Off Message newsletter

[Synthaholic]

He wrote this months ago. They didn't listen. As far as we know. Joseph Biden (God's choice) hasn't spoken yet tonight.

 

[Synthaholic]

A snip from his latest:


The succession to a new ticket, almost certain to be led by Harris, has rattled Republicans badly.

They will say all manner of nonsense in the hope of making this transition turbulent. Their vice presidential nominee JD Vance has intimated that if Biden isn’t fit enough to run for re-election and serve another full term, then he isn’t fit enough to serve out the next six months. It’s the kind of argument an intelligent person can only make in bad faith.

They tried to psyche Biden and his allies out of making this decision by suggesting it might somehow not be legal for Biden to withdraw from the race. They’ve pretended to believe that the winner of a primary (a Democratic primary, anyhow) is obligated by law to accept the nomination and run for office even if they decide the right thing for themselves and the country is to retire.

They’re making risible arguments, and may well file frivolous lawsuits, because they’re terrified. Everything they’ve said and done since this debates reveals their collective judgment: Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden, but maybe only Joe Biden.

 

[Billiejeens]

A snip from his latest:


The succession to a new ticket, almost certain to be led by Harris, has rattled Republicans badly.

They will say all manner of nonsense in the hope of making this transition turbulent. Their vice presidential nominee JD Vance has intimated that if Biden isn’t fit enough to run for re-election and serve another full term, then he isn’t fit enough to serve out the next six months. It’s the kind of argument an intelligent person can only make in bad faith.

They tried to psyche Biden and his allies out of making this decision by suggesting it might somehow not be legal for Biden to withdraw from the race. They’ve pretended to believe that the winner of a primary (a Democratic primary, anyhow) is obligated by law to accept the nomination and run for office even if they decide the right thing for themselves and the country is to retire.

They’re making risible arguments, and may well file frivolous lawsuits, because they’re terrified. Everything they’ve said and done since this debates reveals their collective judgment: Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden, but maybe only Joe Biden.

Boring.

 

[Synthaholic]

Boring.

Well, it's intelligent discourse, and you need short sentences consisting of small words.

Now run along and look up 'discourse'.

 

[Billiejeens]

Well, it's intelligent discourse, and you need short sentences consisting of small words.

Now run along and look up 'discourse'.

What?

 

[Synthaholic]

Imagine a period of Republican rule, even a brief one, defined by developments like the following:

• Business elites and industrialists align with GOP pseudo-populists to support a system of tariffs absent any progressive taxation, dramatically increasing their own wealth and power at the expense of normal people who must overpay for staple goods to subsidize the fortunes of the ultra-wealthy.
• This inherently corrupt alliance transforms into a plot against democracy, including efforts to flood society with anti-worker and anti-democratic propaganda, overturn elections, stack the Supreme Court with loyalists, tilt the playing field of elections to lock in minority rule, and even corrupt the decennial Census.
• Democrats struggle politically despite this intolerable state of affairs, due in part to GOP power grabs, and to the influence of third party candidates. But they also stick with an old, unpopular incumbent who loses the presidency after one term.
• Elections under these circumstances are all hotly contested, and narrowly decided, allowing Republicans to win the presidency most of the time without ever building majoritarian appeal.

This is something like the world Donald Trump’s Republican Party seeks to build today. But it’s also (in extremely, embarrassingly imprecise and abbreviated terms) the history of the Gilded Age, and the commandeering of the state by tycoons and robber barons.

 

[Synthaholic]

Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more ​ Don't Let The GOP's Harris Smears Go Unanswered​ Some of them are harmless, others are counterproductive, but eventually one will snowball into a big problem.​ Brian Beutler Jul 24 ∙ Preview ​ ​ ​ ​ READ IN APP​ ​ (Photo by Jim Vondruska/Getty Images) A substantial body of reporting suggests Kamala Harris’s alternate candidacy sent Donald Trump and his campaign racing back to the drawing board. A switch in time that enraged swine. Republicans wanted to run against Joe Biden so badly, and now they’re pissed they can’t. Consider Stephen Miller’s satisfying meltdown here, or the fact that Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio is bracing for Harris to claim a lead in the polls. If you’re a masochist, you can navigate to Truth Social and scroll through Trump’s ongoing meltdown. It’s not that they had no inkling Biden might step aside for Harris. Days after last month’s fateful debate, Trump called Biden a “broken-down pile of crap” to some golf-course buddy, and boasted, “I got him out of the—and that means we have Kamala.”​

 

[Synthaholic]

The Stephen Miller meltdown that he mentioned.

 

[Synthaholic]

My podcast cohost Matthew Yglesias thinks Harris would be best served by making conspicuous policy gestures that code moderate. Four days after Biden withdrew from the race, and two days after Harris locked down the Democratic nomination, he wrote, “everyone needs to be realistic that she's still down in the polls and needs the leash to run a campaign aimed at persuading the center.”

Hear us fight about this on Politix

By contrast, recently coconut-pilled progressives like David Klion want Harris to maintain factional cohesion—presumably this advice would apply in general, but Klion argues specifically that she should court the left by rejecting the pro-Israel governor Josh Shapiro as a running mate.

I’m much more uncertain (and have no specific suggestions to offer) about the approach Harris should take, or the balance she should strike. As a threshold issue, it isn’t clear to me whether Harris urgently needs to do anything, because we don’t know who’ll be winning when the dust from the shakeup settles. But more to the point: all these years later I remain deeply uncertain about the implicit question at the heart of the debate: How exactly did Obama’s coalition come together?

​

(Photo by Trevor Stone)
Was the cerebral, cosmopolitan Obama able to run up the score with non-college whites because he mastered the art of cross-racial working-class appeals and issue moderation? Was it that he seemed steady-handed, serious, and methodical at an uncertain time? Was he simply such a cultural behemoth that it became “cool” to support him—even in parts of the country where racial resentment runs high? Or… was he mostly lucky to be running for president at the end of eight disastrous years of GOP rule?

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[marvin martian]

Except Biden isn't a bad candidate.

This is fucking hilarious. Barely a month ago.

 

[Synthaholic]

True.

 

[Synthaholic]

Maybe it's just me, but I never find anything to disagree with in his writings.

---

Prior to this most improbable of months, a hallmark of the Biden era had been a great forgetting of the Trump years that preceded it.

Joe Biden’s belief that he could unilaterally turn down the temperature in American politics (as if Republicans had no power or incentive to keep it ratcheted up) along with the difficulty he had defending himself or mounting partisan attacks, allowed a fatal resignation to take hold within the anti-Trump majority. Biden’s lackluster politics enervated the broad left, while the right reveled in revisionism. Many Americans let go of their never-again determination to lock Donald Trump out of power. Other softened their memories of his terrible presidency, and even reconceived it as part of the pre-COVID good-old days.

It took about six days, plus a little grit and good fortune, for a great remembering to set in.

The key was calling an early end to the Biden era, and turning leadership of the Democratic Party over to a younger, vigorous, more comfortably partisan campaigner. But the reversal was helped along by two less dramatic contingencies:

1. Trump’s decision to nominate an un- or under-vetted candidate for the vice presidency, making his ticket a perfect foil for one led by a female former prosecutor; and
2. Democrats’ late, related discovery of an effective rhetorical pitch to reconsolidate the anti-Trump movement. It’s us versus them, we are normal, they are weird.

The effect has been dramatic. Wherever the horserace lands in the next couple weeks, these developments have remade the game board. They’ve seen Trump survive an assassination attempt, play the press like a fiddle through his third nominating convention…and lose popularity. They’ve seen Democrats coalesce around a figure they’d long counted out as political roadkill, only to see her favorability numbers soar.

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[Synthaholic]

Let's Stop Playing Dumb​

Donald Trump's manipulations are transparent, and if reporters had more grit or integrity, the manipulation itself would be a big story.​

 

[Synthaholic]

 

[Synthaholic]

Free article today.​

​

The Rotten World Elon Musk Is Trying To Force On Us​

Beating Donald Trump and Elon Musk won't just feel good—it's critical to thwarting a bleak vision of the near- and long-term future.​

 

[Synthaholic]

Even Republicans should be getting this guy's free newsletter, at least. Or subscribe.



Why Everyone In Politics Panders To Republicans


Before returns are in tomorrow, I’ll publish my final thoughts on the 2024 election, including the role of traditional media has played.


The short version is that, unlike in 2016, most voters this year will have been able to apprise themselves of the stakes of this election pretty easily. Eight years ago, casual news consumers could easily have been misled into believing that Donald Trump was the less-corrupt of the two candidates; that he was uncouth and unpolished but nevertheless issue-driven, and in any case very unlikely to win so—whatever, vote your conscience. A great deal of public understanding of that election stemmed from news networks running his remarks unfiltered and uncorrected.


Today, Trump lies as much as ever and right-wing media is the dominant form in our country. Responsible journalism is shrinking into a small niche within political media, and more and more of what people learn about politics, true or false, is determined by algorithm or the raw viral potential of content. Nevertheless, this year, I think most voters (even Trump supporters) are on notice both that he can win, and that his victory would plunge us into a dark unknown.


Some people just thrill to recklessness, and this election is a test of whether they’re numerous enough to elect a president. Their temptation will either prevail or it will be defeated.


But that doesn’t mean I think national political journalists collectively did a good job! I spent much of this final week before the election in public and private conversation with these agenda-setters, hoping to awaken them to the risk they’re taking with their own vocation by pandering to people who want to destroy it.

​

In a worst-case scenario, political journalists will once again help deliver the presidency to Trump, and this time he will institute a much farther-reaching crackdown on the press. But even if Kamala Harris wins, a large percentage of mainstream news consumers are questioning the value of political journalism as practiced by leading national outlets. If these consumers leave the market, the outlets will be in big trouble.

Brian Beutler | Substack

Founder of Off Message, a newsletter about politics, media, and culture, without the jargon or talking points. Formerly Crooked Media editor in chief, New Republic senior editor.

substack.com

 

[Synthaholic]

Boycott The Donald Trump Show​

Playing captive to the lies he’ll tell at his coming address to Congress is weak, conveys weakness, and surrenders the whole national stage to him.​

There’s one form of mass anger sweeping the country, and it’s all directed at Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and, more recently, JD Vance. (Perhaps he was feeling a bit left out…)

In an irony, we can see the anger most clearly in the reddest states and districts, because that’s where Republican office holders still resemble elected representatives, rather than quislings or Trump vassals. Their electorates are so Republican that they don’t dread town hall events. Letting their MAGA freak flags fly is representative. But they forget that even in 75-25 Trump districts, tens of thousands of voters dislike Trump and grow more impatient with his antics every day.

Because these dustups happen in places that seem unlikely—central Georgia or rural Oregon or flyover country—Trump loyalists have chalked it up to astroturf groups and agents provocateur. Over many years now I have seen both parties make this mistake. If demonstrators are mad at Republicans, it must be due to meddling by groups like Indivisible. If demonstrators are mad at Democrats, they’re surely underwritten by well-heeled lobby shops like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. And though everyone should know better by now, the error is understandable. In our national lore, we tend to decouple the logistical work of organizing and staging from the heroism of public-facing activists, who, we imagine, rise and protest of their own volition, driven by righteous anger. When the people doing the organizing behind the curtain are operatives for corporate front groups or labor unions, it becomes even more tempting to dismiss the significance of the men and women who actually show up to be counted. Just another Brooks Brothers riot.


Brian calls it, then Roger Marshall tries the same old trick:

Now, you can all lie to yourself and tell yourself that these are Democratic operatives, but that would be pathetic.

 

[Synthaholic]

Anyone watching that video would have to conclude that they are ALL Democratic operatives in order for the lie to work, as they are all screaming at Marshall as he makes his cowardly escape.

Also, no one is looking at the two people speaking like "who the hell are you? You're a stranger to us." Nope. These are all local people, which I'm sure could be further proven.