out that Wingnut
Judgement Day might finally be just around the corner.
And what Wilson is trying to pass off as founding "Never Trump" in 2015 was just
him doing normal, well-paid, campaign dirty work for a candidate. He
worked for the Rubio campaign until Rubio flamed out, then hired himself out
to the Cruz campaign. Which is no more the "founding" of anything than working for Santorum in 2012 was founding a "Never Romney"
movement.
Also, fun fact, the Lincoln Project was actually founded in December of 2019
when Conservative grifters figured out that credulous Liberals would throw
huge bags of money at any former Republican who would produce slick "Trump is
an asshole" ads that never budged a single vote but was political PornHub to
those credulous Liberals. Founded by George Conway,
Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, Rick Wilson, Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow, Reed
Galen, and Mike Madrid, and two years later had
all but collapsed
due to
sexual and financial scandal.
Inside the Lincoln Project’s ‘toxic’ workplace
Interviews with nearly two dozen people with knowledge of the group’s
workings reveal a culture of infighting, sexist language and disparate
treatment.
But inside Wilson's shameful flim-flamming of our British friends, we find a
grain of truth.
After a lengthy disquisition in which Wilson shows that he knew perfectly well
that going into the 2016 election, a huge percentage of the Republican base
was motivated by an unhinged, racist hatred of Barack Obama, one of the Brits
say, well yeah, but hadn't this sort of thing been going on for decades?
What about Nixon's Southern Strategy? And that 30% who hate Obama isn't
enough, is it? They have to be amped up. That hatred has to be used by
someone.
Great point. Wilson replies...
Wilson: Listen, the old theory of the Republican party was we knew that 25%
of the base, if I may put it as bluntly as it used to be said in the room,
were cousin fucking weirdos.
Big laugh
Wilson: And you brought them out of the closet every four years. You hosed
them off and you sent them off to vote.
We did not want to talk about those people. We did not particularly like
those people. I come from... you can call it the RINOS or the country club
Republicans or whatever you want to call it, but we were the guys who could
win races and the weirdos could not win races, but that coalition, they were
a part of it. Now they're in the government.
You may have noticed two different flavors of lies here.
First, it was never 25%. As Stuart Stevens now effectively admits, it
was much higher than that. Probably closer to 70% or 80%.
Second, "everyone in the room" means that everyone in Republican leadership knew damn well what kind of dangerous nutcases these people were.
And third, as to this "we were the guys who could win races" claptrap? A lie by
omission. The only way your country club Republicans clients could win
anything was by flattering and pandering to "cousin fuckers". By
ratcheting up their hatred every election cycle, and using Fox News and Hate
Radio to keep them at a full boil in between. Without the "cousin
fuckers" you'd never have won fucking thing and eventually they figured it
out.
And do you know who was jumping up and down, shouting warnings about
Frankenstein, and the Golem and the Sorcerer's apprentice while Rick Wilson
was getting rich whipping the cousin fuckers into a frenzy? From me
in 2005 in a "Both Sides Do It" column by (who else?) David Brooks --
...I’ll name 15 leaders of your party who are intolerant,
hate-mongering theocrats. Superstition-touting extremists. Your opinion
leaders. The ones who get out the vote for your candidates and without which
you cocksucking Cocktail Party Republicans would never win anything.
-- which is a sentiment I've repeated in dozens-- probably hundreds -- of
posts ever since.
The sad truth is that Hate is the Right's Ring of Power. They're never going
to give it up, because they know the minute they do -- the minute they're no
longer allowed to pretend that Liberals are evil, freedom-hating
fifth-columnist monsters who are dragging America into a Marxist abyss on
the secret orders of our Kenyan Usurper Overlord -- their whole ideology
would implode...
...they would never win another election...
...and tens of thousands of powerful, well-remunerated insiders from Rush
Limbaugh to David Gregory who depend on that hate for their daily bread
would suddenly have to go out and find honest work.
To be clear, it wasn't just me. I was one voice in a great chorus of
Liberal writers and bloggers who were all sounding the alarm. That to
stay in power, the leaders of the GOP were now explicitly bending the knee to
Hate Radio and Fox News because their dependence on Conservative media to get
out the vote and drum up contributions was now complete.
To anyone paying attention with honest eyes, this was all clear as day when, in 2009, the head
of the RNC had to go groveling to Rush Limbaugh to beg forgiveness for saying
[checks notes]
true things about that despicable scumbag.
Steele to Rush: I'm sorry
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says he has reached
out to Rush Limbaugh to tell him he meant no offense when he referred to
the popular conservative radio host as an “entertainer” whose show can be
“incendiary.”
“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush
Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit
inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or
his leadership.”
But the louder we Liberals sounded the alarm, the louder we were denounced as
alarmist crackpots. And this went on and on right up until Trump showed
up and it had become all far too late to stop what was about to happen.
What happened next?
First, media corporations -- which were overstuffed with savvy pundits who had
assured the public that the GOP was fine and healthy and this sort of thing
could never happen -- began scrambling for talking heads who could explain the
inexplicable.
And, second, they wanted nothing to do with all those Liberal alarmist
crackpots who, as it turned out, had been right all along. Because those
Liberal alarmist crackpots tended to arrive with receipts. And those
receipts made their vastly overpaid savvy pundits look like idiots.
Because we can't have that.
The much better alternative was to platform the shit out of a handful of
now-unemployed Republican comms people who you all already knew, and who were
only too happy to spin the story of the Rise of Trump in a much more savvy
pundit-friendly way. That this was some kinda Black Swan event. A
fever that was sure to break sooner or later. A glitch in the Matrix
that no one could have seen coming and for which certainly none of them were
responsible.
But you know, come to think of it, you know who might be kinda responsible for
a big chunk of the horrors that were now raining down on their heads?
Those damn Liberals. Because, just maybe, it was them saying the
Republican party was a racist party... made so many Republican voters mad
that, well, they went ahead and started doing racism just to say "Fuck you!"
to the Liberals.
Which was a theory floated by Charlie Sykes and a number of his guests when he
was the public voice of The Bulwark... as the Bulwark was being relentlessly
promoted by CNN and MSNBC the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Because for hardwired right-wing goons like Sykes, regardless of the
circumstances, somehow, some way, the Left will always turn out to have been
the villains.
They either knew they were playing with something dangerous and radioactive,
or they were willfully blind to it. And as the toxicity of the GOP base
spiked higher and higher year after year, the more they were either willing to
go along with it for the money and the influence, or the tighter they had to
squeeze their eyes shut to what was happening all around them.
And once it all fell apart, then came the mad scramble for...believe it or
not...credit. Listen to any Never Trump podcast and within minutes you'll
hear them boasting about how they were warning Republicans about Trump in 2016
or 2017 or 2018 and woe betide the fools who did not listen. You will
hear them rolling their eyes at how all those morons called them [checks
notes] alarmist crackpots back in 2018 or 2019 or 2020. And now look at
'em!
Their whole marketing campaign is based on the single premise that they saw
this coming when no one else did, which is why you should send them money and
heed their warning that the Democratic party needs to become more
Centrist. And buy their book!
Now that they have successfully colonized what little was left of the "Liberal
media" it's safe for them to mention, often in passing, that, sure, they knew
the base was nuts. That when your job is to get Republican elected, and
bigots, imbeciles and Fundies are all what you have to work with, then that's
what you work with.
Too bad. So sad. Also buy my book.
No wonder they hate Liberal bloggers and podcasters. No wonder they
continue to pretend we never existed. We fuck up their entire business
model.
So, while we know we'll never be invited to cross the pond and feted by the
Brits, as we eat their prime joints of venison and partridge and drink their
Taylor Fladgate port and tell the true tale of what really happened, today I
felt compelled to set the "Who, What, When" record straight once again.
Mr. President Trump, sir, I swear, the Illinois Republican party has lost its
damn mind. Pardon the swear but I'm just SO MAD at them. Their about
to go into battle with the forces of EVIL and COMMUNISM right here in the Lard
of Lincoln and I just heard there going to do it without there GREATEST
GENERAL.
At a time when the Dumocraps have sew much MONEY, they told the papers they're
going to do it without you. This is insane!!! There going into the
lions den without the LORD on there side!!!
Instead we here this sort of thing in the papers.
"Bailey and his Republican colleagues mostly steered clear of mentioning
the president"
and
"The president of the United States has nothing to do with the problems
that Illinois is having right now."
Sir, they wont even say your name!
I dont even no what to say. These are people I sent money to, and
voted for, LOYALLY, and there going into the elections turning there backs
on the GREATEST LEADER in American HISTORY. The man I voted for SIX
TIMES. The man who is saving this country form the plots and schemes
of the RADICAL LEFT COMMUNISTS.
I swear, the only LOYAL one of them is the amazing Mary Miller who PROUDLY
shows a picture of you and her on the front page of her web site.
HELP!!!
These fools need you HEAR as soon as possible to get them back in line. They
need to see that BIG BEAUTIFUL plane landing hear, and you coming down the
steps, like the KING that you are, and reminding these clowns that there
about to get BALLROOM AND The OVAL OFFICE back in better shape than
ever. And dont forget the ARCH!!
You need to remind them that we have already won the
war against the muslem villains of IRAN and the STRAITS are ours
now!!! That no one is better at ECONOMY than you -- just look at the
3.2 billion dollars you made in just the last 2 years!!! If ANYONE
knows more about making money, I've never met them.
Mr. President Trump, sir, PLEASE come as quick as you can and save us from
these stupids before ITS TOO LATE!!!
This was a lead story in The New York Times today.
The short answer, which is actually rather long, is "No".
This is roughly the 12,258th "think piece" on progressive outsiders winning a
few Democratic primaries. It's nearing the "But Her Emails" saturation point. And these articles tend to come either in one of
two flavors.
First, Dire!Warnings! cursing Democrats for risking dooming us all by not
becoming GOP Lite in order to chase the votes of disaffected
Republicans. These articles tend to come from (small wonder)
recently-former Republicans whose "advice" to Democrats has always been --
rain or shine -- to keep moving rightward, ever-rightward -- in pursuit of an
imaginary Center which is always, somehow, slipping over the horizon.
Second, there are the breathless articles touting how a few members of the
Democratic majority (do the math) are fighting back hard against a small
number of progressives with whom they have no intention of sharing even a
small corner of the Democrat's Big Tent. Mind you, they had no fucking
problem when it came to sharing our Big Tent with ghouls like Liz Cheney
who spent their entire career slandering Democrats in the most monstrous
language imaginable...but us New Deal Democrats get nothing but the stink-eye
and a boot in the ass from the gatekeepers who own the velvet ropes.
Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left
One moderate group says the progressive wins are “deeply troubling” and
is planning a $15 million effort against democratic socialism.
The embattled establishment of the Democratic Party searched furiously
for a political reset after Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s progressive victory in
Michigan handed the party’s long-dominant moderate wing its most painful
defeat of the year.
Some strategists urgently pressed to adopt a sharper edge to tap into
the fury among Democratic voters that was felling its centrist
candidates. Others wanted to attack democratic socialism, undercutting a
budding movement now set to have far more than a toehold in the next
Congress. Yet another young democratic socialist ousted an incumbent
congressman in Detroit on Tuesday.
“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” said Jonathan
Cowan, the president of Third Way, a leading centrist Democratic group,
revealing to The New York Times a new $15 million effort between now and
2028 to discredit democratic socialism.
It will not shock you to learn that Third Way gets its money from Big
Pharma, Big Banks, Big Tech as well as outfits such as ExxonMobil and
various health insurance companies. All the usual suspects who would
rather see a MAGA flag flying over this country forever than share the
Democratic Party with actual progressives.
Now, it is rumored that this “Better Dead than Al-Sayed” gang of Regressives
is led by a shadowy figure known only as “David Fucking Brooks”. And
two Fridays ago Mr. Brooks left his Bethesda Maryland compound just long
enough to appear on the PBS News Hour where, practically in tears, he said
this.
Voters in almost every presidential race, I think, in every one of my
lifetime, have always said, who's closer to the center? And they vote
for that person. Trump seemed closer to the center than Kamala Harris.
Biden seemed closer to the center than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump over the last few years has run away from the center. He
is handing this election to the Democrats. All they have to do is sit
there and be couch potatoes. They do not have to support Medicare for
all so that Republicans can go to them and say, you like your private
health insurance? Mr. El-Sayed's going to take that away from you.
That is politically bad news, and that's only one of the issues on
which the party is moving further and further away from the center, and
therefore…
At which point, Brooks co-panelist, Jonathan Capehart, reached his limit of
politely tolerating this old fraud's endless bullshit and interrupted him
with:
I mean, I disagree that the Democratic Party writ large is moving far
away from the center, and that a few races won by Democratic Socialists
or people who identify as progressive, like Dr. El-Sayed, that -- to me,
I just don't -- I do not see it that you can put this -- make this
blanket argument that the Democratic Party is running far left.
That was the signal for the host – Amna Nawaz – to do the PBS thing of
quickly moving on to the next topic at the slightest sign of conflict.
However, since I do not abide by PBS rules, I will just add that it is a
matter of public record that David Brooks has never had any workable
definition of "the center" beyond:
"What I, David Brooks, happen to think at this moment".
It is also irrefutably true that he has spent the past quarter-century
publicly demonstrating that he knows fuck-all about what "voters" think
about anything.
And of course Third Way is not a solo act. They have plenty of fellow
travelers who are horrified that a few Democratic candidates have won their
primaries in ways that Third Way, LLC does not approve
of.
Centrist Democrats launch new pledge: ‘We are capitalist, not
socialist’
Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024
are launching a pledge for their party’s candidates they hope will act
as a rallying cry for centrists, calling for a “politics of persuasion
over purity” and declaring that “we are capitalist, not socialist.”
The pledge is a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as
democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.
Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California) said
they will unveil the pledge Wednesday afternoon at the center-left
conference WelcomeFest, and hope to get candidates up and down the
ballot to join them in signing it.
Why Is the Political Establishment So Afraid of Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New
Deal?
So, the short answer is "No".
The longer answer -- the reason why the answer is "No" -- is
uglier and deeply embarrassing to the legacy media, which is why you will
never hear them speak of it. Because it has to do with what the "Tea
Party" actually was.
For several years I bored you all silly with post after post after post about
how the Tea Party was not some new, insurgent outsider group who were storming
the barricades of the moribund Republican party. That they
were the Republican party: the same ignorant, racist,
shoutycrackers Republican base they'd always been, but now that the Bush
administration had shit the bed hard enough to crack the Earth's mantle, they
needed their own,
incredibly inconvenient past to go away so they could get on with the important work of having a full-on,
eight-year-long, screaming mental breakdown over the election of a Black man
as president.
And they accomplished this by A) Putting on stupid hats, waving Gadsden flags,
and swearing that they'd never even heard of George W. Bush and, B) Getting
the legacy media to go along with this massive fraud, which the legacy media
was only too eager to do, given their own despicable complicity with the
various crimes and treasons of the Bush administration.
And it worked. And, as is our eternal fate, the only people willing to straight-up call bullshit on the whole scam were
usdirty, disreputable Liberalswho no one listens to anyway.
By early 2010, it was absolutely clear to anyone who wasn't a Republican
operative or enabler that the "tea party" was emphatically not a
spontaneous movement of concerned citizens with no previous political
affiliation, but was just one more, GOP-manufactured re-branding scam.
Ed Kilgore
wrote about it, as did Max Blumenthal (pay-walled site) and
E.J. Dionne. There was also this
July, 2010 Gallup poll that concluded:
The Tea Party movement has been the focus of media attention during the past
year, and has had some success in getting its preferred candidates nominated
or elected in the 2009-2010 election cycle. However, as Gallup has pointed
out,
those who describe themselves as Tea Party supporters are in many ways
indistinguishable from, and largely a subset of, Republican identifiers
more generally.
But here's the thing. There was absolutely no stomach in the Beltway
media for reporting the obvious fact that these idiots in tricorner hats were
nothing but the same old Republican wingnuts who, as
one wag put it in 2009...
Like German soldiers after the fall of Berlin...have stopped running away
from the catastrophe they created only long enough to burn their uniforms.
No, no, no! Definitely could not say that because that
would violate the post-Dubya Generally Accepted Beltway Narrative that all
problem are caused by "the extremes on Both Sides" and in the middle there is
a "vital Center" full of millions of political virgins who had been moved by
the noblest of motives to abandon their neutrality and take to the streets.
And to this very day, that lie continues to be one of those "Zombie lies",
which everyone sorta knows is nonsense -- like Tax Cuts Pay For Themselves --
but has so completely passed into the realm of myth that the legacy media
keeps right on pretending that it was actually true.
In fact, the Beltway's lockout of the truth was so secure that by 2016 Joe
Scarborough could finally come right out and say
of course the whole "tea party" thing was bullshit and of course we all
knew it and know with perfect certainty that there would be consequences (h/t
Heather at Crooks & Liars)
And that's the longer answer. The Democrats are not facing their own "Tea
Party" moment because There. Was. No. Tea. Party. There was just the
Bush-Off Machine
goin' like 60 to rebrand the Republican base.
What corporate Democrats are facing are ... New Deal Democrats. People
who revere FDR as the man who crushed fascism, and whose programs built the
Middle Class, strengthened the union movement and helped insure that old age
and poverty weren't a death sentence.
People who remember that FDR was called a commie by the Republican party and
the Republican media every inch of the way.
People who look at the mess the establishment has made of this country and
think the Middle Class could used some help, the aged, infirm and poor could
use some help, that good health care should be affordable, that unions are a
good thing, that robber barons and Republican looters are bleeding us dry and,
most importantly, for any of that to happen, fascism in America must be
discredited and destroyed, root and branch.
As you probably already know, Donald Trump has turned the USS Abraham Lincoln
into a floating gulag for any sailor unlucky
enough to be stationed there:
Trump says record USS Lincoln deployment 'not nearly long enough'
President Donald Trump reacted to reports of poor conditions on the USS
Abraham Lincoln on Friday, claiming that families of service members are
"not" concerned and saying that the vessel hasn't been deployed for
"nearly long enough."
The president also confirmed that a new aircraft carrier is headed to the
Middle East to replace it during a very brief gaggle with reporters on the
tarmac at Joint Base Andrews Friday afternoon.
The aircraft carrier's movements come amid reports of mental health and
supply issues aboard the USS Lincoln, whose long deployment to the Middle
East in support of the Iran war includes a record-setting time at sea of
more than 200 days. Navy leaders, including the Navy's acting Secretary
Hung Cao, last week held a heated town hall for families of the USS
Lincoln who had raised concerns about the conditions on the ship.
Tapper: What is your husband saying about conditions on the ship? Wife of
Service Member Aboard USS Lincoln: My husband is appalled at the
conditions on this ship. This is not his first deployment. And he is
saying that it is the worst deployment that he's ever been on. His
shipmates say the same.
This should come as no surprise, as Donald Trump has never given a shit about
the United States military except as a toy for him to play with. Trump
also thinks anyone willing to risk their life for their country is
a "sucker" and a "loser".
John Kelly confirms Trump privately disparaged U.S. service members and
veterans
Trump called fallen soldiers "suckers” and "losers" during his presidency,
according to a 2020 report in The Atlantic.
But do you remember the fate of the USS Abraham Lincoln during the last
Republican administration that lied us into a disastrous war in the Middle
East and then catastrophically botched it?
It was in all the papers.
That would be Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech, delivered on
May 1, 2003.
And that, just two days before that speech, the cover story of the now-defunct
Weekly Standard featured David Brooks declaring that The War Was Over!
Yay!
The Good Guys had triumphed! Neoconservatism had been vindicated. And it
was time for the resistance to crawl under a nearby porch and quietly die, or
dry up and blow away or dissolve into laughably delusional
absurdism.
Pieces of Mr. Brooks' radioactively reckless and vindictive claptrap can be
found
here.
As you literati know, maritime myth and literature are full of stories about
ships "sailing under a doom." The story of Jonah from the Bible.
The tale of the Mary Celeste. The legend of the Flying Dutchman.
Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Poe's
MS. Found in a Bottle. Melville's Moby Dick. And so
on.
Now I'm not saying that the USS Abraham Lincoln is cursed. I am saying
that, if it is cursed, we definitely know why. And that, out of
an abundance of caution, it wouldn't hurt to burn some sage, flick a little
holy water around, ring some church bells, and never, ever put another
Republican in the White House.
As most of you know, on this blog, on our podcast, and on stage and screen, I
have long maintained a particular theory about how the Republican Party got itself
into this mess.
They kept two sets of books.
The first set of books was for the rubes, the bigots and the chucklefucks, who
make up the Republican base. And those books were full of absolute nonsense.
Liberals are baby killing, gun-grabbing Commie demons. Trans people are coming
for your children. Immigrants are rapists. Tax cuts pay for themselves. The
government is always the problem. Whatever scary story or conspiracy theory
would keep people angry, frightened, and voting Republican -- that was what
went into the first set of books.
And there is no bottom to it. No limit. The Republican base will believe
whatever they were told, because the Republican Party spent decades training
them to believe it. But the point of those lies was never really
governing. The point was power.
The racism, the conspiracy theories, the fear, the culture-war panic -- those
were the keys that unlocked the public treasury. The Republican Party could
use Fox News, talk radio, and an entire conservative media ecosystem to push
those buttons whenever they needed votes. Then, once they were in power, they
could do what they actually wanted to do: deregulate everything, cut taxes for
wealthy people, and serve their donors.
That was the first set of books.
Ah, but to keep the country from complete collapse, Republican leadership had
to keep a second set of books. This one contained reality.
That was the book with the spreadsheets and the data and the boring stuff: how
economies work, how wars work, how logistics work, how science works, how
diseases work. It was the book you actually need if you are trying to run a
country.
And for decades, the Republican Party had a strange arrangement. They would
loudly scream about all the imaginary horrors from the first set of books to
get the base furious enough to elect them, then quietly operate from the
second set of books once they were in office.
They would tell their voters that they were going to deport everyone they
hated, crush their enemies, restore some imaginary golden age, and punish all
the people they had been taught to fear.
Then they would get into office and discover that reality existed. They never
delivered the fantasy. They never actually purged the country of all the
people they demonized. They never delivered the revenge fantasy they sold
their voters. OMG, they even -- gasp! -- cut deals with those baby
killing, gun-grabbing Commie demon Dems!
And as long as the Republican elites and donors controlled the party, the
arrangement sorta worked.
Then along came Trump, and the important thing Trump changed was not the
Republican Party's nature. It was that he simply burned the second set of
books. Trump decided he didn't need the reality-based ledger anymore. He
operated entirely from the first set of books.
He told the base: Yes. I really am going to give you everything you dreamed
of. I will punish the people you hate. I will hurt the people you fear. I will
break the rules for you. And in exchange, you will let me loot the place.
That was the deal. And it still is.
The Republican Party had always used fantasy as a political weapon. Trump
simply stopped pretending that reality existed at all. He looked at the
spreadsheets, the facts, the experts, the institutions, and basically said:
screw it. We don't need any of that.
It was the same kind of thinking that led people throughout history into
disasters: don't worry about the details, don't worry about logistics, don't
worry about reality. We can definitely invade the Soviet Union and
conquer it in two, three months tops because we're awesome! We always
win because we are awesome!
A triumph of the will, if you will. And when the Dear Leader lives in
that mindspace, facts are no longer an issue.
This was from me in September of 2016 -- years before anything called "Never Trump", and decades before Never Trumpers sloooooly and grudgingly began to accept that the real problem with the Republican party is that it's full of Republicans.
Once you start to notice that a depressingly large number of our fellow
citizens have become reprogrammable Orwellian meat-puppets, the rise of
Trump is not hard to understand at all.
And this was the citation from Orwell I was using:
"Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There
is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation -- anything. I
could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wish to. I do not wish
to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those 19th
century ideas about the laws of Nature. We make the laws of
Nature." -- O'Brien, 1984
And this is how Republicans operate all the time now. Everywhere.
Except there are still places where reality has a way of forcing itself back
into the room.
The courtroom is one of those places.
Outside the courtroom, operating from the first set of books, Republicans can
and do say anything. They can invent stories about reflecting pools, election
fraud, conspiracies, whatever. They can feed the base whatever toxic slop they
want because nobody is forcing them to prove it.
But eventually somebody crosses the border between fantasy and reality.
That's what happened to Jeanine Pirro.
When she is on television, playing to the audience, she can live in the first
set of books. She can repeat whatever bullshit the audience wants to hear.
But when she walks into a courtroom, she has crossed into domain of the second
set of books.
Here, there are rules. Here, tangible evidence matters. In fact, it's pretty much all
that matters. In here there are questions that can't be dodged, wriggled out of, or
dismissed with a demeaning insult. And most importantly, in here there
are now consequences for lying.
And once you've crossed the membrane between the domain where Boxwine Pirro spends most of her time, where Doug Burgam and
Donald Trump can lie all they want to because, as long as they keep feeding
the bigots and imbeciles the lies they want to hear, they are rewarded for
lying...
...and the domain of the courtroom, suddenly all the things that worked
outside the courtroom don't work anymore.
In here lawyers and judges get to demand that you show actual evidence.
Where are the photographs? Where are the witnesses? Where is the chain
of proof ? In here, Trump regime's lies and bluster evaporate like fairy gold once the enchantment has been broken.
This stupid Reflecting Pool fuck-up is the Decline and Fall of the Republican Party in microcosm, because reality is the wall Republicans keep slamming into. They have spent decades
building a political machine fueled entirely by bullshit from a fantasy
universe where nothing has to be proven. Because the base doesn't want
facts. They hate facts. They demand the story they were promised
-- the toxic slop they now crave like crack, which is why the people who feed
them that slop keep getting elected.
But science doesn't work that way. The law doesn't work that way.
Reality doesn't work that way.
We saw it with COVID. The refusal to respect facts and science had real
consequences. People died because this administration and its allies chose
political fantasy over reality. And now we see the same pattern in something as small and ridiculous as the
reflecting pool fiasco.
Trump made a bet that he could hire one of his mobbed up stooges to slap some paint, declare victory,
and everyone would accept the story. Which is pretty much his same "strategy" in Iran. When reality pushed back, the response was exactly what it has always been. Find a scapegoat. Find a boogeyman. Blame somebody else.
On questions about depleted munitions, Team Trump struggles to keep its story straight
To recap, the depleted stockpiles aren’t depleted, though they could be better, and everyone should blame Joe Biden.
But eventually you run into the problem that every authoritarian movement runs
into. There are still places where facts matter. There are still institutions where you cannot simply scream louder than
everyone else and reality goes away.
Which is why they keep losing. The more you force them into arenas where they have to answer questions,
produce evidence, and defend their claims, the more exposed they become.
Because their alternative to reality is always the same thing: Scream louder. Blame immigrants. Blame Muslims. Blame liberals. Blame trans kids. Blame anyone except themselves and their catastrophic decisions and failure. And the louder they scream, the clearer it becomes that they have nothing
else.
Look at the Republican campaign ads flooding the country right now. They have
money. They have the machinery. But what do they have to run on? Trump has wrecked the economy. He has driven up prices. His tariffs have hurt
consumers. His foreign policy disasters are piling up.
So what is left?
The first set of books. Fear. Rage. Racism. Resentment.
Because that is all they have.
It cracks me up with I see headlines from anonymous sources about Republicans getting nervous about Trump
hurting their chances in the midterms. Hey dum-dums, what it is about ""Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" that you do not understand? Because that, sure as shit, is what you signed up for.
Trump is the Republican Party. Trump is the movement. You no longer have an independent identity separate from him. You are not partners, or pals, or peers. You are a tool he can use and discard. You are mere cells in the body of Trumpism.
This is the bargain you accepted when you handed your party over to someone who never cared about the second set
of books. Someone who never cared about reality. Someone who only cared about the first set of books — the one where every lie
is true as long as enough people want to believe it.
But eventually, reality always comes looking for payback.
Some days it's hard to understand what put the "Never" in "Never Trump".
Or, rather, why their slogan was not, is not, and never will be "Never
Republican".
Because Temu Reagan actually delivered on their dearest
wishes. And he did so by diligently pursuing the path to political
success laid down by St. Ronald Reagan.
Reagan tied Republicans to White Christians and now the party is
trapped
Republicans have a passionate base that is out of touch with the rest of
America.
...Reagan’s first-term record was a mixed bag, as far as cultural
conservatives were concerned. Even so, four years into his presidency,
Reagan saw an opportunity to use religion to forge a political
realignment in the South. Addressing a crowd of 10,000 religious leaders
at an “Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast” during the 1984 Republican
Convention, the president delivered a rousing speech. Reagan willfully
blurred the line between church and state. “Religion needs defenders
against those who care only for the interests of the state. The truth
is, politics and morality are inseparable — and as morality’s foundation
is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related.” He
concluded: “If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we
will be a nation gone under.”
Not surprisingly, the Republican platform that year reflected the
agenda of White evangelicals. It called for a constitutional ban on
abortion with no exceptions and the appointment of federal judges who
opposed abortion. It supported voluntary school prayer, ignored the
Equal Rights Amendment (which Republicans had supported in every
platform from 1940 to 1976 with only two exceptions: 1964 and 1968) and
rejected equal pay for women. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral
Majority, closed the 1984 Republican convention by triumphantly calling
the incumbent ticket “God’s instruments in rebuilding America.”
The Reagan Administration is seeking an unprecedented peacetime
military buildup.
The Reagan Administration’s Fiscal Year 1985 budget request for national
defense spending is greater, even when adjusted for inflation, than
defense spending in any other year since World War II, including the
years of the Korean and Vietnam wars. If the Reagan Administration has
its way, defense spending would climb an additional 25 percent, in
inflation adjusted dollars, between 1985 and 1989. By 1989, Department
of Defense spending would be 29% higher (after adjustment for inflation)
than during the peak of Vietnam when 50,000 American troops were engaged
in combat overseas...
‘Arguing with Zombies’: Paul Krugman on Economic Ideas That Won’t
Die
In his new book “Arguing With Zombies: Economics, Politics, and the
Fight for a Better Future,”
Krugman calls a number of economic policies “zombie theories” because
they have been proved false, refuse to die and keep coming
back.
Another example he cites is that “tax cuts pay for themselves.”
“We both tried tax cuts and tax increases and it’s never happened. The
Reagan tax cut led to big deficits. George W. Bush’s tax cut led to big
deficits. Trump’s tax cut led to big deficits,” Krugman said. “Bill
Clinton raised taxes and, you know, Republicans predicted disaster. It
goes on and on.”
“This is a theory that has – nothing has been tested as often as this
one. And yet, when the Trump tax that was passed just about every
Republican in Congress said, ‘Oh, I’m sure this will pay for itself,’”
he said.
So why does that theory persist? And did Republicans really believe it
would pay for itself?
Krugman has a blunt answer.
“With politicians, do they actually believe in anything?” he quipped.
”The answer is, look at the people whose taxes are cut. A lot of zombie
ideas, not all of them, but a lot of zombie ideas are basically kept
shambling along eating people’s brains by billionaires.”
7 Ways the Big Beautiful Bill Cuts Taxes for the Rich
Overall, the Big Beautiful Bill will harm poor Americans and raise the
incomes of rich Americans—driving gains for the rich through cuts to
marginal tax rates and the estate tax, along with tax breaks for
businesses, business owners, and investors
Over the next decade, the Big Beautiful Bill (BBB) will cut taxes for
the richest 10 percent of Americans by more than $14,700 per year per
household and cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans by more
than $50,000 per year, according to estimates from the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT).
Despite this, there has been comparatively little coverage of the
specific mechanisms by which the BBB funnels money to the ultrarich.
Meanwhile, tiny tax cuts for the working class have received
disproportionate media attention, even as the BBB will reduce the
incomes of the poorest Americans.
Overall, the BBB cuts taxes by $4.5 trillion over the next decade,
primarily with $2.3 trillion of provisions that deliver most of their
benefits to the richest 10 percent of Americans by income, according to
new analysis of JCT data by the Center for American Progress. Within
that, the BBB delivers $1 trillion in tax cuts to the top 1 percent
while cutting more than $1.1 trillion from the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and other health programs used by
the poorest Americans.
Trump says it's 'not possible' for the U.S. to pay for Medicaid,
Medicare and day care: 'We’re fighting wars'
Trump urged states to fund benefits programs instead because "we have to
take care of one thing: military protection."
He went on to say that he told Office of Management and Budget Director
Russell Vought: “Don’t send any money for day care, because the United
States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. We
can’t take care of day care. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We
have all these other people. We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of
day care. You got to let a state take care of day care, and they should
pay for it too.”
Then add to the mix all the culture war bullshit -- the "Guns, God and Gays"
bullshit -- that holds the coalition of Republican bigots and imbeciles
together so the donor class can get what they're paying for.
Ronald Reagan was the first sitting U.S. president to actively champion
overturning Roe v. Wade and making opposing the 1973 Supreme Court decision a
core platform of the national Republican Party.
Ronald Reagan also accelerated the decades-long political and legal push to reshape the federal judiciary with conservative judges who opposed Roe v. Wade, helping create the conditions under which organizations like The Federalist Society would become enormously influential and raise up crop after crop of lawyers
and judges who were Right Wing True Believers.
And Reagan -- along with two Conservative federal judges named Bork and Scalia
-- gutted the Fairness Doctrine and unleashed a tidal wave of Conservative
propaganda outlets that no longer had to worry about facts or fairness.
What Reagan delivered with a smile and hair dyed unnaturally brown, Trump
delivers with a scowl and hair dyed an the color of a Dreamsicle. How can
any fair-minded human look at the last 50 years of Republican politics and
not see that Reagan was the overture and Trump is the finale of one, long,
catastrophic Conservative revolution?
You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all that
which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from the sight
of the world around you? That world is not the product of your sins; it is
the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral ideal brought
into reality in its full and final perfection.
You have fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it,
and Donald Trump is the man who has granted you your wish.
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