Embrace Your Power To Influence

 

Kerry Eleveld has some suggestions about how you can influence uncertain or disengaged voters within your sphere of influence and outside the realm of the Republican- wired media.  Here's a long excerpt:

So what messages should anti-Trump, pro-democracy voters transmit in their spheres of influence? It depends on who you're talking to. 

If you're talking to Trump voters who condemn the Jan. 6 insurrection but don't really want to vote for Biden, The Bulwark crew took a shot at how to engage these voters in a recent episode of Crooked Media’s “The Wilderness.”

Former Republican strategist Tim Miller suggested playing on the fear that Trump will never leave office, which many swing voters are already expressing. 

"What do you think the chances are that Trump doesn't leave office after four years?" Then wait for the answer, Miller advised, as a way to start the conversation. If they say 5%, well, that 5% is too much of a risk. After all, Trump already orchestrated a coup to stay in office the last time he lost an election. 

Generally speaking, Republicans who are open to voting for Biden don't believe he stole the 2020 election and were horrified by the violent insurrection attempt, so revisiting that concern is a worthwhile endeavor. 

However, if you're talking to voters who are primarily worried about the economy and inflation, it might be better to phrase the question as “who do you think will fight for you?” Democrats are the ones cracking down on price-gouging corporations by capping bank fees and insulin prices, while Trump is promising corporations another $2 trillion tax cut.

Younger voters might be the most difficult to reach of all the potential swing voters. As Dan Pfeiffer, former Obama senior adviser on strategy and communications, wrote on Substack Tuesday, TikTok is hurting Biden, especially among young people who are the platform’s primary users. Trump’s right-wing influencers are outgunning progressive firebrands such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on a platform that is featuring political news even as other social media platforms de-emphasize it. 

Polling suggests that Trump might be making gains with younger voters, but loss of freedoms and abortion access remain a top priority for young Democrats. Linking Biden to Democratic priorities like expanding protections of abortion, the LGBTQ+ community, and voting rights as well as cracking down on gun violence could give him a boost among young voters...

Each of us has a duty as citizens to encourage these potential voters to vote for democracy, freedom, and the rule of law, lest we lose it all in one last, free election.  Politics is not a spectator sport and, unfortunately, democracy is fragile both here and elsewhere around the world and must be fought for.  We nearly lost it all in 2020/ 21.  If we are resolute and persistent, we have a better chance of it not happening in 2024.

BONUS:  Good read about what we're up against.

QOTD -- Facts And Fiction

"1. Under Biden's stewardship, the U.S. economy has generated 12.7 million jobs over 27 months, according to the “mighty” jobs thread of Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg.

"2. The Biden economy is creating opportunities for all, not just the few: The Black unemployment rate was 4.7% in April 2023, the lowest ever recorded and an incredible comeback from 16.8% in May 2020, according to The Washington Post's Heather Long.

"3. Since 1989, the U.S. economy has netted 49 million jobs. Ninety-six percent of those jobs have been created while Democrats controlled the White House.

"4. In the first quarter of 2022, the national uninsured rate reached an all-time low of 8%, with about 5.2 million people – including 4.1 million adults ages 18-64 and 1 million children ages 0-17 – gaining health coverage since 2020.

"5. New business applications have soared during the first two years of Biden's administration, with 5.4 million new business applications filed in 2021, the highest of any year on record, according to the U.S. Census Bureau." -- Kerry Eleveld in Daily Kos providing "Five facts every Democrat should know about Biden's record economic growth."  Because we live in a deeply ill-informed country, with powerful "fake news" organizations generating irrational fear and foreboding, most people surveyed in polls continue to cling to the myth that Republicans do a better job on the economy.  Democrats had better find a way of cutting through the clutter if they're going to correct that dangerous narrative -- and soon.

BONUS:  Here's the cognitive dissonance we're talking about (our emphasis) --

Biden inherited from Trump an economy badly damaged by the coronavirus pandemic, but the public sees the former president as a better economic steward than the incumbent. In the poll, by 54 percent to 36 percent, Americans say Trump did a better job handling the economy when he was president than Biden has done during his presidency so far. 

Here's one more apropos quote for you, from H.L.Mencken (Notes on Democracy: A New Edition): 

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”

Democrats are going to have to work hard to prove Mencken wrong in 2024 and beyond.  

QOTD -- Sell Your Moscow Mitch Stock!

 

"In [Sen. Moscow Mitch] McConnell's retelling of the debt ceiling tale, he "stepped up" to save the day because Democrats had refused to act on their own. In actuality, he simply got outplayed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and President Joe Biden.

"But overall, McConnell's stock is depreciating. Trump is breathing down his neck at every turn. He's got an increasingly recalcitrant caucus. And the fundraising muscle that he has flexed for years to buy the loyalty of GOP lawmakers is being undercut by the sheer force of Trump's endorsement within the GOP base." -- Kerry Eleveld, DailyKos, on the slipping stock of the most destructive Senator in history.

 

QOTD -- Message Sent

...[W]hat we are witnessing is more than just the Pentagon’s split with Trump; it's a stand for the Constitution and the U.S. military's commitment to it. In essence, current and former leaders of the military are putting Trump on notice that their ultimate allegiance is to the foundational document of our country, not the person who fleetingly occupies the Oval Office. Even the public rift between Trump and military leaders over their willingness to strike the names of Confederate commanders from military bases is another sign of the rupture between the two entities. [snip]

Over the past couple weeks, civilian and military leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces have sent every signal possible that they are not going to stand by while Trump defies the results of a U.S. election. Sure, there's more ways than one to steal an election, but the military just took one potential avenue away. The generals themselves will clearly haul Trump out of the White House and to the curb if he is voted out and refuses to leave on January 20, 2021. -- Kerry Eleveld, reflecting on the messages coming from retired Adm. Mullen and retired Gens. Mattis, Dempsey, Powell, Kelley, and Chairman of the JCS Gen. Milley and others in recent days. If Bunker Boy had entertained fantasies of the military intervening on his side after losing the election, he's been put on notice now.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Congratulations to the Kansas City Chiefs and their deserving head coach Andy Reid on winning the Super Bowl last night 31-24.  Among the true football fans offering congratulations was this "jenius:"



The Chiefs, of course, represent Kansas City, in the great state of Missouri. The "jenius" has since deleted the tweet and replaced it with one referring to the correct state.  But not in time to avoid some shade:

He’s not wrong, dammit. pic.twitter.com/z2ZO07GZjy

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) February 3, 2020

The looming acquittal of said "jenius" by Senate Republicans on Wednesday is the subject of several articles and op/ eds this morning.  Here's E.J. Dionne, Jr.'s take on the "Trump 51" who voted against hearing witnesses:

This was no ordinary roll call. It was a direct assault on American democracy and our core freedoms. Whatever the flaws of our system, we could once believe that a president who tried to bring down a political opponent by conspiring with a foreign government — and using American taxpayer dollars in the process — would be punished. The Trump 51 told us that such faith is for suckers.

The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a party that once crusaded against slavery and led the fight to amend our Constitution to guarantee equal protection under the law was exposed by the tortured rationalizations offered for its capitulation to absolutism. [snip]

There is one thing we need not fear: that the Republican apostles of surrender to Trump (and to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, his coverup sidekick) have set a precedent for their future behavior. On the contrary, we know that they will do exactly the opposite if a Democrat is president.

The editorial board of the Washington Post takes direct aim at one of the most vile, treacherous members of the "Trump 51," Sen. Lindsey "Huckleberry" Graham:

Mr. Graham’s behavior has been particularly shabby as he has threatened to misuse his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the former vice president. He has announced a formal probe and asked the State Department for documents. “We’re not going to live in a world where only Republicans get looked at,” he said in December, indulging in a toxic (and unwarranted) display of grievance and implying that Mr. Biden’s demonstrably benign activities in Ukraine are equivalent to Mr. Trump’s corruption.

But there is no moral equivalence. There is no reasonable case against Mr. Biden. The case against Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is just as definitive in the opposite direction. Mr. Trump had no good reason to press Ukraine to investigate Mr. Biden, an American citizen whom U.S. authorities were not themselves investigating. He did so anyway, to no conceivable benefit to the United States. That Mr. Graham would suggest that the two belong in the same universe shows that he is so poisoned by partisanship, he either does not understand or has lost all moral direction.

Mr. Trump’s corrupt scheme to persuade the president of Ukraine to slander a political rival did not succeed. It is pathetic that U.S. senators would do the job instead.

Everyone is in the loop (surprise!):

A midnight court filing on Friday night revealed that the White House is refusing to release at least two dozen emails directly related to Donald Trump’s withholding of military assistance from Ukraine. The filing, authored by an attorney from the Office of Management and Budget, described the until now hidden documents as communications by Trump or his immediate advisers “regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine."

In other words, the idea that Trump withheld military assistance to Ukraine because of concerns over corruption, or the need for more “burden sharing” — as Trump’s defense team has stated throughout hearings in the House and the trial in the Senate — could be directly revealed by an examination of these documents. Which they will not share.

As CNN reports, the Department of Justice withheld the existence of these emails until just hours after the Senate had made it’s vote to not subpoena any further witnesses or documents in Trump’s impeachment trial. This appears to be another staggering example of how Trump has used the full power of the executive branch to paper over his actions, block access to key information, and simply prevent the release of the truth.(our emphasis)

Kerry Eleveld has a silver lining and a call to active engagement:

But here's the silver lining: During a time when Washington commanded the attention of most Americans and when polling consistently showed that voters overwhelmingly craved resolution, Senate Republicans exposed themselves a nothing short of tools of Trump's regime. They no longer serve the people, they serve him and him only.

Pundits across spectrum smelled trouble for Senate Republicans. "I think (McConnell) underestimates the backlash to this vote," conservative radio host Charlie Sykes told MSNBC. "I think people are going to be a lot more angry about this vote on the witnesses than folks in Washington really understand. And it really does put the Senate in play."

Former GOP operative Nicolle Wallace called the vote “political suicide,” adding, “I hope they take it." They did.

So as we enter the start of the Democratic nomination contest in earnest on Monday, bundle up all that rage and take it to the polls. Let it drive your engagement and participation throughout the rest of the year until Election Day.

Of course, tonight are the Iowa caucuses, which (for better or worse) may produce multiple "winners" and potentially end some campaigns for candidates deemed non- viable.  HuffPo has a "things to watch for tonight."  (November can't come soon enough.)

Finally, do yourself a favor and check out Infidel 753's link round- up for the most comprehensive selection of interesting finds across the internet.  It's so much more than just politics -- more like a digest of life happening around us.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Before we get to the mundane, a new horizon in human history is about to be reached 4 billion miles away:

Streaking through space at nearly nine miles per second, NASA's New Horizons probe closed in on a frozen remnant of the solar system's birth Monday, on track for a historic New Year's Day flyby of the most distant body ever explored. 

Officially known as 2014 MU69, the target is a small, 19-mile-wide object in the remote Kuiper Belt a billion miles past Pluto, a body so far away -- 4.1 billion miles from Earth -- it appears as little more than a speck of light even to the Hubble Space Telescope. 

Dubbed "Ultima Thule" (pronounced TOO-lee) in a NASA naming contest, the small body is thought to be literally frozen in time, a pristine remnant of the original disk of rocky debris that coalesced to form the solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. 

New Horizons will fly within 2,200 miles of Ultima Thule during the New Year's Day encounter, mapping its surface with a suite of cameras, spectrometers and other instruments to probe its structure and chemical makeup, giving scientists a close-up look at one of the solar system's original building blocks.  [snip]

While the flyby will happen in the blink of an eye, it will take 20 months for the gigabytes of stored data to make their way back to Earth, thanks to the enormous distances involved and the probe's 30-watt radio transmitter, which operates at power levels comparable to a refrigerator light. (our emphasis)

For perspective, New Horizons was launched in 2006, when Dumbya was president.

The advent of a New Year is always the occasion for retrospectives, predictions, and listicles.  Here's a telling retrospective that while familiar is at the same time unsettling:

President Trump’s year of lies, false statements and misleading claims started with some morning tweets. 

Over a couple of hours on Jan. 2, Trump made false claims about three of his favorite targets — Iran, the New York Times and Hillary Clinton. He also took credit for the “best and safest year on record” for commercial aviation, even though there had been no commercial plane crashes in the United States since 2009 and, in any case, the president has little to do with ensuring the safety of commercial aviation. 

The fusillade of tweets was the start of a year of unprecedented deception during which Trump became increasingly unmoored from the truth. When 2018 began, the president had made 1,989 false and misleading claims, according to The Fact Checker’s database, which tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president. By the end of the year, Trump had accumulated more than 7,600 untruths during his presidency — averaging more than 15 erroneous claims a day during 2018, almost triple the rate from the year before.  (our emphasis)

There's no question that Trump is a sick, unhinged monster.  The article goes on to opine about whether the firehose of lies is still working.

As for predictions, Jack Shafer offers this:

The pattern of lies and lying that Mueller has uncovered isn’t random. Many of the verified lies told by Flynn, Manafort, Gates, Papadopoulos, Van Der Zwaan and Cohen were told to protect both the tellers and the man at the top of the prosecutorial pyramid that Mueller is building: Donald Trump. 

I’m not foolish enough to predict when Mueller will close his case, but I’m brave enough to venture that Trump’s troubles are only now beginning. As Garrett M. Graff recently wrote, there are more than a dozen investigations into the various scandals connected to the president, from the Russians’ hack of the election to the purchase of influence by Middle Easterners to obstruction of justice to inauguration committee funding to campaign finance fraud. On Jan. 3, a Democratic House of Representatives will be seated and pursue aggressive, additional oversight into Trump’s affairs, further complicating his life. I can’t wait until Trump tweets his view that Congress should be dissolved. 

Trump and his team will, I suppose, attempt to lie their way out of the jams that 2019 promises. It’s my guess that Mueller is hoping for exactly that. The old lies told in Trump’s service have brought him closer to the truth. Newer lies will only hasten the president’s demise.

Kerry Eleveld lists Trump's 5 worst moments of 2018 (how difficult to winnow out just 5!).  Number 1:

The Trump administration's horrific policy of forcibly separating children from their parents at the nation's Southern border was as misguided as it was unconscionable. Trump used the federal government to terrorize desperate migrants, kidnap their children, and in some cases permanently orphan those kids. Systematically wielding the might of the federal government to inflict pain and trauma on some of the globe’s most vulnerable and defenseless people may not be the downfall of Trump’s presidency, but it was by far his lowest, most depraved episode in 2018 and worthy of an unceasing and indefinite amount of scorn and humiliation. It was monstrous, and Trump should never be allowed to live it down. 

Guess Trump won't be calling this guy "one of my generals":

The former top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan, retired four-star Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, criticized President Donald Trump's behavior and handling of the presidency, saying the commander-in-chief is dishonest and immoral. 

“I don’t think he tells the truth,” McChrystal said in an exclusive interview on “This Week” when asked by Co-Anchor Martha Raddatz if he believes the president is a liar. 

“Is Trump immoral, in your view?” Raddatz asked. 

“I think he is,” he said.  

Hooah!

As always, Infidel 753 has a great link round- up to ring out 2018.  Let's just say our favorite link has to do with a certain planet.