The Basic Dilemma

This is exactly the kind of dilemma Sun Tzu talked about.

It should be obvious that US politics is a sewer, better suited to the worst possible comments section on the worst possible website. It's fucking awful in way to many ways.

I don't think that's happened by accident, and I don't think the Dark Money Gang is even trying to hide their cards anymore.

We are being divided on purpose, and at the same time, we're being told that being divided is the real problem, and the solution is to go with a Third Party.

Bullshit. Standard Daddy State Divide-n-Conquer bullshit.

We can spend the time and effort it takes to sort through some of the shit and come to some basic conclusions about our approximate position on the old Left/Right spectrum, but an awful lot of people don't feel motivated for whatever reason, or they don't have the intellectual interest (or the mental horsepower) to do the work.

For my own bad self, I've been chided for being part of the problem - "our deeply divided nation" - because I try to pay some attention to what's going on, and I come down (mostly) on the progressive side of things. So plenty of people see me as way too partisan. And I'm betting that a majority of those people haven't stopped to think about the difference between ideology and partisanship, because then they'd have to make some kind of decision, which puts them right back into a position where they have to figure out what the issue is and where they stand on it, when what they really want is a sensible-sounding excuse not to engage at all.

So - dilemma.

• If you do the responsible citizen-of-a-democracy thing and take a side, you risk being wrong, voting for the wrong guy, and made to look a fool - possibly in public
• If you shun the process by hiding behind Both-Sides-ism, then you can self-congratulate because you're "too smart to fall for any of that politics stuff", but you've handed your right to self-determination to someone else

It may not feel right to be choosing the lesser of two evils, but why would you stand aside and let someone else choose the greater of those evils for you?

Keep choosing the lesser of the two evils, and over time, the "lesser of the two evils" starts to look more like what it is: The greater good.

Opinion

A No Labels candidate would likely throw the election to Trump

Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council and author of “The New Democrats and the Return to Power,” is an adjunct professor of graduate studies in government at Johns Hopkins University.

 

Craig Fuller is a longtime Republican strategist and served as assistant to President Ronald Reagan for Cabinet affairs and chief of staff to Vice President George H.W. Bush.

For most of our careers, the two of us have been on opposite sides of the political aisle. We regularly express our disagreements in a weekly point-counterpoint commentary on a digital platform in Maryland.

But we love our country more than we love our parties, and as we look ahead to the 2024 presidential election, we are in complete agreement: To save the American republic, former president Donald Trump must be defeated. And that’s why the centrist political organization No Labels must cease and desist from its effort to nominate a third-party candidate.

We agree on three points: (1) In a head-to-head general-election contest, Trump faces the same challenges to winning the popular vote as he has in the past, perhaps worse; (2) a moderate independent third-party candidate on the ballot gives Trump the best possible chance of winning reelection; and (3) with Trump saying he will seek reelection even if he is convicted of crimes, we can’t just hope that this threat will go away.

The coup that Trump and his cronies attempted after he lost the 2020 election represented the greatest threat to our democracy since the Civil War. That threat is ongoing. Trump is the Republican front-runner, and, at least so far, his indictments appear to have only intensified his support.

That might change as his legal troubles mount, but if he wins the GOP nomination for president, all Americans who believe in democracy must unite behind a single candidate to assure that Trump, in the words of then-Rep. Liz Cheney, “never again gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”

Even a wounded Trump will be formidable in 2024. Four out of 5 of his voters in 2020 told exit pollers they voted mostly “for [their] candidate” rather than “against his opponent.” Because he has so many hardcore loyalists, his vote is unlikely to fall significantly below its 2016 and 2020 level, about 46 percent.

Dedicated Trump loyalists don’t represent a majority of the electorate. That’s why he has lost the popular vote in both his presidential runs and did not top 47 percent in either. As long as the anti-Trump vote is unified behind a single candidate, Trump is very unlikely to win, as Joe Biden demonstrated in 2020. And this would most likely be the case in a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024.

But a third-party candidate dramatically changes the equation. If he or she takes even a small part of the anti-Trump vote away from Biden, Trump is likely to be returned to the White House. That’s why the No Labels effort poses such a danger to our democracy.

In the five states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — most likely to decide the 2024 election in the electoral college, the numbers tell the story. Together, they have 73 electoral votes. In 2016, Trump narrowly won all of them. In 2020, Biden did.

In all five of these swing states, Biden’s razor-thin margins came from a massive anti-Trump vote. In all of them, at least 1 in 3 Biden voters said they voted mainly against Trump; in Wisconsin, that number was 38 percent; in Arizona (where No Labels has already secured a spot on the 2024 ballot) a whopping 45 percent.

Even a small drop-off from his 2020 anti-Trump vote would put President Biden in a precarious position in 2024. He has no margin for error. Just 44,000 votes out of more than 10 million cast in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin — less than half of 1 percent — were the difference between the Biden presidency and a tie in the electoral college that would have thrown the election to the House of Representatives.

Our calculations show that if a No Labels candidate had won just 3 percent of the popular vote in 2020, Trump would probably be sitting in the White House.

Given Biden’s current low approval rating, it’s not unreasonable to assume a No Labels candidate in 2024 could peel off at least 15 percent of the anti-Trump vote from the president. If that happened, and Trump’s base stayed with him, Trump would win all five swing states comfortably and return to the Oval Office.

Early polling shows Biden and Trump running neck and neck, and every indication is that Biden will again need a big anti-Trump vote. In an April Wall Street Journal poll, 11.5 percent of voters said they disapproved of the way both Biden and Trump handled the presidency. Biden led among those voters by 54 percent to 15 percent. That advantage translates to about 4.5 percent of the total vote, giving Biden that much of a head start in the race. He’s likely to need every bit of that to overcome the intensity of the pro-Trump vote.

If the No Labels organization concludes it wants to put a third-party candidate in the race, that candidate would almost certainly throw the 2024 election to Trump. We need voices from all sides saying, “Not now, No Labels. For the good of the country, cease this third-party effort now.”

Every Day

...45* comes out with some new fuckery. Nothing new about that, of course; it's what he's always done. It's what he's always been about. And I can't believe it's what we have to address every fucking day - what we have to talk about every fucking day - knowing that getting us to talk about him is his whole fucking point. There's nothing else to it. Exposure and brand awareness. "There's no such thing as bad publicity".

And somehow, 20-30% of us are still with him.

And we keep going along with each new iteration of the Cult45 Cliffhanger. Like we're a buncha knuckleheaded 10-year-olds at the local movie house on a random Saturday in 1935.

WaPo's front page today:

Previously, I've put up links to Amy Siskind's posts at Medium, where she keeps a list of these shitty things that Cult45 has been doing. I guess I need to get back to doing that more regularly.

Last week was #100, and the list had more than 150 items on it.

58. On Sunday, WSJ reported GOP operative Peter W. Smith raised at least $100,000 to search for Hillary Clinton’s 33,000 deleted emails. Smith mysteriously died 10 days after first speaking to the Journal in Week 35.

68. The offices of Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency, a troll farm, was set ablaze. Earlier this year, more than a dozen employees of the operation were indicted in the Mueller probe for interfering in the 2016 election.


And this is from Reuters, via The Guardian:

There can be no story more representative of the fucked-up-edness we find ourselves in than "Dead Pimp Wins Election".

GOTV

Liberty Hill

The women will save us - from ourselves - again.

Karen Collins is a grandmother, and award-winning quilter with deep Texas roots. She never cared much about politics until the 2016 election. Now her retirement has a new sense of purpose.

Liberty Hill from K&A on Vimeo.

Approaching Overload

Here at the end of another long fucking day.

Trump had undisclosed hour-long meeting with Putin at G-20 summit

Donald Trump Jr. Met Russian Accused of Laundering $1.4 Billion

Present at the Destruction: How Rex Tillerson Is Wrecking the State Department

(this is from a coupla weeks ago - watch Rachel's last segment from last night if you want that knot in your stomach to get worse)

Republicans divided on debt ceiling strategy

House GOP aims to shut down federal election agency

Quick Survey

We now know Ms Veselnitskaya handed off some kind of file at the meeting in Trump Tower last year.  What was in that file?

a) Kompromat on Hillary

b) Kompromat on Trump(s)

c) both

d) Dammit - I shoulda built that survival bunker when I had the chance

One thing - overload is what these assholes are trying to achieve. They need to shock the system and get us back on our heels.

Get some ideas of what you've been in favor of recently - why you voted for Bernie or Hillary or whoever. Make a list, and bullet-point those ideas so you can rebut the recent bullshit narrative that Liberals are only about blocking Trump and they don't have anything to propose and blah blah blah (Daddy State Rule 1: every accusation is a confession, and sometimes they take the shit they've been guilty of for years and project it onto their opponents)

• Voting Rights and Campaign Finance Reform
• $15 minimum wage
• College tuition help
• Move towards single payer healthcare
• Infrastructure
• Renewable energy and Climate Change

Don't get nuts - keep it to 3 or 4 and always ALWAYS ALWAYS lead with your strongest point, and weave it into a statement of your values.

"I think every adult has the right and the duty to vote. We don't keep our democracy without free and fair elections, and we have to level the playing field so everybody has the same opportunity, and nobody gets to buy the means of making his voice count for more than anybody else's."

Today's Turnaround

Lend 'Em A Hand

From National Journal:

There will be no "boycott" of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech before Congress next month, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Thursday.

But while she downplayed reports of an organized protest, she suggested some lawmakers might just be too busy to attend. And at least two Democrats have already decided they won't be on hand.

"I don't think anybody should use the word 'boycott,'" Pelosi said in her weekly press conference. "When these heads of state come, people are here doing their work, they're trying to pass legislation, they're meeting with their constituents and the rest. It's not a high-priority item for them."

Pelosi's pretty cagey.  This is a wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more proposition, and here's what I think we can do to help out:

Call all three of your Congress Critters and insist that you have an urgent matter requiring their attention; that you don't feel comfortable discussing it with a staffer; and that you can only make time for a visit on the exact date and at the exact time of Netan-fuckin'-yahu's address to the joint session.

Most of them will blow you off - Repubs especially have shown a particular affinity for turning their backs on us if there's a good grandstanding opportunity at hand - but we'll be giving the others some cover if they decide to stay away (ie: constituent service is still supposedly a thing).

And here's the plum - by calling the Repubs and giving them a chance to rebuff your requests, you have some nice advertising fodder for the 2016 election cycle.  

Kinda like this: 
"I called [insert Congress Critter's name here] regarding [insert urgent thingie here], but I guess hearing Uncle Bibi's sales pitch about sending more American kids to get all fucked up in some desert shithole was more important to him."

You're welcome.  Limber up, be creative and let the shit fly.

Voter ID

Getting on airplanes and driving cars and cashing checks and having a drink are all things I dearly love being able to do.

But I actually have an obligation to go out and vote.  It's my right, and since every right carries a responsibility, it's the duty of everybody in this country to participate in our little experiment in self-government.

So I have to insist that you get the fuck outa my way and let me do it.  Thank you.

Solution Seeks Problem

The need to fight rampant voter fraud is one of those really scary sounding memes the Repubs love to trot out as they try to beat back the tide of Youth and Minority voting that they fervently believe threatens to wash them away at any moment.

Rampant Voter Fraud is also - you guessed it - almost completely baseless.

Here's a good look at the "issue" in The Tennesseean (not exactly a bastion of liberal bias):

“They identified a lot of fraud, but very, very, very, very, very, very little of it could be prevented by identification at the polls,” Levitt said.

The remainder involved vote buying, ballot-box stuffing, problems with absentee ballots, or ex-convicts voting even though laws bar them from doing so. Over the same seven-year time period covered by the cases Levitt reviewed, 400 million votes were cast in general elections.

“If there was evidence of this, we’d know about it,” said Elisabeth MacNamara, president of the League of Women Voters. Her organization, which has affiliates in every state, knows voter registrars, attends election meetings, observes and works at polls and is intimately aware of how the election system works.

It's not about protecting the franchise.  It's about keeping people from voting a certain way - in this case for Democrats - and it stinks.  If a big majority (of either party) showed up in some state houses, the electees might grow some balls, step out of line, and then the Lords of Lucre will lose a big measure of control.  And we can't have that now, can we?

Voter Fraud

Repubs make a big noise about how the Dems try to steal elections, but some how there's never any evidence of it at the end of loud and distracting investigations.

And then, there's this.

Voters in Maryland started getting mysterious phone calls on election day last year, that told them to "relax" and not bother going to the polls because President Barack Obama and Gov. Martin O'Malley "have been successful."

"Everything is fine. The only thing left is to watch on TV tonight," the robocalls said.

Some truth from The Brennan Center at NYU Law.

Interesting

Wisconsin State Sen Lena Taylor rips into the "voter ID bill" - and makes a pretty good impression IMO.

What really stuck for me tho' was her mention of Martin Luther King being a card-carrying Repub. It always startles me a little when I'm reminded of how everything seems to flip over once in a while. In the American South during Jim Crow, the Democrats were guys like Lester Maddox and Strom Thurman and George Wallace, and they were all Democrats because Abe Lincoln was a Republican. So it just makes sense that MLK would line up with just about anybody other than those guys. It's good to get these little refreshers once in a while.