And Now COVID? July 18, 2024July 18, 2024 THE TOP LINE Two things can be true at the same time: Our chances of winning in November are better if Joe takes the win and passes the torch. He’s been a great president. If he doesn’t, we can still win. He and his team of 4,000 would continue to make us proud and move us forward. Either way, we have to get the job done. The alternative is the twice-impeached convicted felon and adjudicated rapist whom Putin loves — but whom Republicans like Nikki Haley and J.D. Vance call “unhinged” — “a con man” — “dangerous” — “America’s Hitler” . . . a man who “destroys everything he touches,” running to wreak “vengeance” and “retribution.” He already controls the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives, and had the power to invoke a Senate filibuster to keep the border in crisis — his best campaign issue. Watching in horror won’t help. Lamenting the situation won’t help. Tuning out won’t help. Only helping will help — regardless of who our nominee turns out to be. For example: here, here, and here. MENENDEZ Convicted on all counts. Kevin Drum: Let’s tally up the score so far. Joe Biden’s Department of Justice has now secured convictions against two Democrats: The president’s son, thanks to pressure from Republican lawmakers. Robert Menendez, a Democratic senator from New Jersey. In addition, they have indicted one other Democrat: Henry Cuellar, a Democratic member of Congress from Texas. Meanwhile: A federal judge appointed by Trump has dismissed charges he’s clearly guilty of, based on reasoning that would make a first-year law student blush. The Supreme Court, with three members appointed by Trump, has quashed two of the four charges against him for trying to overturn a legal election. They then granted him immunity so broad that it jeopardizes the other two charges, very likely killing the entire case. Now can we talk again about how the federal court system has been weaponized? VANCE What Mitt Romney Saw in the Senate (from the Atlantic): . . . [A]s Romney surveyed the crop of Republicans running for Senate in 2022, it was clear that more Hawleys were on their way. Perhaps most disconcerting was J. D. Vance, the Republican candidate in Ohio. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J. D. Vance,” Romney told me. They’d first met years earlier, after he read Vance’s best-selling memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. Romney was so impressed with the book that he hosted the author at his annual Park City summit in 2018. Vance, who grew up in a poor, dysfunctional family in Appalachia and went on to graduate from Yale Law School, had seemed bright and thoughtful, with interesting ideas about how Republicans could court the white working class without indulging in toxic Trumpism. Then, in 2021, Vance decided he wanted to run for Senate, and reinvented his entire persona overnight. Suddenly, he was railing against the “childless left” and denouncing Indigenous Peoples’ Day as a “fake holiday” and accusing Joe Biden of manufacturing the opioid crisis “to punish people who didn’t vote for him.” The speed of the MAGA makeover was jarring. “I do wonder, how do you make that decision?” Romney mused to me as Vance was degrading himself on the campaign trail that summer. “How can you go over a line so stark as that—and for what?” Romney wished he could grab Vance by the shoulders and scream: This is not worth it! “It’s not like you’re going to be famous and powerful because you became a United States senator. It’s like, really? You sell yourself so cheap?” The prospect of having Vance in the caucus made Romney uncomfortable. “How do you sit next to him at lunch?” Vance was the choice of Project 2025 (60 seconds). So if you don’t think they’re serious about radically changing your country for the worse (unless you’re a white Christian nationalist who prefers Putin to the FBI and wants to criminalize porn, etc.), here’s one more data point: They got their pick. Take heart! We’re gonna win.