Author: A.T.

Thunderous Applause And A Prolonged Ovation

Pete versus JD.  A debate I think we’d all like to see.  (Bill Maher – 3 minutes.)

Don Jr.’s girlfriend thinks we stormed the beaches of Normandy to fight communism.  And this was no unscripted slip-of-the-tongue (40 seconds).

Fareed Zakaria explains how the parties have changed.

“To understand how complete that transformation is, notice that not a single former nominee of the Republican Party for president or vice president is attended the Republican National Convention.”

He goes on to say:

Biden was a strong candidate against Trump in 2020 and has been an excellent president with major accomplishments in both domestic and foreign policy. His manner and tone have been dignified, decent and empathic.

But for months now, it’s been clear that this would not be enough. In early May, I pointed out that polls had Biden headed for a loss and that the key number to look at was the question of who voters felt was more competent. In 2020, Biden led Trump by nine percentage points; earlier this year, Trump led Biden by 16 points — a 25-point shift. This is obviously a reflection of people’s sense that Biden was just too old for the job, a perception he could not change. And that was before the debate.

Crime is falling, inflation is falling, mortgage rates are falling, we’re producing more oil and gas than any country in history — including in Trump’s best year — and the border crisis persists solely because Trump has willed it to.

There’s still lots we need to do — starting with that border crisis he insists we not end until he can ride it back to power.  But we’ve made real progress and are poised to make lots more.

If I had to predict: Joe will get the thunderous, prolonged standing ovation he deserves next month as he takes the stage to support our nominee.

That nominee and his or her VP will forcefully prosecute the case against Trump and — with our help, help, help — save America from fascism.

Which someone should tell Kimberly Guilfoyle is what we stormed the beaches of Normandy to defeat.

 

And Now COVID?

THE TOP LINE

Two things can be true at the same time:

  1. Our chances of winning in November are better if Joe takes the win and passes the torch.  He’s been a great president.
  2. 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.

:

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.

 

The V.P.

Not Speaking Truth To Power: our leaders owe it to their leader — and the country — to tell him what they think.

If not Joe, who?  According to this ranked-choice poll, Kamala.

Passed over for VP:

> Gov. Doug Burgum, who said he wouldn’t do business with Trump.

> Marco Rubio, who called Trump a con artist.

Chosen:

> J.D. Vance, a never-Trumper who compared Trump to Hitler.

(In fairness, what Republican hasn’t said unflattering things about Trump? Two minutes worth sharing.)

And much more — read the oppo research memo Steve Schmidt shared yesterday.

Now Vance says he got it wrong; having seen the results Trump got as president, he’s become a big fan.

In fact, the economy Trump was handed was much better than the economy he handed off.

Trump will blame that on the pandemic — and who could have predicted a pandemic?

Trump slashed CDC staff inside China prior to COVID.  The program in China specifically charged with spotting new infectious diseases went from having four American staff in 2017 to none by 2019.

Even without those cuts, it’s not clear COVID could have been averted the way Obama averted Ebola.  But the contrast between competence and bluster seems clear.  Same with providing affordable health care.  And bringing manufacturing jobs home.  And revitalizing our infrastructure.  And working out a truly bipartisan solution to the border crisis that “he alone” prevented from becoming law.  Read the bill.  It would have ended the crisis.  Trump insisted the crisis continue.

But I digress.

THE SHOOTER

In 2021, he sent $15 to a progressive group, but he later registered as a Republican — so maybe he was just a hopeless loner . . . bullied every day in school . . . obsessed with guns, rejected by the rifle team, who wanted to prove he was a good shot after all.  Too early to know.

Kristina M.: “Whether or not it was politically motivated, ‘mass’ shootings happen on average more than once a day in the U.S.  This one is shocking only because the venue was so highly secured.  Either all mass shootings are tragedies that demand we do something to prevent them; or, as Republicans repeatedly tell us, they are ‘the price of freedom’ and we just have to live with them.”

 

The Shooting

Any political violence — let alone something as egregious and tragic as Saturday in Pennsylvania — is completely unacceptable.

Like everyone else, I condemn it.

I found this perspective worth the 8 minutes.

He might have added that while a mob was chanting “hang Mike Pence,” hunting for Nancy Pelosi, storming the Capitol, and beating police . . . the man who had incited them to “fight like hell” (knowing that many were armed) watched for more than 3 hours as they did so, brushing aside pleas from all sides to call them off.

 

 

NATO Aggression

Trump’s son-in-law is going to build “a memorial dedicated to all the victims of NATO aggression.”

General Wesley Clark calls it “a betrayal of the United States, its policies, and the brave diplomats and airmen who did what they could to stop Serb ethnic cleansing.”

Putin loves Trump.  Trump loves Putin — and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and strongmen across the board.  He aspires to be the strongest of them all.  Democracy is not his thing — authoritarianism is.  And hey, he’s entitled to favor any form of government he wants.  “It’s a free country.”  At least for now.

But we get a say, too, November 5.

(Not, needless to say, by violence.)

The GOP Platform Perfectly Reflects the Lunacy of Trump’s Party.  “It’s an unconditional surrender to the cult of Trump, and its plan to reduce inflation* is laughable,” writes Timothy Noah in the New Republic:

“Republicans,” the 2024 platform says, “will use existing Federal Law to keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.” If that rings a bell, it’s because this is slight reworking of what Trump said last Veteran’s Day in Claremont, New Hampshire: “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” It did not go unnoticed back then that “vermin” echoed Hitler (“Should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin?”), so the offending word was scrubbed from the platform version.

Maureen Dowd: For Biden, a Race Against Time.

Chris Matthews: He’s Our Guy.

David Frum: “Biden has been an astonishingly successful president“ . . .

With a wafer-thin majority in the House and Senate in his first two years (and despite losing the House for his second), Biden enacted more major liberal legislation than any other president since Lyndon B. Johnson. He organized the successful defense of Ukraine against Russian invasion, expanded and invigorated NATO, and faced down internal opposition in his own party to stand by Israel in its hour of need.

Over his four years in office, one social indicator after another has turned positive after trending the wrong way under even the pre-pandemic Donald Trump: Crime is down, marriages are up; opioid deaths are down, the number of American births is up. Not all of this was his personal work, but it happened on his watch—and the opposite happened on the previous watch.

. . . but, Frum says, the President should pass the torch.

If he doesn’t, we just have to hunker down and make sure he wins — and we will — because in his second term, he and Kamala and their team of 4,000 appointees will do a terrific job for average Americans and for the world at large.  And because — more to the point — the alternative is the end of the American experiment.  A Trump/Putin victory; monuments to NATO aggression, and all.

All that matters is that we win.  Which means all that matters is that we select whichever slate gives us the best chance.

*Inflation, which Trump would have his followers believe is raging out of control, came in at one-tenth of one percent in June, or 1.2% annualized.  So when they say inflation was 3%, it means prices are 3% higher than they were a year ago, which includes not just the most recent month’s rise, but the prior 11 as well.

I’m not suggesting a month’s inflation can be measured with precision; or that next month might not be worse.  But it seems pretty clear inflation is not raging; prices are rising slower than wages; and the current rate, whether 1.2% annualized or 3%, is not far from the Fed’s 2% target.  (You might think the target should be zero — if inflation is bad, why have any of it?  But, among other things, a little inflation greases the psychological wheels.)

 

We Win Either Way

George Clooney says . . .

I love Joe Biden.  But we need a new nominee.

I’m guessing you’ve already read that one.

Tom Friedman says . . . 

Both men running for president right now are unfit for the job: One is a good man in obvious cognitive and physical decline, and the other is a bad man who lies as he breathes, whose main platform is revenge . . . .

It’s worth reading in full, but that’s the nub of it:  Which would we rather have?  A good man who’s slowing down; or a bad man with enormous energy to do terrible things?

Consider:

If Biden says “Putin” when he means Zelensky or “Trump” when he means Harris (and then quickly corrects himself), no damage is done.  He’s not going to slip and accidentally veto a bill that revitalizes the nation’s infrastructure (a bill Trump never managed to get passed); or accidentally side with Putin against the FBI and against Ukraine. 

But when Trump carries out Project 2025 — and becomes the world’s strongest strongman — terrible damage will be done, with more to come in his third and fourth terms.  (Do you think he would ever willingly give up power, except, perhaps, to his son?)

Consider, too, the difference between the two parties:

As Friedman notes, “only one party in America’s two-party system is ready to defend our constitutional order anymore.”  The other “is ready to renominate Trump even though many of those who worked most intimately with him in his first term — including his vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state, chief of staff, national security adviser, press secretary, communications director and attorney general — have warned that Trump is erratic, immoral and someone who must never be let near the White House again.”

Whom would you rather have: a good man in a wheelchair with serious health problems who might not live out his fourth term, or a fascist with a mustache who holds legendary rallies?  Or, to move it forward 80 years: an aging but experienced, principled leader like Biden; or someone with more energy like Putin/Le Pen/Trump?  (I lump them together because Le Pen recently did.)

Consider this anecdote from 1962: When Presidents Played By the Rules.  (And read books.  And tried to set a good example for the nation’s kids.)

Democratic Presidents still do.

I titled this post Either Way, We Win because, whatever happens, we must and, I think, will.

There’s no question that Joe and his team of 4,000 highly competent appointees — who will need no transition or learning curve to keep moving the country forward — would be a thousand times – a million times – better than Trump and the team he would assemble once he released some of them from prison.  If Joe is our nominee, I feel sure we can persuade enough voters of that to win.

It will be tough — but so was Georgia in 2022, when we had to elect that state’s first Black and first Jewish senator.  No one thought we could – but we had to, and we did.

That said . . . and as clear as yesterday’s press conference made it that, though old, Joe Biden really knows his stuff and has invaluable relationships with leaders around the world . . . I’m in the camp that believes our odds are better if Joe takes the win, passes the torch, and gives us the energizing excitement of a mini-primary, and/or a fresh story.

However the next few days and weeks play out, though, we have to win — and absolutely can.

Have a great weekend.

 

Once Elected, Can Tyrants Be Dislodged?

You saw the good outcomes in Europe.  Progressives won in Britain.  In France, Trump-like nationalists finished third.

(Watch what Le Pen says about being allied with Trump/Putin — 40 seconds.)

Normal, free and fair democratic elections.

But of course that’s not how it works in Putin’s Russia or Kim’s North Korea — or lots of other places around the world.

A friend writes to say:

We must not forget about the upcoming presidential “election” in Venezuela on the 28th.

It would be following the now typical Nicaraguan model of democratic pretense, except that down here, we are all learning a lesson in charismatic leadership. Lo and behold, Maria Corina Machado (MCM) is spearheading the democratic opposition to the current authoritarian and quasi-brutal regime. They disqualify her, threaten her, put innumerable obstacles in her way, and she responds brilliantly and her movement only grows. Everyone now knows that in an even vaguely equitable election, she (or since they disqualified her, her surrogate candidate Edmundo González) would win in a landslide. All of a sudden, this stolid, dense authoritarian regime has an unanticipated and non-trivial problem on its hands.

Chavismo wants to pretend to have a democratic election, but they have no intention (ZERO) of giving up power except in a few carefully negotiated instances for appearance’s sake. (Where would they go, if not to jail?)  So they have long been training in the techniques of the heavy-handed regimes of Cuba and Nicaragua, which have demonstrated real success at staying in power at whatever cost. But now they find that they have MCM all over them, and it is increasingly unclear how they can fake it. This is the stuff of Nelson Mandela on a local, Latina scale.

So keep an eye on what is coming in Venezuela and pray for the best.

(If you should want to say anything publicly to call attention to this, please keep me completely anonymous. The heat is on down here.)

For more on this, watch Thor Halvorssen’s conversation with the bravest woman in South America.

Whether it’s Joe or someone else, we have to win or else Trump (and then his son) will never leave.

And then what?

The Lincoln Project: “For those who can’t imagine the death of American democracy, we imagined it for you” (4 minutes).

 

Taking The Win

I’ve long said Joe’s been a great president who’ll always put the country first.

Millions of his fans now believe he should do the selfish thing: take the win and pass the torch.

I say “the selfish thing” because he would:

> Go down in history as one of our greatest presidents.

> Avoid the frighteningly real risk of being remembered, instead, for extinguishing the torch.

(Sure — like Russia and China, we’ll have elections.  We’ll have courts.  We’ll have a legislature.  Even North Korean has those things.  But — like those countries, the ranks of whose leaders Trump hopes to join — we’d have a strongman bent on total control, very possibly for more than two terms, with a son in the wings ready to extend his rule.  The Statue of Liberty weeps at the thought.  The Founders roll in their graves.)

> Get to relax.  God knows he’s earned it.

Because the President is known more for his resilience, modesty, empathy, love of family, and love of country than for his selfishness — the man took Amtrak for decades, and have I ever told you my grilled cheese story? — doing the selfish thing, if he does it, will be hard.

And one more reason to admire him.

Because the only metric that matters here is who has the best chance of winning.  If it’s Biden/Harris, that should be our team.  If it’s Harris/Shapiro or Harris/Coons, that should be our team.  If a Whitmer/Warnock or a Whitmer/Wes Moore team emerges from a mini-primary, that should be our team.

No matter who our team is, I’m all in.

Maureen Dowd’s take, in case you missed it.

The Escalation Trap POTUS needs to avoid.

OKAY, IF YOU INSIST

Picture it: Vice President Biden is headlining our annual LGBT dinner, this one in D.C.  I ask one of his long-time aides if there’s anything he wouldn’t expect us to know that we could surprise him with. 

“Believe it or not, he likes those little miniature grilled cheese sandwich hors d’oeuvres.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Perfect.”

I call the hotel and ask that they prepare a plate of these things for the photo line portion of the evening.

“Oh.  Let me see whether we can do that,” he says.

“Whether your chef can make a grilled cheese sandwich?” 

“No, I’m sure he can do that.  But it’s more complicated than that.”

It turns out that any time the Vice President is going to eat something prepared outside his or her normal routine, a high-ranking naval officer needs to be in the kitchen for the 24 hours before.  An admiral, I think.  My memory has gone a little hazy on this.  Maybe not a full admiral, and maybe not a full 24 hours.  But something like that.

“Seriously???” I said on the second or third phone call when I was told, sorry, this four-star hotel could not prepare a little plate of grilled cheese squares for the V.P.

 “Yes, I’m very sorry.”

So now it’s the night of the dinner and Charles and I have purposely hung back to be the last ones in the photo line, to have a moment alone.

“I’m so sorry!  I had hoped to have a plate of little grilled cheese sandwiches for you.”

“Oh, I love those things — how did you know?”

So I tell him the story.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” he laughs, rolling his eyes.  “Like someone’s really going to try to assassinate the Vice President.”

 

The Court, The Election, and Plan B

THE COURT

Rachel on the Court’s immunity ruling (90 seconds).

The rule of law in this country means that the law is not used as the instrument of the ruler; the rule of law is supposed to constrain the ruler.  And the Supreme Court just undid that.  And the only way out of this is to put someone in the White House from here on out who will not abuse the absolutely tyrannical power they have just been granted.

So how do we do that?

THE ELECTION

Most of us agree there’s only one valid consideration: we should do whatever gives us the best chance of winning.

And most of us agree Joe Biden and his team have done a terrific job: restoring decency and dignity to the Office, competence and honesty to the Administration; reversing the decades-long decay of our infrastructure; bringing inflation and unemployment down, manufacturing jobs home; restoring our alliances, standing up to Russian aggression, appointing progressive judges, confronting climate change . . . and more.

On Joe ‘s watch, wages are now rising faster than inflation, the stock market’s at record highs, we’re the largest energy-producing country in the world, and crime rates have fallen.

Not bad for an old guy.

So . . . stick with Joe?  open convention?  something else?

Conversations are in overdrive.

Tom Friedman’s column yesterday likely made sense to a lot of people.

You should probably stop here and read it.

I’ve heard from really smart people on all sides.

That the Biden team has not seized on “the antihistamine theory” suggests Thursday’s debate performance was not the result of a cold pill after all — and the President is too honest to pretend that it was.  Which leaves us with the Gish gallop theory — that someone as bright as you or me can be flummoxed by a tsunami of outlandish claims.  (See: Donald Trump’s Shocking Box Score: 602 Lies in Just 40 Minutes.)

For the President to bounce back, most people believe he needs to do extended interviews like this one with Stephanopoulos scheduled for Friday.

He can come right out and say —

Look. I’m an old guy with a lifelong stutter who has trouble confronting a fire hose of lies with 50 million people watching me.

But my job isn’t to be a debater, it’s to assemble and lead a terrific team to make life better for the American people.

So I’m here to answer anything you want to know about inflation and immigration and health care and all the other things that matter to folks.

But first let me just say: only 4 of the top 44 people in his administration have endorsed him. The people he appointed who worked most closely with him won’t endorse him.  Some have written books begging folks not to support him. Think about that!  What does that tell you?  I may be boring and old, but I’m effective.  I know right from wrong. I tell the truth.  And when I misspeak, as I often have all my life, I correct my mistakes. I don’t insist on “alternate facts.”

Our infrastructure is being revitalized and our country is getting stronger every day. And if Trump hadn’t killed the bipartisan border bill, we would have ended that crisis by now. TRUMP killed it because he needs the crisis to continue so has an issue to run on.  He needs it to stay out of jail.  The immigration crisis is HIS crisis now.  It’s Trump who has kept it from being fixed, for his own selfish reasons.

Okay!  Thanks for letting me get all that off my chest.  Now fire away, George.

And then, in a calm, relaxed way, they would discuss each issue in depth.

If he can’t shine in that format brightly enough t0 shake the images from Thursday, we go to plan B, as Friedman argues we must.

WHAT IS PLAN B?

Part #1 would be simply for Joe to take the win.  Pass the baton; go down in history as having been one of our greatest presidents ever; avoid the possibility of going down in history as the guy who lost democracy.

And then?

Some dream of Michelle Obama magically grabbing the baton — one poll has her beating Trump by 11 points.

More likely combos might be Kamala Harris & Chris Coons or Gretchen Whitmer & Raphael Warnock.

Some people would like to see the President come out into the Rose Garden flanked by everyone from the Clintons and Obamas to Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kerry Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, James Clyburn, Al Gore, Joe Manchin, A.O.C. . . . you get the idea . . . and basically “anoint” whatever team he and his advisors believe would give us the best chance of November 5.

Another approach comes from a friend who writes:

I would much prefer an open 6-week process with at least 3 candidates (say, Harris, Whitmer, Newsom) with Joe not choosing but pre-endorsing whichever wins.

They’d do maybe 3 debates (that respect Reagan’s 11th commandment of not criticizing a member of their own party), driving Trump out of the news, showing off how good they are, driving resurgent-optimism/enthusiasm money to the DNC and culminating in a real, “woo-hoo for democracy” convention that has some actual excitement to it and huge viewership and culminates in the formerly-Biden delegates actually choosing whoever the hell they choose, and then busting out into Sept-Oct to beat the pants off Trump, with a fresh, virile (of either gender) media- and convention-legitimized winner of a candidate who makes Trump look like the pasty old gasbag he is, and Joe active in the campaign.

That — disorder, excitement, suspense, validation — to me is a way better scenario than some backroom deal in which Joe bows out for a pre-determined successor. BTW, it would also leave Kennedy with only otherwise-Trump voters.

Each debate (maybe each stump speech) begins “All three of us are a vastly better, positive choice than Trump, and I will enthusiastically support and campaign for either of my friendly rivals if I am not the nominee. That’s why I’m not going to say a negative word about either of them, just try to tell and show you about me and how I would fulfill the office if elected, and hope that gains the delegates’ support.” It’s actually a FUN 6 weeks!!

Whatever happens, it seems now to be happening fast.  And I go back to what I posted right after the shock of the debate:

All I’m going to say for now is that Joe Biden has been a great, great president — his record is terrific; his decency, exemplary — and will do, I believe, whatever gives us the best chance of defeating Trump.