QOTD: "New Horrors Each Day"

 

The Guardian's Margaret Sullivan writes about how far down. the road to fascism we've gone in under one year of the Malignant Fascist's regime:

"One awakes to new horrors each day. And it is difficult to grasp – and painful to realize – just how far gone we are, and how quickly it has happened.

Yet, we know that Trump was duly elected. Even after his deeply disturbing first term and even after the warnings that came with the knowledge of Project 2025, the rightwing blueprint for an authoritarian second term – even after Trump himself said publicly he would be a dictator just on day one – enough Americans chose him over Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent.

Frightening as the current reality is, it’s even scarier to realize that we’re only nine months into this presidential term. Where will three more years of this decline leave us? And what if the three years turns into something even longer, since there is no one to restrain this president from deciding that a third term is necessary, perhaps for national security reasons?"

Cracks in the MAGA facade are showing, whether the agriculture / ranching sector's sense of betrayal over the MF's punishing tariffs and beef deal with Argentina, or the conspiracists that are insisting that the MF release the Epstein - Trump files that he's prominent throughout, or general outrage over his oligarch-financed imperial ball room and Qatari presidential jet representing crass elitism.  We've posted below about Hispanics leaving the Republican Party in Texas over the cruel and unlawful treatment of fellow Hispanics there and across the U.S.  If those cracks split open, Dems need to be nimble and smart enough to step in and expose the hypocrisy and dishonesty the MAGA movement represents.  Will they?  Let's not take it for granted that they will.

QOTD: A Reckoning We Ought To Have

 

Margaret Sullivan, writing in The Guardian on the media's unbalanced and misdirected reporting:

"There’s plenty of blame to go around for Biden’s ultimate loss – and the horrors that it brought the whole world in the election of Donald Trump to a second term. Bruce Springsteen laid it out to a concert audience last week as he opened his European tour: “My home, the America I love, that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”

As a media critic, I’m always happy to see a good reckoning for the mainstream press.

But this one makes me wonder. When is the reckoning coming for the failures to cover Trump effectively?

At what point will there be a general acknowledgment and some serious self-scrutiny about the way big media failed to adequately convey what would happen if Trump were elected again? [snip]

What do you investigate? What is the precise wording of that news alert? How prominently do you display that story? Whom do you quote and to whom do you grant anonymity? What photo do you choose? Do you use terms like “straining the bounds of propriety” to describe what looks more like a bribe?

So if the media were going to put their thumb on the scale – as they inevitably do – they ought to have done so in defense of democracy, the rule of law and human decency.

The failure to do so is playing out in our shattered world, and at a frightening pace.

That’s a reckoning we ought to have, but I doubt we ever will."  (our emphasis)

Ms. Sullivan's entire opinion is important and well worth the read.

 

Truth And Bias -- Media's Failure Risks Democracy

 

With the stipulation that Democrats often commit political malpractice in their messaging, fail to mount sustained attacks on their right- wing adversaries, and scatter like sheep at the first clap of thunder (what a party!), we have to once again point out the long- term failings of the political media through our proxies this morning.  Margaret Sullivan focuses on "what" the current failure is, while Steve M. focuses on the "why" there's such disproportional, biased coverage of the two presidential candidates.

Margaret Sullivan, The Guardian

... First truth: the president’s stumble and the political fallout that followed is a huge, consequential news story that deserves a lot of coverage.

Second truth: the media coverage is overkill – not only too much in quantity and too breathless in tone, but also taking up so much oxygen that a story even more important is shoved to the back burner.

That bigger story, of course, is the former president’s appalling unfitness for office, not only because he tried to overturn a legitimate election and is a felon, out on bail and awaiting sentencing, but because of things he has said and done in very recent weeks. As just one example, he claimed that he doesn’t know anything about Project 2025, the radical rightwing plan hatched by some of his closest allies to begin dismantling our democracy if he wins another term.

Trump’s disavowal is a ridiculous lie, but I doubt most members of the public know anything about it, nor do they likely know much – if anything – about Project 2025.  [snip]

Meanwhile, what of Trump’s obvious cognitive decline, his endless lies, his shocking plans to imprison his political enemies and to deport millions of people he calls “animals”, his relationship with the late accused sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein?

“Sure, you can say, we’ve covered those things,” commented Norman Ornstein, emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a longtime observer of media and politics. But, Ornstein pushed back: “Where? On the front page above the fold? As one-offs before moving on? In a fashion comparable to the Defcon 1 coverage of Biden’s age and acuity?”

There really is no comparison in the amount or intensity of coverage. One journalist, Jennifer Schulze, counted New York Times stories related to Biden’s age in the week following the debate; she counted a staggering 192 news and opinion pieces, compared to 92 stories on Trump – and that was in a week when the US supreme court had ruled he has immunity for official acts.

Nor is there much self-scrutiny or effort to course-correct. Only self-satisfaction and an apparent commitment to more of the same...

Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog 

... [E]ven if you believe that Trump's brain is full of failing neurons rather than right-wing disinformation, it's hard to believe that the media has a categorical bias toward portraying major-party candidates as coherent. If that were the case, we wouldn't have had months of stories in the media questioning the mental fitness of Joe Biden.

What we have instead is a bias toward normalizing Republicans, a process that's usually accompanied by an "othering" of Democrats. This has been going on for decades: Walter Mondale was a gloomy wimp, Michael Dukakis was an effete Ivy League weirdo, Al Gore was a prissy egghead, Hillary Clinton was a cackling ballbuster. Their opponents were Real Americans, fond of country music, pickup trucks, and plain-spoken common sense. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden fought against this narrative and won some victories, but the idea that Republicans are normal and Democrats are peculiar is ingrained in our politics, and allows Republicans to embrace genuinely extreme policies -- on guns, abortion, climate change, taxation, regulation, torture, and many other issues -- while Democrats are the ones branded as out-of-step extremists. It doesn't help that Democrats regularly praise at least some Republicans (a favor that's never returned), or that Democrats regularly proclaim that some fellow party members really are ideologically beyond the pale, something Republicans know will lead to instant banishment if it's attempted in their party.

It's because we're accustomed to all this that our political culture struggles to define Trump as a mentally ill person or (more accurately, I think) as a dangerous radical. But we're used to marginalizing Democrats. In Biden's case, we're marginalizing him based on perceived mental fitness, but we nearly always do this to Democrats in some way or another, unless, like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, they're very good at fighting back. 

The key to this is being better at fighting back, not only at MAGAt Republicans but at their enablers in the media.  It seems every election cycle we have those same two opponents, and every proceeding election cycle the stakes get even higher.  We can't expect or rely on these conditions to change;  we can only do everything we can to win in every election until Christosfascist Republicanism in America is beaten back in our culture and politics.

BONUS:  Seconded --

The news seems to forget everything Trump says a day or so after he says them. Could the media be in cognitive decline? I am calling for them to step down.

— The Volatile Mermaid (@OhNoSheTwitnt) July 10, 2024

 

 

QOTD -- Trump Win Would Create Banana Republic

 

From The Guardian's Margaret Sullivan, warning of the existential threat to democracy if the Malignant Loser is elected in 2024, and the broken press' responsibility:

"The press must get across to American citizens the crucial importance of this election and the dangers of a Trump win. They don’t need to surrender their journalistic independence to do so or be 'in the tank' for Biden or anyone else.

It’s now clearer than ever that Trump, if elected, will use the federal government to go after his political rivals and critics, even deploying the military toward that end. His allies are hatching plans to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one.

The US then 'would resemble a banana republic', a University of Virginia law professor told the Washington Post when it revealed these schemes. Almost as troubling, two New York Times stories outlined Trump’s autocratic plans to put loyal lawyers in key posts and limit the independence of federal agencies.

The press generally is not doing an adequate job of communicating those realities.

Instead, journalists have emphasized Joe Biden’s age and Trump’s 'freewheeling' style. They blame the public’s attitudes on 'polarization', as if they themselves have no role. And, of course, they make the election about the horse race – rather than what would happen a few lengths after the finish line.

Here’s what must be hammered home: Trump cannot be re-elected if you want the United States to be a place where elections decide outcomes, where voting rights matter, and where politicians don’t baselessly prosecute their adversaries."  (our emphasis)

This may be the most crucial test for the media to see if it recognizes the danger that the Malignant Loser and his MAGA cult pose, or to continue as if this election were a typical Dem vs. Republican contest. 

(Image: Democrats.com)

 

"We Might Be Living In A Different World"

The Guardian's Margaret Sullivan looks at the failing mainstream media as they create false equivalences and "news" that helps the Republican / Shooters / Forced Birth cult of the Malignant Loser. An excerpt from her excellent article:

'The big problem is that the mainstream media wants to be seen as non-partisan – a reasonable goal – and bends over backwards to accomplish this. If this means equalizing an anti-democratic candidate with a pro-democracy candidate, then so be it.

Add to this the obsession with the “horse race” aspect of the campaign, and the profit-driven desire to increase the potential news audience to include Trump voters, and you’ve got the kind of problematic coverage discussed above.

It’s fearful, it’s defensive, it’s entertainment – and click-focused, and it’s mired in the washed-up practices of an earlier era.

The big solution? Remember at all times what our core mission is: to communicate truthfully, keeping top of mind that we have a public service mission to inform the electorate and hold powerful people to account. If that’s our north star, as it should be, every editorial judgment will reflect that.

Headlines will include context, not just deliver political messaging. Overall politics coverage will reflect 'not the odds, but the stakes', as NYU’s Jay Rosen elegantly put it. Lies and liars won’t get a platform and a megaphone.

And media leaders will think hard about the big picture of what they are getting across to the public, and whether it is fair and truthful. Imagine if the New York Times, among others, had stopped and done a course correction on their over-the-top coverage of Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign. We might be living in a different world." (our emphasis)

That different world would have dealt with immigration, the COVID 19 pandemic, our foreign adversaries and friends, and our domestic divisions in a rational and productive way, not the way a would-be autocrat and demagogue did. Keeping the heat on the press to follow that "north star" of truth is essential as we face the greatest threat to our democracy ever in the candidacy of the Malignant Loser.

 

Quotes Of The Day -- The Demagogue-In-Waiting

 

"He thinks the climate crisis is a hoax, supports Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and would gladly pardon Donald Trump on day 1 of his would-be presidency. A wealthy biotech entrepreneur, the 38-year-old has never before run for public office.

"Despite all of this (or maybe because of it), this week’s Republican debate became a national coming-out party for Vivek Ramaswamy.

"Suddenly, this inexperienced and dangerous showoff is almost a household name..."  -- The Guardian's  Margaret Sullivan on Vivek "Ramasmarmy" Ramaswamy, "America's Demagogue-in-Waiting," and his performance at the Republican "debate" in Milwaukee this past Wednesday.

____________________

In her op/ed, she references The Bulwark's Charlie Sykes' take on Ramasmarmy. Here's his salient quote:

"Vivek is a facile, clownish, shallow, shameless, pandering demagogue, but he is exactly what GOP voters crave these days. So, he will likely get a bump in the polls, at least in the short-run.

"Last night, Vivek was Trumpier than Trump. He touched all the erogenous zones of the MAGAverse with a fluency and zeal unmatched by anyone on the stage, from his anti-Ukraine memes to his fawning praise of the absent God King..."

We have to hope that, however much this grinning, facile "ChatGPT" demagogue appeals to the MAGAt lizard brain, he repulses everyone else for the reasons Sullivan and Sykes lay out.  Since they're deathly afraid of attacking the Malignant Loser directly, the rest of the pygmies running should compensate by training fire on this dangerous MAGA vessel.

QOTD: "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" Threat

 

Margaret Sullivan, writing in The Guardian:

"The Florida governor Ron DeSantis likes to brag that he’s just getting started with his rightwing agenda.

'You ain’t seen nothing yet,' was how he put it in one recent speech.

Banning ideas and authors is not a ‘culture war’ – it’s fascism.

He means it as a promise, but it ought to be heard as a threat. That’s particularly true for women whose abortion rights already are being dangerously curtailed and for gay and transgender students who are already being treated as lower life forms. It’s particularly true for those who care about voting rights and press rights, and for those who cherish the power of books and free expression as a foundation of societal wellbeing.

Of course, if DeSantis should somehow capture the presidency (he’s undeclared thus far but the Oval Office is clearly on his mind), that threat would extend to our entire nation and to the world beyond."  (our emphasis)

Predictably, the majority of the Beltway Media has yet to cast a critical eye on Florida's rampaging fascist Governor, despite (or perhaps because of) his overt hostility and threats. It's similar to he way that they treated the rise of the Malignant Loser as an edgy, entertaining novelty, although DeSantis is no entertainer. When most of them treated the Malignant Loser as a threat to democracy, it was far too late.  The pattern seems to be repeating with DeSantis, especially since they see him as the biggest threat to the Malignant Loser's return to power.

 

QOTD -- No Righteous Conclusion?

 

"Not everything was good about the media world of the 1970s. It was almost entirely White and male, barely open to other views or voices. This was long before the democratizing effect of the Internet, which has elevated the ideas of people of color, women and other marginalized groups.

"But it was a time when we had a news media that commanded the trust of the general public, a necessity in helping bring Nixon to justice. That, at least during his presidency, was never possible with Trump.

"As we remember Watergate, we ought to remember how very unlikely its righteous conclusion would be today.

"Richard M. Nixon’s presidency would have survived." -- Margaret Sullivan in the Washington Post, on why the upcoming January 6 hearings on the Capitol insurrection will not have the same impact as the Watergate hearings, due to a radically altered media environment that is more fractured and less trusted.  Many observers have pointed out the fact that Fox "News" was the first national Republican propaganda organ that was created to make sure another Republican president's righteous defenestration wouldn't occur again;  many others have followed on multiple platforms that were not even conceived of in the 1970's.  It's why the Malignant Loser survived an unprecedented two impeachments, and may survive a righteous conclusion for conspiring in and leading the first coup attempt in American history. 

 

Quotes Of The Day -- Asymmetry

 

Margaret Sullivan on the hiring of former Trump enabler Mick Mulvaney by CBS News (our emphasis):

Mulvaney has been on the wrong side — the deeply, undemocratically wrong side — of America’s most important political issues in recent years.

The larger issue here, though, is the news media’s blind and relentless pandering to the outdated notion that both sides of the aisle are pretty much equal these days — that they’re similar, just with different governing philosophies.

That’s simply not the case.

“We have a two-party system and one of the two is anti-democratic,” as NYU professor and press critic Jay Rosen put it. This basic asymmetry, he noted, “fries the circuits” of the mainstream media, which largely refuses to recognize it or do anything about it in their coverage.

To paraphrase one commenter's view, democracy doesn't die in darkness, it dies because of shit like this.

 _______________________

Washington Post fact- checker Glenn Kessler on Russian disinformation on Hunter Biden that's being weaponized by Republican media shills and parroted by the pandering, Republican- wired media (our emphasis):

The Russian Defense Ministry knows how to stir up the interest of the right-leaning news media in the United States — just mention Hunter Biden, the president’s son.

Russia for years has been seeding the ground to claim that the United States set up biowarfare labs in Ukraine and other former Soviet republics — claims that have been revived as part of the invasion of Ukraine. As part of his media presentation, Igor Kirillov of the Russian armed forces alleged the labs were part of the U.S. plot to study the natural immunity of the population to identify the most dangerous pathogen for people in the region.  [snip]

First of all, as we have previously documented, these are not bioweapons labs, but biological research facilities focused on better detecting, diagnosing and monitoring infectious-disease outbreaks. Second, random emails can be easily misinterpreted without additional reporting.

We’ve dug into the records and discussed the deals in question with people involved. The reporting from those news outlets is false. Hunter Biden has come under scrutiny for business deals in places such as Ukraine and China that took place while his father was vice president. But he was not “financing” these labs. In fact, he was not part of a decision to invest in a company at the center of the Russian allegations, he did not profit from it as he was kicked out of the investment firm over cocaine allegations, and the company made little money from its tiny bit of business in Ukraine.

Kessler goes into some detail, debunking the various allegations being fed by the Russian Defense Ministry into our media culture (most recently at the encouragement of the Malignant Loser and other cultists).  Just the latest (and continuing) example of the asymmetry of the two parties and the brain- dead media's "relentless pandering" to the worst among us.

Monday Reading

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

David Rothkopf remembers Madeleine Albright:

I remember recounting to her my unease the first few times I found myself in the Situation Room during my time in the Clinton Administration; telling her how out of place I felt. She responded, “Let me tell you something, everyone in that room has impostor’s syndrome. We all think we don’t belong. We all remember who we were in high school and wonder how we got to where we are now.”

It was a great leveler. It was also the kindest and most helpful thing she could have said.

But, of course, I knew when she said it that she was anything but an impostor. She was one of those rare leaders who are set apart not just by their hard work or public achievements, but by their humanity.

For those who knew her, that is undoubtedly why she will be most missed. But for those who did not, it is also why her actions—as a diplomat, a teacher, a champion of women—will resonate with so many for so very long. She had the strength to translate compassion, decency, and values into action. In a moment as fraught as our current one, we can only hope fate sends our way more leaders like her.

We can hope, but...

Will Bunch discusses the Supreme Court's ongoing legitimacy crisis, heightened by the Ginni Thomas- Mark Meadows cuckoo coup texts:

There was an endless stream of chatter on social media this weekend about the Ginni Thomas file, yet folks had a hard time pinning a name on the great angst they were feeling. I’ll take a stab at it. The majority of Americans — the people who gave more votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and even more to Biden in 2020 and put the Democrats back in nominal control of Congress — are still, despite those victories, watching the car careen off the cliff, and we are unable to find the brakes. There seems to be no way or no will to hold our staggeringly corrupt leaders accountable — whether it’s Trump defrauding the banks or plotting an attempted coup from the Oval Office, or a Supreme Court justice ruling on his wife’s bat-guano crazy political crusade. And there’s seemingly no way to stop the crazy, like QAnon, from getting crazier. I’m in a total funk over the state of the union, and when I wrote that on Twitter hundreds of people agreed with me.  [snip]

It felt fitting that the high court’s legitimacy crisis was reaching a crescendo right in the middle of the fraught confirmation for a new justice, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Her ascension — likely to occur on close to a straight party-line vote — could have been a reaffirming moment, with KBJ bringing experience, a sharp legal mind, and, most important, new perspectives as a former public defender and as the first Black woman in Supreme Court history. Instead, the hearings were a tawdry showcase for Republican senators to spout some of the same QAnon-flavored nonsense that seems to have poisoned Ginni Thomas’ brain — and a reminder of how a toxic right-wing movement has been slowly infecting our justice system for decades.

A good read, as usual.

Margaret Sullivan explains how, even after Putin shut down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's operation in Russia, it only increased the level of traffic to the private non- profit's other outlets:

In the first three weeks after the invasion, page views from Russia to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sites skyrocketed to 26 million, more than 50 percent more than an earlier corresponding period. Video views from Russia to their YouTube channels more than tripled to 237 million. And this was happening despite sites being blocked within Russia.

“Despite the Kremlin pressure, people are still hungry for the truth,” Fly told me. “To some extent, they see through the propaganda, and they want to explore broader sources of information.”

He and his colleagues are particularly proud of the on-the-ground reporting in Ukraine, such as a March 10 video headlined “Ukrainian Troops Attempt to Drive Russian Forces from Village Near Kyiv.” There have been thorough reports about civilian deaths in Mariupol and about mortar fire directed at Ukrainian interior minister and journalists.

Many listeners and viewers are getting around Russia’s media barricades through the use of VPNs (virtual private networks) and “mirror sites” that duplicate content but use a different URL.

Putin's attempts to turn Russia into a hermetically sealed North Korea are doing about as well as his army in Ukraine so far.

El Salvador's 40-year-old presidential bro is getting ready to crash his country's economy:

The president of El Salvador is making a huge bet on bitcoin with his country's treasury. President Nayib Bukele is hoping to launch bitcoin-backed bonds to raise $1 billion for the country.

Bukele wants to raise the funds through international cryptocurrency traders, and to avoid his critics in the United States, including at the International Monetary Fund.

Last year, Bukele got El Salvador to become the first nation to adopt bitcoin as legal tender, right alongside the national currency, the U.S. dollar.

The bitcoin bond launch would mark another first of its kind. But while these moves are welcomed by crypto enthusiasts, they've raised concerns among detractors of the popular, unregulated asset market.

El Salvador's finance minister had announced the launch would happen in mid-March, but on Tuesday, he said it was postponed because of Russia's war in Ukraine and cryptocurrency volatility, Reuters reported.

What could possibly go wrong?

Finally, we recommend a visit to Infidel 753's link round-up for a collection of links to some of the most interesting posts from around the Internet. You likely won't agree with every point of view, but the scope of what he does every week is impressive.  Also, he has another good summation of "Putin's failed war" this week.

QOTD -- Played

"Someday, we’ll get some perspective on how the press has contributed to this mess -- just as we can now look back on the news coverage of the run-up to the Iraq War and clearly see the sins committed then by most of Big Journalism: the shameful lack of skepticism, the foolish granting of anonymity to deceptive and self-interested sources.

"When we have that distance, what I suspect we’ll see is a candidate and a president who played the media like a puppet while deeply damaging the public’s trust in the press as a democratic institution. Someone who dazzled us with his show, while acting constantly in his own self-interest while we willingly — almost helplessly — magnified his message." --  Margaret Sullivan, observing that history won't judge the media's coverage of nitwit incompetent Donald "Moron Vector" Trump kindly.

QOTD -- Media, Make "Truth Sandwiches"!

"Some months ago, I wrote about the linguist George Lakoff’s prescription for handling the president’s false statements and lies, an approach that’s become known as the “truth sandwich.”

"Rather than lead with the falsehood and then try to debunk it, Lakoff — an expert on how propaganda works — suggested flipping that formula: Lead with the truth, air the falsehood, and then follow with the fact check.

"Avoid giving prominence to lies, he advises. Don’t put them in headlines, leads or tweets. It is that very amplification that gives them power, even if they are proclaimed false in the next beat."  (our emphasis) -- Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post media columnist, with some advice to the media, which will undoubtedly go largely unheeded.  We've written often about the corporate media's hard- wired instincts to find false equivalence where none exists, and to amplify that false equivalence in asymmetric ways that benefit the firehose of lies that gushes from Trump and his nihilistic minions.  If they can't get it right when the stakes are as high as they are this year, they never will.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.  We have some long excerpts today, so let's get started.

Leonard Pitts, Jr.,  has some good advice on how to keep Republicans from cheating you out of your vote (garnered from Carol Anderson of Emery University).  Here are the first four things you should be aware of now, and take action if needed:

1. Check periodically with election officials in your state to make sure you’re properly registered and that your name has not been purged. “We know these lists are flawed. So it’s really important to double check and make sure that you haven’t been wiped off the list erroneously”...

2. If you’ve moved, “Alert election officials just to give them your new address”...

3. “Make sure that your polling place is where you think it is. Georgia, for instance, is continuing to shut down polling places. So whereas you may have always gone to Southside Church to vote, Southside Church may not be the place anymore. They may have moved it five miles away from you”...

4. “Be prepared for chicanery.” In other words, be on the lookout for fake sample ballots, misleading robo-calls and other dirty tricks...

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article237159024.html#storylink=cpy

There are several more, so go check out the rest.  Because, even though there are more of us than there are of them,

Trump’s party knows all too well that the numbers are against them, that they cannot win nationally without cheating. So they do. Behind a fig leaf of concern over imaginary voter fraud, Republicans have imposed photo I.D. laws, voter purges and polling-place closures that disproportionately disenfranchise those who don’t vote GOP. Meaning, pretty much everyone who’s not a straight, white, angry, older male lacking a college diploma.

2020 is an all- hands- on- deck election;  make sure your vote is counted.

Speaking of 2020, Electoral Vote looks at a possibly significant shift in the white working- class female demographic (found via Infidel 753):

McClatchy is running a series of studies of key demographic groups that will probably determine who wins the White House in 2020. The first one is about white working-class women, who make up about 20% of the electorate. They went solidly for Trump in 2016, but many are now having misgivings about doing that again in 2020 (in contrast to white working-class men, whose support of Trump is unwavering).

A study of polls, focus groups, and interviews with voters and over a dozen party strategists, shows that Trump has little chance of winning white working-class women by 27 points again, as he did in 2016. One hint came in 2018, when they went from R+27 to R+14, a drop of 13 points. Forty percent of them now favor impeaching him, up from only 11% in September.

Many voters told the McClatchy reporter that they didn't especially like Trump in 2016, but they hated Hillary Clinton. She won't be on the ballot in 2020. Also important is that Democrats are showing up in rural areas like Howard County, IA, which went for Obama by 21 points in 2012 and for Trump by 20 points in 2016. One resident, April Cheeseman, was repelled by both Trump and Clinton in 2016, but now says she will probably support whomever the Democrats nominate. Many other people had the same story to tell.

The Democrats don't have to win white working-class women outright to capture Iowa's 6 electoral votes, but if they can knock 10 or 15 points off Trump's margin with them, that might be enough. The same holds for most of the neighboring states. If the Democrats show up, listen to people, and take what they hear to heart, they have a good chance of making big gains with this key demographic group.

These aren't Trump dead- ender cultists.  They've been paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and they also vote pocket book issues like health care and minimum wage.

The public impeachment hearings are starting this week, and Margaret Sullivan has some pointers for the media on how to serve the public interest:

Stress substance, not speculation. Journalists and pundits love to ponder about how the public is reacting to news, though they aren’t much good at it. [snip]

“Decline to speculate on how this is playing to voters in the swing states,” is the advice of New York University professor and press critic Jay Rosen.

A related issue: The extreme likelihood that the media will be focusing on the partisan fight, rather than the substance of what is being proved or not proved in the hearings themselves...[snip]

Don’t let stunts hijack the coverage. If we know anything about Trump’s reaction when things get tough, it’s that he and his allies will haul out some attention-grabbing performance art and its distractions. [snip]

Avoid Barr-Letter Syndrome. It was a little over six months ago that Attorney General William P. Barr took it upon himself to summarize the Mueller report in a misleading letter that the news media — pretty much en masse — represented as an accurate summation of the 448-page report about Russian interference in the 2016 election and its aftermath. [snip]

You’d think journalists would have learned that lesson. But then more recently came the release of a partial, rough summary of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that asked for “a favor.” (The phone call, of course, is at the heart of the impeachment hearings, which explore Trump’s holding up military aid to Ukraine in trade for help in damaging his political opponents.)

In the initial round of coverage, almost all in the news media characterized this as “the transcript,” which strongly suggested that it was verbatim. It wasn’t — though it was damning enough, anyway.

Partly as a result, we see legions of Trump fans in T-shirts with the words “Read the Transcript.”(Actually, anybody who reads the transcript would discern abuse of power.) [snip]

Beware mealy-mouthed and misleading language. Punditry will be running even more amok than usual once the hearings begin. And we’ll be hearing a lot about what a divided nation we have and how ugly politics has become. We’ll be hearing the term “quid pro quo” endlessly...

"Extortion" and "bribery" make the point more accurately and directly (or "shakedown," as crime family boss Trump would understand the word).

In case you missed it, it looks like one of Trump consigliere Rudy "You Have A Fool For A Lawyer" Giuliani's bagmen is flipping:

An associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani who was involved in a campaign to pressure Ukraine into aiding President Trump’s political prospects has broken ranks, opening a dialogue with congressional impeachment investigators and accusing the president of falsely denying their relationship.

The associate, Lev Parnas, had previously resisted speaking with investigators for the Democrat-led impeachment proceedings, which are examining the president’s pressure attempts in Ukraine. A former lawyer for Mr. Trump was then representing Mr. Parnas.

But since then, Mr. Parnas has hired new lawyers who contacted the congressional investigators last week to notify them to “direct any future correspondence or communication to us,” according to a copy of the letter.

The lawyers also signaled on Monday that Mr. Parnas, who was arrested last month on campaign finance charges, is prepared to comply with a congressional subpoena for his documents and testimony. (our emphasis)

Needless to say, the legal peril for Rudy just went up exponentially.

We once again close by recommending you visit Infidel 753's link round- up for much more variety and scope than we can offer.  He puts in a lot of effort every week just on this one feature, and you owe it to yourselves to check it out.

Read more here: https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article237159024.html#storylink=cpy[snip]

QOTD -- Last Chance For A Do-Over

Media columnist Margaret Sullivan in today's Washington Post:

In political media, as in love, there aren’t many chances to correct a serious wrong.

But the news media will get just that on Wednesday when Robert S. Mueller III testifies before Congress, months after his long-awaited report on Donald Trump and possible Russian collusion to swing the 2016 election was competed.

Recall how gullible — and therefore misleading to the public — the news media was in March when Attorney General William Barr characterized the unreleased report in a four-page letter.

Coverage of that letter set in place an inaccurate narrative that has been almost impossible to dislodge.

Many news organizations, including some of the most prominent, took what Barr said at face value or mischaracterized the report’s findings.

They essentially transmitted to the public — especially in all-important headlines and cable-news bulletins — what President Trump desperately wanted as the takeaway: No collusion; no obstruction.

Most of the credulous stenographers of the mainstream media got it terribly wrong last March when they foolishly trusted Trump's consigliere William Barr to be telling the truth about the damning findings of the Mueller report.  If they blow it again following Mueller's testimony tomorrow (for example, reducing it to "partisan bickering"), you'd have a hard time convincing us they're not "the enemy of the people."

The soul of our country and its democracy are at stake every day.  Figure that out -- or don't, to your everlasting shame and peril.

Monday Reading

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

Margaret Sullivan explores the media's treatment of women candidates as a stubborn feature of our (still) sexist society:

“There is a narrow universe of acceptable behavior for women,” explained Heidi Moore, a media consultant who is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and former business editor of the Guardian U.S. 

In politics — as in so many other spheres — women get bashed far more than their male counterparts for personality quirks, vulnerabilities and actions of all sorts. 

Not to mention their appearance and speaking voices. Think of how far a female candidate would get if she came off like the rumpled and ranting Bernie Sanders. 

“We see in coverage of women lawmakers that even minor flaws are treated as disqualifying,” Moore told me, “while men’s flaws get brief attention but are glossed over as a case of ‘nobody’s perfect.’ ”

It's especially galling in the age of Trump -- with his endless miasma of ugliness, betrayal and failure -- that inane trivialities in the initial coverage of Sens. Harris, Gillibrand and Warren are already appearing as sexist narratives that some in the media are testing out. Watch for it, then push back.  Hard. (Sullivan also cites Norman Ornstein's great takeaway on how the media treated the relative coverage of Clinton's emails and Trump's disqualifying rotten- to- the- core scandals in 2016:  “A balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.”)

Here's what a hollow, damaged, needy little man does:

Acceding to a request from Washington, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe nominated U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize around autumn for engaging with North Korea, Japanese government sources said Feb. 16. 

According to the sources, the U.S. government "informally" asked Tokyo to nominate Trump after he met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in Singapore in June, the first-ever summit between the two countries. 

At a news conference in the White House on Feb. 15, Trump revealed that Abe gave him a copy of a five-page letter the prime minister sent to the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the prize. 

The deadline for nominating candidates for the prize is February every year. College professors and members of the parliament in each country, as well as former Nobel laureates, are eligible to recommend candidates. 

Trump quoted Abe as saying, “I have nominated you, respectfully, on behalf of Japan.”
As for the reasons for the nomination, Trump said, “Because he had rocket ships and he had missiles flying over Japan. They had alarms going off. You know that. Now, all of a sudden they feel good. They feel safe. I did that.”

First, shame on Abe.  So, Rump takes credit for defusing a crisis on which he lit the fuse (remember "They will be met with fire and the fury like the world has never seen"?). Meanwhile, how's that denuclearization workin' out for ya? Sad!

As he inches closer to being the kind of despot he so admires overseas, Rump is engaging in some industrial strength projection this morning:

Wow, so many lies by now disgraced acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. He was fired for lying, and now his story gets even more deranged. He and Rod Rosenstein, who was hired by Jeff Sessions (another beauty), look like they were planning a very illegal act, and got caught.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2019

....There is a lot of explaining to do to the millions of people who had just elected a president who they really like and who has done a great job for them with the Military, Vets, Economy and so much more. This was the illegal and treasonous “insurance policy” in full action!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 18, 2019

"Deranged," "lies," "lying," "illegal," and "treasonous" are descriptors more commonly applicable to the tweeting twit than to his targets. 

Here's the full transcript of former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe's "60 Minutes" interview that aired last night, that triggered Rump.  A pithy excerpt:

[Scott Pelley voiceover] McCabe says that the basis for both investigations was in Mr. Trump's own statements. First, Mr. Trump had asked FBI Director Comey to drop the investigation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who has since pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts.  Then, to justify firing Comey, Mr. Trump asked his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, to write a memo listing the reasons Comey had to go. And according to McCabe, Mr. Trump made a request for that memo that came as a surprise. 

Andrew McCabe: Rod was concerned by his interactions with the president, who seemed to be very focused on firing the director and saying things like, "Make sure you put Russia in your memo." That concerned Rod in the same way that it concerned me and the FBI investigators on the Russia case. 

If Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein listed the Russia investigation in his memo to the White House, it could look like he was obstructing the Russia probe by suggesting Comey's firing. And by implication, it would give the president cover. 

Scott Pelley: He didn't wanna put Russia in his memo. 

Andrew McCabe: He did not. He explained to the president that he did not need Russia in his memo. And the president responded, "I understand that, I am asking you to put Russia in the memo anyway." 

When the memo justifying Comey's firing was made public, Russia was not in it. But, Mr. Trump made the connection anyway, telling NBC, then, Russian diplomats that the Russian investigation was among the reasons he fired Comey. 

Why would Rump be so eager to get the FBI/ Justice Department on record undercutting the Russia investigation if there was nothing to hide, then brag to his Russian handlers that he took care of the troublesome Comey and (presumably) his investigation?  (Rhetorical questions.)

Unfortunately, our blogging brother Infidel 753 has been suffering with an inflammation affecting his hand (which, according to the latest info, is much better), so no link round- up for now. But feel free to go over and offer your best wishes for a quick, complete recovery. (UPDATE:  He's back -- here's the most interesting link round- up you're going to find anywhere.)

Media Largely Ignoring Voter Suppression By Republicans

Margaret Sullivan has a timely read this morning about the media dutifully following the agenda of nitwit narcissist Donald "Rump" Trump while largely ignoring a threat to the core of our democracy:

Yes, voter suppression is alive and well in the United States. 

But Americans who rely on the broadcast news networks for their information, and they still number in the millions every night, probably don’t know about it. 

Obsessed with all things Trump — caravan invasion, anyone? — and occupied with breaking news about hurricanes and mass shootings, the networks have almost ignored voter suppression. 

With the consequential midterm elections only a week away, the near silence is deafening. [snip] 

“The network news divisions have not worked out how to cover politics without following the agenda set by President Trump,” he told me by email. “That’s not to say their coverage is pro-Trump, since they will use his agenda to present him in both a positive and negative light. But it does mean that they find it difficult to present politics as being about anything except him.” 

Since Labor Day, Tyndall told me last week, the three broadcast networks (CBS, NBC and ABC) together had done only a handful of stories — fewer than 10, all told — on threats to voting rights.

We shouldn't expect a turnaround in the media's obsession with covering every vile syllable coming out of Rump's lie hole.  As disgraced former CBS chairman Les Moonves once said of the pre- election saturation coverage of Rump, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." It would be hard to find a network or cable executive who didn't, and probably still doesn't, think that same way about Rump coverage.  Clearly, it's all about the money to these soulless suits.

While vigilance (and legal teams ready to square off against the suppressers) is working to keep the voting process as fair as possible in these reactionary times, expanded public awareness is needed of the efforts by Republicans to deny or discourage Americans from exercising their right to vote. That the media, through its inattention to this assault on a fundamental right, is letting Republicans get away with it is a critical abdication of their presumed role as witnesses and truth- tellers, especially in this watershed election.

As Sullivan goes on to point out, those gauzy feel- good- about- America features the network news programs show are fine,

But the unfettered right to vote is much closer to the heart of the American ideal. 

And, especially now, the growing threats to that right should be considered news of the most urgent order.

One week to go.

Congratulations, One And All!

We have congratulations and trophies to pass along today.

Margaret Sullivan writes about how the media continues to fail our democracy, most recently in its coverage of the Singapore "summit":

All the problems the media has in conveying a true picture of Donald Trump’s presidency were on display in Singapore on Monday night. 

They were just writ larger than usual. 

And the stakes, never low with this president, were higher than ever. 

Although every legitimate news organization made efforts, some better than others, to bring context and even a measure of skepticism into their mix of stories, the event overall was a triumph of Trumpian stagecraft. 

And the media played its accustomed role.

That is:  bending over backwards to normalize the abnormal and aggrandize the superficial. Congratulations, defenders of democracy! (The media might want to reevaluate its position after this.)

Haaretz's David Rothkopf has a warning for panderers of malignant moron Donald "Rump" Trump in the Middle East:

 A deal is only as good as it is for him as long as it is good for him. Long-standing alliances?Disposable. International agreements? Unimportant. The entire international security order and America’s investment in global peace and stability of the past century? Expendable.    

Because the Trump doctrine is, "What’s in it for me?" And the events of the past couple weeks (and from all of Trump’s personal and professional endeavors throughout his life) have shown, when that calculus changes, so too can and will the actions of the president of the United States.   

So, to Bibi Netanyahu and the leaders of the Gulf, ask not for whom the news from Donald Trump’s Washington tolls, because sooner or later it will toll for thee.

Rump's doctrine his whole shallow and sordid life has been "What's in it for me?" For supposedly smarter people here in the U.S. and abroad who thought the office would change him, or that they could use/ control him, have been proven catastrophically wrong. Well done!

Republican strategist Rick Wilson has been repeatedly asked by knuckle- dragging Rump supporters to give Rump credit for his yuuuge achievements, so Wilson obliges in the way only he can:

Good job, Mr. President. You’ve terrified our allies with your cavalier and sloppy art-of-the-moron negotiating style. You’ve told American troops who will remain on the Korean Peninsula they’re no longer going to practice with their Korean counterparts as a deterrent to the North’s long, long history of aggression. I’m sure if the balloon goes up, they’ll thank you for stopping their exercises. [snip]

So congratulations, Mr. President. You spent the week deliberately wrecking American alliances and leadership, allied yourself with one of the most egregious enemies of freedom in the world, and abandoned the shared values of our friends like Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany. 

You must be so proud.

We certainly know we are! Check out all the op/ eds;  they're keepers.

Democracy Also Dies In Indecency

Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, yesterday on certain foul reptilians' politicizing the death of Seth Rich:

... On Sunday, former House speaker and Trump insider Newt Gingrich used Fox’s national platform to spread the lies, squandering what remains of his own credibility to make respectable people think it might be so. (Police think it may have been a robbery gone wrong.) 

Decent people should shun both Hannity and Gingrich. (our emphasis)

The Washington Post op/ ed page this morning:

The president just made a titanic foreign policy shift. The media missed it. By Newt Gingrich

That would be the same newspaper that adopted the post- election slogan, "Democracy dies in darkness."  Good to know the Post has such high, immutable standards.