#Presidential Rematches

[deadpresidents]

How many presidential rematches have there been?

When it comes to the major candidates in a general election, this year's election will be the ninth rematch:

•John Adams vs. Thomas Jefferson: 1796 & 1800

•John Quincy Adams vs. Andrew Jackson: 1824 & 1828 (William H. Crawford and Henry Clay were also candidates in 1824)

•Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay: 1824 & 1832 (John Quincy Adams and William H. Crawford were also candidates in 1824; John Floyd and William Wirt were also candidates in 1832)

•Martin Van Buren vs. William Henry Harrison: 1836 & 1840 (Hugh L. White, Daniel Webster, and Willie P. Mangum were also candidates in 1836)

•Grover Cleveland vs. Benjamin Harrison: 1888 & 1892 (James B. Weaver was also a candidate in 1892)

•William McKinley vs. William Jennings Bryan: 1896 & 1900

•Dwight D. Eisenhower vs. Adlai E. Stevenson: 1952 & 1956

•Bill Clinton vs. Ross Perot: 1992 & 1996 (George H.W. Bush was also a candidate in 1992; Bob Dole was also a candidate in 1996)

•Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump: 2020 & 2024

[garyconkling]

Presidential Rematches Happen, But Not Often

A 2024 Biden-Trump Rematch Would Be the Seventh in American History Presidential rematches in the United States aren’t common, but they aren’t rare. Of the 59 presidential elections in U.S. history, six (more than 10 percent) have been rematches. The rematch this year between Joe Biden and Donald Trump would be the seventh. For anyone keeping track, the first four rematches resulted in a…

[beemovieerotica]

Trump has openly said he would be a dictator on Day One, reimplementing a Muslim ban, purging the bureaucracy of professional civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, invoking the Insurrection Act to quash protests and take on opponents while replacing military leaders who would resist turning the military into a presidential militia with pliant generals. He would begin immediately to put the 12 million undocumented people in America into detention camps before moving to deport them all. His Republican convention policy director, Russell Vought, has laid out many of these plans as have his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, among others. Free elections would be a thing of the past, with more radical partisan judges turning a blind eye to attempts to protect elections and voting rights. He has openly flirted with the idea that he would ignore the 22nd Amendment and stay beyond his term of office.

The Biggest Lie Trump–Biden 2024 Rematch Voters Are Telling Themselves

Americans have a normalcy bias. It leads them to believe anyone who tells them that everything is awesome and that a system is “holding”—even as that system is hanging together by way of dental floss...And many journalists have a normalcy bias so acute they wouldn’t know how to cover an authoritarian takeover if it meant that one of the two presidential candidates threatened jail for his political opponents—even as he continues to refer to these journalists as “the enemy of the people.” It also means that they tend to cover “Trump convicted on 34 felony counts” in terms of “how much would this story make us deviate from covering a normal election?” It turns out that we’re normalizing the abnormal, covering the election as a horse race between democracy and illiberalism without mentioning illiberalism or considering the stakes and the consequences, and repeatedly applying a false equivalence to Trump and Biden. We are worried about this baseline assumption that everything is fine until someone alerts us that nothing is fine, that of course our system will hold because it always has. We worry that we are exceptionally good at telling ourselves that shocking things won’t happen, and then when they do happen, we don’t know what to do...The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger.

[whencyclopedia]

US Presidential Election of 1796

The US presidential election of 1796 was the first contested presidential election in the history of the United States. John Adams, the candidate of the Federalist Party, won the presidency, defeating his rival, Thomas Jefferson, candidate of the Democratic-Republican Party. Since Jefferson won the second most votes, he became Vice President, as was the protocol at the time.

In the previous two national elections – the US presidential election of 1789 and 1792 – George Washington had been unanimously voted into office, and the presidency had never seriously been contested. Now, with Washington declining to serve a third term, each political party scrambled to secure support for its candidate. Adams, as the incumbent vice president, was widely viewed as Washington's natural successor, but his association with the haughty, nationalist Federalists led to accusations that he was a pro-British monarchist. Jefferson, likewise, was attacked for his party's support of the bloody French Revolution, and his hypocritical opinions on slavery were brought into question. The use of partisan newspapers to attack the candidates became prevalent in this election, reflecting the increase of factionalism in US politics.

At the time, presidential elections were conducted very differently than they are today. Candidates did not run on a shared ticket; instead, each member of the Electoral College cast two votes for whichever candidates they pleased. The candidate who got the most votes was elected president, while the candidate with the second most votes became vice president, regardless of political party. It was for this reason that Adams ended up winning the presidency with Jefferson as his vice president, even though they had been rivals in the election. The partisanship that fueled this election would only worsen four years later, when Adams and Jefferson rematched in the US presidential election of 1800.

Background: Washington's Farewell Address

It was less than two months before the election, on 19 September 1796, when President Washington's famous Farewell Address appeared in the Philadelphia newspaper American Daily Advisor, confirming that he would not seek a third term in office. In the address, Washington revealed that he had initially planned on retiring after his first four years in office but had decided to serve a second term because of heightening tensions with Great Britain. Now, with that crisis averted, Washington saw no reason to stick around and was happy to hand the torch off to a successor. He then went on to emphasize the importance of the Union, which bound all Americans together and protected their liberties, before warning against three existential dangers that threatened to destroy that Union: regionalism, partisanship, and foreign entanglements. On the issue of political partisanship – or 'factionalism' as it was then known – Washington warned that it would lead to a 'spirit of revenge' and would open the door to 'foreign influence and corruption'. He went on to say:

serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of the party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community…they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which the cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterward the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

(constitutioncenter.org)

George Washington

Gilbert Stuart (Public Domain)

Continue reading...

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Gregory E. Williams

With Nikki Haley out of the race, Trump and Biden are officially facing off in a presidential rematch. Both of these deeply unpopular politicians are attempting to get ahead by scapegoating migrants and refugees at the U.S.-Mexico border. In dueling publicity stunts, they both went to the border on Feb. 29., hundreds of miles apart in Texas. Despite the polarized rhetoric, there is little substantive difference between their approaches to immigration. 

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

No 2nd Debate for POTUS

"Brothers" Discuss: Did Donald Trump lie?

The Germany-based company responded to a request for comment from Just The News.“The resemblance is striking,” the company told Just The News. Read more on this story from Just The News reported: Manufacturers of the earrings said on Wednesday that the resemblance between Harris’ earrings and their audio earrings “is striking.” “We do not know whether Mrs. Harris wore one of our products. The resemblance is striking and while our product was not specifically developed for the use at presidential debates, it is nonetheless suited for it,” Malte Iversen, managing director at Icebach Sound, told Just the News on Wednesday. “To ensure a level playing field for both candidates, we are currently developing a male version and will soon be able to offer it to the Trump campaign. The choice of colour is a bit challenging though as orange does not go well with a lot of colours. “Currently, we are unfortunately out of stock and also busy preparing a lawsuit against a big Chinese tech company breaching our patents,” Iversen continued. “We are talking to investors in order to ramp up operations accordingly and are confident that we will ship again very soon.”

As The Gateway Pundit readers probably know, the Harris campaign called for a rematch immediately following Tuesday’s debate in Philadelphia.

Trump's Response on Truth Social:

KAMALA SHOULD FOCUS ON WHAT SHE SHOULD HAVE DONE DURING THE LAST ALMOST FOUR YEAR PERIOD. THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!

When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, “I WANT A REMATCH.” Polls clearly show that I won the Debate against Comrade Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ Radical Left Candidate, on Tuesday night, and she immediately called for a Second Debate.

She and Crooked Joe have destroyed our Country, with millions of criminals and mentally deranged people pouring into the USA, totally unchecked and unvetted, and with Inflation bankrupting our Middle Class.

Everyone knows this, and all of the other problems caused by Kamala and Joe – It was discussed in great detail during the First Debate with Joe, and the Second Debate with Comrade Harris. She was a no-show at the Fox Debate, and refused to do NBC & CBS.

Linsey Davis & Kamala are sorors.

[ridenwithbiden]

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) - "Republican former President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he will not debate Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, hours after Fox News invited the two presidential contenders to participate in a possible second debate on either Oct. 24 or Oct. 27.

Trump and Harris debated each other for the first time on Sept. 10. Trump has said there would not be another debate before the Nov. 5 election. He rejected a past invitation from CNN for an Oct. 23 debate, accepted by Harris.

Trump and Harris face each other in what polls show to be a tight race for the Nov. 5 U.S. elections.

In its statement, Fox said a second debate "would present an opportunity for each candidate to make their closing arguments."

Last week, Harris' running mate and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz debated Trump's running mate and U.S. Senator JD Vance.

"THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH," Trump said on his Truth Social platform. "SO THERE IS NOTHING TO DEBATE."

Trump said it was very late in the process now to have a debate.

Trump faced then-Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. President Joe Biden in a debate in late June.

Biden stepped aside as presidential candidate less than a month after the disastrous performance. Trump had built a lead against Biden following the debate but Harris took over as candidate after Biden bowed out and her entry has tightened the race, with some polls showing she has a narrow lead.

In their Sept. 10 debate, Harris put Trump on the defensive with a stream of attacks on his fitness for office, his support of abortion restrictions and his myriad legal woes."

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

what a coward. even in a safe space like fox.

[redistrictgirl]

As of August 11th, 2024, the race for president is a dead heat.

Let's begin looking at my forecast by understanding what it represents. This map represents the median expected outcome of the presidential election - a slight win for Vice President Harris. The coloration of each state does not necessarily represent the expected margin - the less a candidate is believed to have an advantage and the more undecided voters there are in a state, the closer it moves to a lighter color. In short, the coloration represents the probability a candidate wins a state. With that foreword out of the way, let's look closer at some interesting states:

Arizona and Wisconsin are the two closest states, where Ms. Harris has a theoretical advantage. Really, these states are a coin toss. The good news for the Vice President is that polarization means that the outcome of each state isn't particularly independent, though they are different demographically, with white high school graduates and rural voters having more sway in WI and Hispanic and college-educated voters being more important in AZ.

Nevada isn't particularly important for Electoral College math outside of more fringe scenarios, but it's nice to have for downballot implications and a good temperature check for demographically-similar Arizona. Ms. Harris, then, will be pleased to have a slim edge in the state.

Pennsylvania, by contrast, is pivotal - if former president Trump wins the state, you can reasonably assume that he will win the Electoral College, given its high weight and modest resemblance to Wisconsin. However, Mr. Trump has fallen a good deal behind the Vice President in this state, with only about a one-in-three chance to carry the state. He is behind by a similar margin in Michigan, which is also demographically similar to Pennsylvania.

The South Atlantic states of North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida seem to be a bastion of strength for the former president. He has around a two-in-three chance of winning the former two and is a heavy favorite in the Sunshine State. Mr. Trump must sweep these states for the most straightforward path to the presidency.

Some fringe swing states include Minnesota, the New England states of Maine (at-large) and New Hampshire, and Virginia in Ms. Harris' column, and Texas, Iowa, Alaska(!!), and Maine's second congressional district in Mr. Trump's corner. If one of these polities flips in spite of only having 5-15% odds to do so, expect the candidate who snags it to be having a very good Election Night elsewhere.

Overall, this election is much, much closer than it was a month ago when it was a 2020 rematch. Vice President Harris has shown surprising strength in the Blue Wall and mounted a real comeback in the Southwest, but former President Trump has kept some momentum in the Southeast. In many ways, this map sticks closely to what I call the post-Dobbs coalition (for its applications in 2022), with less religious voters reverting back to the Democratic Party but minorities depolarizing in their place. This is bad news long-term for GOP aspirations, as it makes their gains very inefficient, primarily targeting safely blue states and heavily red states. It's quite the stark reversal from the early Trump era, and I'm curious to see whether that crystallizes throughout these three long, winding months.

[damphexagon]

Fellow Leftists of Tumbler Dot Com ...

I come to you all with a confession, head bowed, filled with shame. I just don't know if I can go on if I don't get this off my chest. So here goes ... I like Kamala Harris. There, I said it. The thing is, I expected this year's election to be another thing to be crushed by. Even the last one that the lesser-of-two-evils candidate won a Pyrrhic victory in sucked shit. I'd emotionally steeled myself for an unwinnable rematch between Ancient Braindead Republican and Trump, followed by 4 years of degradation of civil rights, new mass deportations, worsening environmental destruction, and so forth. And now that... appears to maybe not be going to happen. I know people are not willing to like Harris, because a vote for her is not a vote for The Revolution. Pretty much by definition, you cannot vote a revolution -- after all, a system will never give you the tools you need to dismantle it. But it is a vote for something better, and not in the same way a vote for Biden was for something (only) better than a vote for Trump. You have a woman of color, the youngest serious candidate since Obama, who has promoted and voted for progressive policies for years, not just as something she adopted out of nowhere to get elected (to inevitably abandon immediately after). Within the constraints of what a two-party election can offer, this is what we've wanted. I know the big one for a lot of people right now is the U.S. supporting and financing Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, which is a great tragedy and a national disgrace that should be ended immediately. What I don't get though is why it's making people hate the candidate that most opposes it. Trump is all in, and Biden weirdly maybe even moreso. On the other hand, you have a candidate who refused to attend what basically amounted to a party for Netanyahu, and instead met with him to tell him, from the sounds of the press release at least, get your shit sorted out for a withdrawal from Gaza. When picking a Vice-Presidential candidate, she could've picked the "moderate" Zionist who would've swung a must-win state and most likely won the election, but instead she went with the pro-labor pro-education progressive unknown. To me, that says a lot, about policies but also about personal integrity. I know some would like something more forceful and explicit, but you do need to keep in mind who the average USAmerican voter is and remember that winning does matter. And she is winning. Not by a lot, but steadily by a little more every single day for the past weeks. So I guess what I'm saying is... can you just let me, us, be happy? Maybe just a little bit? I know things are still bad in many ways and regardless of the results of this election the United States is likely to remain a force of destruction in the world. No election result is a substitute for revolutionary action. But as far as elections go, this is more than we could've hoped for in any election since 2016, except the DNC is on board instead of running interference. It's not a guarantee, but things from Medicare For All to the Green New Deal to an actual end of the Israeli genocide of Palestine are more likely now than they have been in a long time. And if nothing else, can't we at the very least take pleasure in Trump's impotent tantrums and visible suffering? I thought we could all at least agree on that. Let me have this. Harris/Walz 2024.

[tiggymalvern]

Nobody I know wanted Biden to run again. Nobody wanted a Biden-Trump rematch and all the polls said so a year ago or more. Biden should have declared two years ago that he would be a one term President, the Dems should have held primaries for his replacement and we should have been bigging up our new candidate all this time. Chances are we would have got someone like Gavin Newsom.

But Biden didn't. And now it is, quite simply, too late. There are four months left until the election. All the funds that Biden has been raising all this time for his campaign cannot simply be transferred to a new candidate. That would be illegal. There is not time for a new candidate to be chosen, raise funds and run. It is impossible to win that way. So we're stuck with Biden, even if the chances of him winning are shrinking by the day.

There would barely be time to replace Biden with Kamala by default, even if we announced that today, and a lot of Dems dislike Kamala. Plus I have serious concerns that a large enough percentage of the American public simply will not vote for a woman for that to tip the balance. Even if only 2 or 3% of Independents are misogynistic enough for that to be a factor, those are the margins this election will be won on. I honestly believe that was a factor in Hillary losing in 2016, along with the fact that people just didn't like her. Kamala is also a woman who is not considered 'likeable'.

Dems need to STOP calling for Biden to stand down. Anyone publicly stating that he needs to be replaced is just doing Trump's work for him. We need to put up, shut up, hold our noses and vote for goddamn Biden, even if he is going senile or has Parkinson's. There are plans in place for that. This is why we have a Veep and an entire Presidential staff - because there are plans for a sick or dead President. There are no plans to stop an authoritarian President who has been given immunity in advance for anything he might do.

[inwokewetrust1981]

More Democrats than Republicans open to third-party presidential candidate

Black voters (52%) say they're open to considering a third-party or independent presidential candidate in a Biden-Trump rematch.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bully Pulp stevebrodner.substack.com

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 12, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 13, 2024

Today, Trump backed out of another debate with Vice President Kamala Harris. He tried to spin his fear as a sign of strength, claiming that “Polls clearly show that I won the Debate,” and so there was no reason to debate again, but boy, is that going to be a hard sell. 

First of all, as journalist Ahmed Baba points out, “This man has never, in his life, denied a stage with millions of viewers…. Trump’s post-debate internal polls must be brutal.” Second, he hardly looks dominant as TikTok is overflowing with memes making fun of his “They’re eating the dogs” moment and as Vice President Harris made fun of his “concepts of a plan” to replace the Affordable Care Act to a packed 17,000-seat stadium in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote: “Impotent Trump was too intimidated to even look Kamala’s direction at the debate and now he wusses out of the rematch. Cannot recall a more dramatic demonstration of beta weakness in a campaign setting.” Harris posted on social media that “we owe it to the voters to have another debate,” and reiterated that sentiment to her cheering supporters in Greensboro.

In a speech to about 550 people in Tucson, Arizona, Trump insisted he had scored a “monumental victory” in the debate, referred to Minnesota governor Tim Walz as the vice president, slurred his words, and appeared to be having trouble reading off the teleprompters. CNN tonight compared one of Trump’s 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton to his performance on Tuesday, and the difference was stark.

Psychiatrist Richard A. Friedman wrote in The Atlantic today that Trump is showing signs of cognitive decline. His tangents and inability to get to a point suggest “a fundamental problem with an underlying cognitive process.” “If a patient presented to me with the verbal incoherence, tangential thinking, and repetitive speech that Trump now regularly demonstrates, I would almost certainly refer them for a rigorous neuropsychiatric evaluation to rule out a cognitive illness,” he wrote.

Trump continues to try to dominate the political debate by refusing to back off any of his assertions, doubling down on the lies about immigrants eating pets and teachers giving students sex change operations. He called Harris a “Marxist communist fascist socialist,” clearly just stringing words together.

Meanwhile, he is giving off vibes of desperation. This afternoon he announced he would launch his crypto platform “World Liberty Financial” on X Spaces on September 16, hardly the sign of a presidential candidate convinced he’s about to regain his position as the leader of the free world.  

It has been notable for a while that Trump’s wife, Melania, is nowhere to be seen, and Trump has begun to cling to provocateur Laura Loomer, who has vowed utter loyalty to Trump and is evidently quite happy to be seen with him. This is a problem for the Republican Party because of her history of conspiracy theories and open racism. As Joe Perticone and Marc Caputo of The Bulwark note, Loomer has referred to Vice President Harris as a “drug using prostitute,” for example, and suggested she has not given birth to children because “she’s had so many abortions that she damaged her uterus.”  

Loomer’s extremism has made other Trump supporters urge him to keep her at a distance, sparking an embarrassing public fight. Two of those trying to get Trump to isolate Loomer are Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Their chilliness prompted Loomer to fight back on social media, questioning Graham’s sexual identity and calling attention to Greene’s extramarital affair and comparing her to a “hooker.” 

The public fight between Loomer and Trump’s more restrained supporters—and who would have thought Greene would fall in the “more restrained” category?—illustrates something Josh Marshall pointed out in Talking Points Memo today. 

Marshall noted that the Republicans are essentially running two campaigns for president in 2024. One is run by Trump himself, and it is based on Trump’s personal grievances and stories from his rallies that have little relationship to reality. In 2016, Trump blew up the American political scene with his idiosyncrasies, and his unique style led him to the White House. But 2024 is a different moment. The campaign is faltering as Trump appears increasingly unhinged, afraid to be on a stage with Harris, and seemingly unable to distinguish fact from fiction. 

The other campaign is being run by Trump’s campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who quietly recognize that Trump is in decline and are trying to run a much more traditional campaign. Like Lindsey Graham when he drew Loomer’s wrath, they keep urging Trump to talk about the economy and to dial back the craziness to avoid driving off voters interested in stability. While they are unable to contain Trump, they are trying to win the election by hammering away at swing state voters with ads attacking Harris and trying to make her look radical. 

If Trump were to win under these circumstances, it seems likely that he would not be the driving force in his own administration. The power of the office would then be wielded by Vice President J.D. Vance, a reality we should confront in the few weeks left before the election. Vance is a religious extremist, of course, whose recent willingness to smear Haitian immigrants with a lie so long as it might enhance the Republicans’ chance of winning was despicable.  

Aside from the Christian nationalism and the lies, Vance recently said he sees American history as “a constant war between Northern Yankees and Southern Bourbons, where whichever side the hillbillies are on, wins.” The Northern Yankees in the late nineteenth century stood for protecting the right of all men to equality before the law, while the Southern Bourbons—probably named originally for Bourbon County, Kentucky, before the name came to represent those who supported the idea of royalty—wanted to get rid of the Fourteenth Amendment that protected Black rights, and the Fifteenth Amendment that established the right of Black men to vote. 

Vance said today’s “Northern Yankees” are what he calls “hyper-woke, coastal elites”: the ones trying to protect equal rights. “The Southern Bourbons are sort of the same old-school Southern folks that have been around and influential in this country for 200 years,” Vance said. Or, as people understood it in the late nineteenth century, they were former Confederates who opposed Black rights. “And it’s like the hillbillies have really started to migrate towards the Southern Bourbons instead of the Northern woke people,” he concluded, in an evident hope that they would control the American future. 

Extremist Republicans used to hide that sentiment. Now the man who could become the acting president is openly embracing it. 

At the same time MAGA leaders are trying to turn out their base, they are also working to make it harder for Democrats to vote. Yesterday, the Republican-controlled North Carolina Supreme Court decided to permit Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to have his name taken off the ballot in that state, although, as Mark Joseph Stern reported in Slate, he did not ask to be removed until four days after he withdrew from the race, which was five days after the deadline for withdrawing. 

By the time he withdrew, county election boards were already printing ballots, and the court’s decision will require nearly three million ballots to be destroyed and new ones designed and printed. According to North Carolina’s state election director, this will take 18 to 23 days and will cut into early voting. North Carolina law requires state officials to mail ballots to Americans living abroad and to service members by September 6, the day that early voting was supposed to start.  

As Stern points out, Trump and Harris are effectively tied in North Carolina, and early voters there skew Democratic. 

Last night, musician Taylor Swift won seven awards at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, mostly for awards surrounding her song “Fortnight.” In her acceptance speech for “Video of the Year,” she said: “[T]he fact that this is a fan-voted award and you voted for this, I appreciate it so much. And if you are over 18, please register to vote for something else that’s very important coming up, the 2024 presidential election,” Swift said, although she could hardly be heard over the roar from the crowd at her call for them to vote.  

Pollster Tom Bonier has been following registration numbers and said that there has been a massive increase in voter registrations after Swift’s endorsement of Harris. “This intensity and enthusiasm is really unprecedented at this point. It’s even bigger than what we saw after the Dobbs decision in 2022.”

Today, Republicans in North Carolina sued to overturn the decision of the state election board that students and employees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill can use state-approved digital IDs as identification for voting. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[bobcatmoran]

PSA that tonight is the first general election US Presidential Debate of the 2024 election, Biden v Trump, in a rematch of their 2020 debates, which included such highlights as "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by," Trump showing up to the first debate with Covid, and "Will you shut up, man? This is so unpresidential."

If you want to watch, it will be airing on CNN, who's sponsoring the debate, as well as streaming on Max and CNN.com (the latter available without a cable subscription just for the debate). Major TV networks (PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, and local FOX broadcast affiliates) will also be showing it.

The debate will run 90 minutes, and will be moderated by Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, starting at 9 PM Eastern Time, 8 PM Central, 7 PM Mountain, and 6 PM Pacific.

I, however, will not be doing my usual debate liveblog. I've got theater tickets to see "Little Shop of Horrors," which will almost undoubtedly be more entertaining than watching two old men yell at each other.

Anyway. Other debates this cycle will include the VP debate between Kamela Harris and Mystery GOP VP candidate on either July 23 or August 13, and a second presidential debate on September 10.

[simply-ivanka]

Former US president Donald Trump claimed on Monday that Hamas would not have attacked Israel on October 7 if he had still been president, vowing to solve the situation “very fast” if reelected as he took a major step toward a rematch for the White House in November.

Speaking in Iowa after winning the first contest of the Republican presidential primary on Monday, Trump said that “Russia would not have attacked, Israel would never have been attacked” if he had still been president.

“The Ukraine situation is so horrible, the Israeli situation is so horrible. We are going to get them solved very fast,” he said, without giving details on how he aimed to achieve this.

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson Oct 9

Yesterday we learned from a forthcoming book by veteran journalist Bob Woodward that in 2020, while he was president, Trump secretly shipped Covid-19 testing equipment to Russian president Vladimir Putin for his own personal use at a time when Americans could not get it.

To be clear, this equipment was not the swabs we now use at home, but appears to be what at the time was a new point-of-care machine from Abbott Laboratories that claimed to be the fastest way to test for Covid-19. 

Journalist Karly Kingsley points out that at the time, central lab testing to diagnose Covid-19 infections took a long time, causing infections to spread. Machines like Abbott’s were hard to get. Trump chose to send them to Putin—not to charge him for them, or to negotiate for the release of Paul Whelan and Trevor Reed, two Americans being held by Russia at the time and later released under the Biden administration, but to give them to him—rather than keeping them for Americans.

NOTE: DOJ!! THIS IS TREASON! ADD THIS TO THE CHARGES

It’s hard to overstate just what an astonishing story this is. In 2016, Republicans stood firm against Putin and backed the arming of Ukraine to stand against Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea. But that summer, at Trump’s urging, the party changed its platform to weaken its support of Ukraine. In 2020, it appears, Trump chose to give lifesaving equipment to Putin rather than use it for Americans. And in 2024, Trump’s willingness to undermine the United States to cozy up to an adversary his own party stood against less than a decade ago does not appear to be a deal breaker for Republicans.

As Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) put it: “What has this country come to if the revelation that Trump secretly sent COVID testing machines to Putin while thousands of Americans were dying, in part because of a shortage of testing machines here, doesn't disqualify him to be President?” He continued: “Donald Trump helped keep Putin alive during the pandemic and let Americans die. This revelation is damning. It's disqualifying. He cannot be President of the United States.” 

Increasingly, Trump’s behavior seems to parrot the dictators he appears to admire. 

After 60 Minutes called him out for breaking a fifty-year tradition of both candidates talking to 60 Minutes and backing out of an interview to which he had agreed, Trump today accused the producers of 60 Minutes of cutting Vice President Kamala Harris’s answers to make her look good. He suggested that such cuts were “illegal” and possibly “a major Campaign Finance violation” that “must be investigated, starting today!” “The public is owed a MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY!” he wrote. Trump is trying to cover for his own failure by attacking CBS in an echo of dictators determined to control the media.

In a post on his social media site tonight, Trump appears to have declined to appear at another presidential debate with Vice President Harris. After declaring he had won the previous debate with Harris and rehashing many of his grievances, he wrote: “THERE WILL BE NO REMATCH!”

As Beth Reinhard of the Washington Post recounted yesterday, a report from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, revealed that the Trump White House prevented a real investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump’s second Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. More than 4,500 calls and electronic messages about Kavanaugh sent to the FBI tip line went directly to the White House, where they were never investigated, and the FBI was told not to pursue corroborating evidence of the accusations by Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez although lawyers for the women presented the names of dozens of people who could testify to the truth of their allegations.  

A number of senators said the lack of corroborating evidence convinced them to vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. As Steve Benen of MSNBC recalled, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) said at the time that it appeared to be “a very thorough investigation,” while the late Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said that the 2018 FBI report “looks to be a product of an incomplete investigation that was limited perhaps by the White House.”

After he left office, Trump told author Michael Wolff that he had gone to bat for Kavanaugh, saying: “I…fought like hell for Kavanaugh—and I saved his life, and I saved his career.” Kavanaugh was the crucial vote for Trump’s right-wing agenda, including ending the federal recognition of abortion rights by overturning the 1973��Roe v. Wade decision.

Ken Bensinger reported in the New York Times today that Trump’s team has refused to participate in preparations for a transition to a potential Trump presidency. Normally, the nonpartisan transition process, dictated by the Presidential Transition Act, has candidates setting up teams as much as six months before the election to begin vetting and hiring political appointees and working with the administration in office to make sure the agencies continue to run smoothly. 

With the election less than a month away, Trump has neither signed the required agreements nor signed the transition’s ethics plan that would require him to disclose private donors to the transition and limit them to contributions of no more than $5,000. Without that agreement, there are no limits to the money the Trump transition can take. Trump has also refused to sign an agreement with the White House requiring that anyone receiving classified information have a security clearance. Currently, his aides cannot review federal records.

NOTE: THEN WHY THE HELL IS HE BEING ALLOWED TO RUN FOR OFFICE? THE ELECTIONS COMMITTEE SHOULD DISQUALIFY HIM NOW!!!!!

Trump ignored the traditional transition period in 2016, cutting off communications with President Barack Obama’s team. He refused to allow incoming president Joe Biden access to federal agencies in 2020, hampering Biden’s ability to get his administration in place in a timely fashion. Now it’s possible that Trump sees no need for a normal transition because Project 2025, on which he appears to be relying, has been working on one for many months. 

It calls for him to fire most federal employees, reinstating the policy he started at the end of his term. To fill their positions, the Heritage Foundation has been vetting loyalists now for months, preparing a list of job candidates to put in place a new, right-wing agenda.  

Yesterday, on California’s KFI radio station, Trump told host John Kobylt that Tom Homan of Project 2025, who as director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement oversaw the family separation policy at the southern border, will be “coming on board” a new Trump administration. 

This afternoon, Trump told an audience in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that he expects to put former rival Vivek Ramaswamy into an important position in his administration. On October 7, 2024, Ramaswamy suggested on social media that he wants to get rid of Social Security and Medicare. He wrote: “Shut down the entitlement state & you solve most of the immigration problem right there. We need to man up & fix the root cause that draws migrants here in the first place: the welfare state. But no one seems to want to say that part out loud, because too many native-born Americans are addicted to it themselves.”

Trump has expressed frustration with the independence of the Federal Reserve, expressing a desire to make it answer to the president. In an interview with Barron’s, one of his advisors, Scott Bessent, has floated the idea of creating a shadow Fed chair until the term of the current chair, Jerome Powell, ends, thus undercutting him without facing a fight over firing the Fed chair. 

This agenda is not a popular one in the U.S., but Trump is getting a boost as Russian operatives work to swing downballot races toward the Republicans. In a briefing on Monday, October 7, experts from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) told reporters that China and Iran are trying to influence the upcoming election and that “Moscow is leveraging a wide range of influence actors in an effort to influence congressional races, particularly to encourage the U.S. public to oppose pro-Ukraine policies and politicians. Russian influence actors have planned, and likely created and disseminated, content, particularly over social media, intended to encourage the election of congressional candidates that Moscow assesses will oppose aid to Ukraine.”  

Russia, an ODNI spokesperson said, uses “influence-for-hire firms, or commercial firms with expertise in these type[s] of activities.” It also coopts “witting and unwitting Americans to work on Russia’s behalf,” to “launder their influence narratives through what are perceived as more authentic U.S. voices.” 

NOTE: IF THIS DOESN'T ABSOLUTELY INFURIATE YOU , YOU'RE EITHER UNCONSCIOUS OR NOT PAYING ATTENTION!!!!!!

Not all of Trump’s supporters appear eager to stick around to see if Trump will win another term. Today news broke that Patrick M. Byrne, the former chief executive officer of OverStock, who became a fervent advocate of the idea that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election, has left the country, apparently permanently, to live in Dubai. Dominion Voting Systems is suing Byrne, as is President Biden’s son Hunter. The younger Biden sued Byrne for defamation last November after Byrne claimed Hunter Biden sought a bribe from Iran. 

In September, Biden’s lawyers were trying to schedule a date for Byrne’s deposition when his lawyer abruptly “claimed for the first time that Defendant has moved his residence to Dubai and if Plaintiff wanted to take his in-person deposition counsel would have to fly to Dubai to do so, to which Plaintiff responded with various related inquiries to try to resolve this matter and defense counsel stated Defendant would not be returning to the United States for the foreseeable future.” 

Byrne claimed to have fled the U.S. because the Venezuelan government has put a bounty on him, but as Biden’s lawyers note, “the Defendant’s truthfulness is directly at issue.” 

[mariacallous]

Former President Donald J. Trump is now the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee. Looking ahead to Trump’s rematch with President Joe Biden in November, some analysts believe that Trump’s electoral base is expanding to include more Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters.

Undoubtedly so. But the evidence that Democrats are “hemorrhaging” minority support and are on the losing side of an impending “racial realignment” is less clear than Trump supporters hope and than Biden supporters fear. Likewise, seven months out from Election Day, Biden’s post-State of the Union surge in the polls is neither important nor insignificant.

Nobody, however, can doubt that white working-class voters, defined simply as white voters without a college degree, are a key to Trump’s past, present, and pending electoral fortunes. I certainly don’t, for reasons both analytical (parsing relevant polling and election data) and anecdotal (knowing white working-class relatives and friends who used to be “Reagan Democrats,” became ex-urban Republicans, and are now “MAGA Republicans”).

But three facts about Trump’s support among white working-class voters are not generally recognized or understood.

First, several other Republican presidential standard-bearers, as well as many GOP candidates for Congress, won about the same share or an even greater share of white working-class votes than Trump did in 2016 and 2020. And, in 2022, Make-America-Great-Again (MAGA)-identified Republicans in many states did less well than Republicans who distanced themselves from Trump.

Second, Will Marble, a brilliant Penn data scientist, has documented that since 2000, “educational polarization” between whites with a college degree and whites without one has widened on both economic and cultural issues and pushed ever more “non-college” whites “toward the Republican Party.”

But might that polarization be more pronounced for working-class white evangelicals than it is for other whites without a college degree? That is what seems to be suggested by exit polls showing that in both 2016 and 2020, Trump won white working-class evangelicals but lost other white working-class voters.

Third, white evangelical working-class voters and other white working-class voters differ with respect to their positions on many policy issues and might also differ in relation to the types of campaign-messaging that do the most to mobilize and motivate them to vote for or against a given candidate or party.