#sarah longwell

[tomorrowusa]

Republican Voters Against Trump have released a new ad. It's part of a larger campaign which includes billboards featuring quotes from former Trump voters.

People are getting bored with Trump. It's the same old incoherent rants, silly name calling, and idiotic claims that he really won the 2020 election. We need to change the channel to hasten the cancellation of The Trump Show.

If you hear somebody praising Trump, just say "BORING!". Repetitious ridicule is underrated by many liberals. It works much better than researched and footnoted assertions. Telling people that you're just plain tired of Trump is also effective. It's time for America to turn the page.

[thenewdemocratus]

Tim Miller, Sarah Longwell & Jonathan V. Last: "Here's What Needs to Happen'

Source:The Bulwark talking about guess what. Source:The New Democrat “The Secret Pod makes an emergency appearance to work through last night’s terrible performance by Biden and to urge the Democratic Party to do the responsible thing in this moment.” From The Bulwark As I wrote about this yesterday: “President Biden’s task tonight, is to show that he’s in full command, he’s doing the job, he has…

[dropoutdottv]

😂🔊Now presenting: the trailer for season three of 'Make Some Noise'! Premiering June 24th.

Make Some Noise season three is our biggest and noisiest season yet and will consist of a whopping 20 episodes with host Sam Reich back behind the desk.

Featuring the return of the Noise Boys (Josh Ruben, Zac Oyama, Brennan Lee Mulligan) and an incredible slew of guests: Anna Garcia, Chris Grace, Carl Tart, Ify Nwadiwe, Ally Beardsley, Erika Ishii, Geoff Ross, Izzy Roland, Jacob Wysocki, Jacquis Neal, Jeremy Culhane, Jess McKenna, Jiavani, Kimia Behpoornia, Kurt Maloney, Lauren Pritchard, Lou Wilson, Nick Mandernach, Rashawn Scott, Ross Bryant, Vic Michaelis, Zac Oyama, Zeke Nicholson, Paul F. Tompkins, Talia Tabin, Victoria Longwell, Devin Field, Rachel Bloom, Hannah Pilkes, D.J. Mausner, Malachai Komanoff Bandy, Mimi von Schack, Maame-Yaa Aforo, Sarah Claspell, Ryder Dunagan, Caitlin Reilly, Pete Holmes, Bri Giger, Echo Kellum, Angela Giarratana, Corin Wells, Ben Schwartz, and Ryan Gaul!

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

You are, I’m sure, familiar with Occam’s razor. It’s the old philosophical theorem that holds that the simplest explanation for an event, the one requiring the fewest assumptions, is probably the best explanation. If you wake up in the morning and there’s snow on the lawn, there are any number of possible explanations. Maybe some friends played a practical joke on you and dumped snow in your yard. Maybe space aliens visited during your slumber and dusted your lawn with the white stuff. Or—maybe it snowed last night.

Republicans keep asking, completely dishonestly, why so much criminal suspicion surrounds Donald Trump. They say it’s all being orchestrated by Joe Biden and Merrick Garland. They insist it’s an effort to interfere with his election campaign. They say a lot of things, but if ever there was a case where Occam’s razor applied, it’s this one. Trump is surrounded by criminal suspicion because he’s a criminal.

He’s been doing criminal things for decades. He just finally got cornered and caught on something. I’ve been writing recently that Democrats have to make sure every voter in the country remembers by Election Day, having heard it said thousands of times, that Donald Trump is a convicted felon. That’s true, and so far, Democrats and affiliated groups aren’t doing a terrible job of this. It’s a little sad that the best expression I’ve seen of this so far comes from a Republican—fiercely anti-Trump Republican Sarah Longwell’s group, Republican Voters Against Trump, has put up some blunt billboards around the country featuring photos of voters, with their names, under the statement: “I won’t vote for a convicted felon.”

But Democrats need to do more. Trump’s criminality, both past and future, should be central to the campaign. There’s a story to tell here, and it’s all true. No matter what the pollsters and the messaging gurus say, it’s impossible that all of this, taken together, doesn’t matter to swing voters.

To tell the story, you go through Trump’s record:

• convicted on 34 felony counts • determined by a court to have raped a woman and ordered to pay her $83 million • found by a court to have overvalued his assets and ordered to pay $364 million • ordered to pay a $2 million settlement after admitting that he misused his charity, which the state of New York shut down • found by the Justice Department to have refused to rent apartments to Black applicants; settled out of court • sued by the Justice Department for violating proper procedures in the purchase of stock; paid $750,000 in civil fines • charged by the New York State Lobbying Commission with violating state lobbying laws while purchasing a casino; paid $250,000 to settle fines • found by the courts to have grossly defrauded students at the so-called Trump University and ordered to pay them $25 million in restitution

This list isn’t even the tip of the iceberg. It’s the tip of the tip. Trump has spent four decades being sued for something or other, typically not paying his bills, like those famous cases where he stiffed the poor vendors for his casinos, filing his own ridiculous countersuits and libel suits, and paying fines to make things go away. If indeed he actually paid the fines. I wonder if anyone has ever really gotten to the bottom of that. And I haven’t even mentioned the current charges around January 6 and the stolen classified documents because, so far, they’re just charges. But whatever the courts end up saying on those two matters, we’ve all seen with our own eyes the insurrection that he obviously incited (as of this January, 718 rioters had pleaded guilty to various federal charges, and 139 had been found guilty in court) and the photos of the boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago that he refused for months to turn over to the FBI.

Another important point: The criminality around Trump isn’t limited to Trump. Eight Trump associates were sentenced to prison time: Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen (joined the good side but still served time), Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, Peter Navarro, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, and Allen Weisselberg. Others copped pleas: Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Cheseboro, and Scott Hall, another Georgia defendant.

This is not a coincidence. As GOP strategist Rick Wilson said, “Everything Trump touches dies”; he corrupts everything and everyone around him. And does anyone seriously think that if he gets back to the Oval Office, the same thing isn’t going to happen again? It’s going to be worse.

It’s going to be far worse. First, he’s going to start, on that dictatorial day one, by pardoning himself. Joe Biden and the Democrats need to try to get voters focused on this. If it happens, people will be completely outraged. Yes, the 38% or so who are MAGA world will be fine with it, but majorities will be flabbergasted at such an act. Is it possible to get voters pre-outraged about something that hasn’t happened? The polls will say no. But as I’ve written over and over lately, polls can either be accepted—or they can be changed.

Right now, what’s most terrifying to me about the polls is that they tell us emphatically that people forget. They forget all the horrible things Trump did. That includes presidential actions, like his lies to the American people about the pandemic, but it also includes his history of criminality and the way that history guarantees he’ll keep behaving that way.

In sum: Trump’s criminal record hardly begins and ends with Stormy Daniels. Somebody needs to make sure that, by November 5, voters know the entire, sordid history.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Unfit :: billboard project

* * * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 3, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 04, 2024

Last night the Boston Globe published a leaked email from a top volunteer with the Trump campaign, former Massachusetts Republican Party vice chair Tom Mountain, telling volunteers that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back” from that important swing state. He urged volunteers to turn their attention instead to Pennsylvania. After the story dropped, the Trump campaign cut ties with Mountain. 

Stephen Collinson of CNN and Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Marianne LeVine of the Washington Post reported today that Trump’s team has given up on trying to get Trump to talk about the economy and other issues voters care about. The former president has decided to spend the rest of the campaign attacking Vice President Harris to destroy her popularity and drive voters away from her, rather than trying to attract them to himself. The Washington Post reporters noted that likely voters view Trump unfavorably and his team has concluded that while he can’t improve his own standing, he can damage hers. 

Collinson dubbed Trump’s plans a “feral political offensive.”

It is not clear that this will work. As Collinson notes, Harris has refused to get dragged into the gutter with Trump, and Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, notes that voters appear to want to put the nastiness of the past several years behind them. Still, the media-tracking company AdImpact reported that between August 23 and August 29, 57% of the total television spending for political ads was on Republican attacks on Harris.

Trump also continues to demand that Republicans support his attempt to suppress voting. Having failed to pass any of the necessary appropriations bills before going on August recess, Congress will be in a rush when it comes back into session next week. It needs to fund the government before the end of the fiscal year on September 30 in order to prevent a partial shutdown. Last Thursday, Trump told right-wing podcast host Monica Crowley that he would “shut down the government in a heartbeat” unless the government funding package includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—which would give credence to the idea that noncitizens are voting in national elections despite the fact it is already illegal—and a bill restricting legal immigration.

Zeeshan Aleem of MSNBC today took public notice of Trump’s “deteriorating ability to clearly communicate.” His speeches “seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day,” Aleem wrote. “Those speeches are making it hard, if not impossible, for people listening to them to understand what he wants to do with his power in office, and they’re reportedly turning off voters.” A reporter for The Guardian pointed out that attendees at Trump’s rallies are leaving as he rambles for nearly two hours, and complaining that he is “babbling.”

For his part, Trump says his wandering speech is deliberate. He calls it “the weave.” I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.’”

Aleem notes that this less-focused, less-capable Trump would be exceptionally dangerous in office a second time. And yet, he was dangerous enough the first time. Today Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman of Just Security released a study showing at least twelve times that Trump used the power of the presidency to retaliate against his political enemies. They note that there is no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone else at the Biden White House ever took similar actions.  

John McCain’s son Jimmy today announced that he has switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat and will work to elect Vice President Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in 2024. The younger McCain enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17 and is now an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment of the Arizona Army National Guard. He said he is speaking out because Trump’s conduct at Arlington National Cemetery was a “violation.” 

Last Friday, just before the long weekend, Trump announced that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would essentially enshrine in the Florida state constitution the abortion rights formerly protected by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. When Trump had bowed to popular support for abortion rights and expressed uneasiness at the state’s current six-week ban—a cutoff reached before most women know they’re pregnant—antiabortion activists launched fierce attacks on him. So, on Friday, Trump switched his position and announced he would vote against restoring access to abortion in Florida. 

That announcement has given wings to the Democrats’ messaging about Republicans’ determination to end abortion rights. It did not help the Republicans that more videos have been unearthed in which Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said that “a childless elite” is ruling the country. He went on to excoriate this elite for what he claimed was their pride that they didn’t have children and that they had abortions, and said “they look down on people who invest their time and their future in their children. And that is a dangerous place to live as a country.” Even a right-wing Newsmax interviewer suggested that he was “painting this group with perhaps a broad brush?”

On October 1, in Louisiana, a law will go into effect that reclassified the drug misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance. Misoprostol can be used for abortion. It is also used for routine reproductive care and during medical emergencies to treat postpartum hemorrhage. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medications, a list containing those medications that are the most effective and safe to meet a health care system’s most important needs. After antiabortion activists targeted the drug, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed a law reclassifying it as a controlled dangerous substance. The reclassification means that the drug will no longer be easily available on obstetric hemorrhage carts. 

“Take it off the carts?” one doctor said to Lorena O’Neil of the Louisiana Illuminator. “That’s death. That’s a matter of life or death.”

The Harris campaign said: “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is the reason Louisiana women who are suffering from miscarriages or bleeding out after birth can no longer receive the critical care they would have received before Trump overturned Roe. Because of Trump, doctors are scrambling to find solutions to save their patients and are left at the whims of politicians who think they know better. Trump is proud of what he’s done. He brags about it. And if he wins, he will threaten to bring the crisis he created for Louisiana women to all 50 states.”

Vice President Harris’s campaign started its “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour today in Palm Beach, Florida, where it drove past the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago club. The bus will make at least 50 stops across the country. 

Pollster Tom Bonier today continued his examination of new registrants to vote. This time his focus was North Carolina. The pattern he has found across the country continues: “surges in registration are being driven by women.” In North Carolina, he writes, the number of registrants was almost 50% higher during the week of July 21 than in the same week in 2020, and the gender gap was +12 women, compared to +6 women in 2020. The new registrants were +6 Democratic, and 43% were younger than 30. 

The Harris-Walz campaign today joined the Democratic National Committee in announcing a transfer of nearly $25 million to support Democratic candidates in down-ballot state and federal races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will get $10 million each in hopes of supporting a Democratic majority in each chamber of Congress in the new administration. 

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the organization devoted to winning state legislatures, will receive $2.5 million. The Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will get $1 million each. 

Finally, today, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump campaign from playing the song he likes to dance to at his rallies: “Hold On, I’m Coming.” The estate of Isaac Hayes Jr., the artist who co-wrote the song, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, his campaign, and a number of his allies, noting that they have never obtained a public performance license for the song although they have used it at least 133 times.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[cmesinic]

Not Donnie’s biggest fan.

[yourreddancer]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

September 3, 2024 (Tuesday)

Last night the Boston Globe published a leaked email from a top volunteer with the Trump campaign, former Massachusetts Republican Party vice chair Tom Mountain, telling volunteers that the Trump campaign “no longer thinks New Hampshire is winnable” and is “pulling back” from that important swing state. He urged volunteers to turn their attention instead to Pennsylvania. After the story dropped, the Trump campaign cut ties with Mountain.

Stephen Collinson of CNN and Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Marianne LeVine of the Washington Post reported today that Trump’s team has given up on trying to get Trump to talk about the economy and other issues voters care about. The former president has decided to spend the rest of the campaign attacking Vice President Harris to destroy her popularity and drive voters away from her, rather than trying to attract them to himself. The Washington Post reporters noted that likely voters view Trump unfavorably and his team has concluded that while he can’t improve his own standing, he can damage hers.

Collinson dubbed Trump’s plans a “feral political offensive.”

It is not clear that this will work. As Collinson notes, Harris has refused to get dragged into the gutter with Trump, and Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, notes that voters appear to want to put the nastiness of the past several years behind them. Still, the media-tracking company AdImpact reported that between August 23 and August 29, 57% of the total television spending for political ads was on Republican attacks on Harris.

Trump also continues to demand that Republicans support his attempt to suppress voting. Having failed to pass any of the necessary appropriations bills before going on August recess, Congress will be in a rush when it comes back into session next week. It needs to fund the government before the end of the fiscal year on September 30 in order to prevent a partial shutdown. Last Thursday, Trump told right-wing podcast host Monica Crowley that he would “shut down the government in a heartbeat” unless the government funding package includes the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act—which would give credence to the idea that noncitizens are voting in national elections despite the fact it is already illegal—and a bill restricting legal immigration.

Zeeshan Aleem of MSNBC today took public notice of Trump’s “deteriorating ability to clearly communicate.” His speeches “seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day,” Aleem wrote. “Those speeches are making it hard, if not impossible, for people listening to them to understand what he wants to do with his power in office, and they’re reportedly turning off voters.” A reporter for The Guardian pointed out that attendees at Trump’s rallies are leaving as he rambles for nearly two hours, and complaining that he is “babbling.”

For his part, Trump says his wandering speech is deliberate. He calls it “the weave.” I’ll talk about, like, nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together, and it’s like, and friends of mine that are, like, English professors, they say, ‘It's the most brilliant thing I've ever seen.’”

Aleem notes that this less-focused, less-capable Trump would be exceptionally dangerous in office a second time. And yet, he was dangerous enough the first time. Today Adam Klasfeld and Ryan Goodman of Just Security released a study showing at least twelve times that Trump used the power of the presidency to retaliate against his political enemies. They note that there is no evidence that President Joe Biden or anyone else at the Biden White House ever took similar actions.

John McCain’s son Jimmy today announced that he has switched his voter registration from Republican to Democrat and will work to elect Vice President Harris and Minnesota governor Tim Walz in 2024. The younger McCain enlisted in the Marine Corps at 17 and is now an intelligence officer in the 158th Infantry Regiment of the Arizona Army National Guard. He said he is speaking out because Trump’s conduct at Arlington National Cemetery was a “violation.”

Last Friday, just before the long weekend, Trump announced that he would vote against a Florida ballot measure that would essentially enshrine in the Florida state constitution the abortion rights formerly protected by the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. When Trump had bowed to popular support for abortion rights and expressed uneasiness at the state’s current six-week ban—a cutoff reached before most women know they’re pregnant—antiabortion activists launched fierce attacks on him. So, on Friday, Trump switched his position and announced he would vote against restoring access to abortion in Florida.

(HOW CAN HE VOTE? HE'S A CONVICTED FELON!!!!!!)

That announcement has given wings to the Democrats’ messaging about Republicans’ determination to end abortion rights. It did not help the Republicans that more videos have been unearthed in which Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance said that “a childless elite” is ruling the country. He went on to excoriate this elite for what he claimed was their pride that they didn’t have children and that they had abortions, and said “they look down on people who invest their time and their future in their children. And that is a dangerous place to live as a country.” Even a right-wing Newsmax interviewer suggested that he was “painting this group with perhaps a broad brush?”

On October 1, in Louisiana, a law will go into effect that reclassified the drug misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance. Misoprostol can be used for abortion. It is also used for routine reproductive care and during medical emergencies to treat postpartum hemorrhage. It is on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medications, a list containing those medications that are the most effective and safe to meet a health care system’s most important needs. After antiabortion activists targeted the drug, Louisiana governor Jeff Landry signed a law reclassifying it as a controlled dangerous substance. The reclassification means that the drug will no longer be easily available on obstetric hemorrhage carts.

“Take it off the carts?” one doctor said to Lorena O’Neil of the Louisiana Illuminator. “That’s death. That’s a matter of life or death.”

(THEN WHY DOESN'T THE AMA SUE LANDRY AND ALL THE LEGISLATORS WHO VOTED TO BAN IT FOR PRACTICING MEDICINE WITHOUT A LICENSE???)

The Harris campaign said: “Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is the reason Louisiana women who are suffering from miscarriages or bleeding out after birth can no longer receive the critical care they would have received before Trump overturned Roe. Because of Trump, doctors are scrambling to find solutions to save their patients and are left at the whims of politicians who think they know better. Trump is proud of what he’s done. He brags about it. And if he wins, he will threaten to bring the crisis he created for Louisiana women to all 50 states.”

Vice President Harris’s campaign started its “Fighting for Reproductive Freedom” bus tour today in Palm Beach, Florida, where it drove past the Trump Organization’s Mar-a-Lago club. The bus will make at least 50 stops across the country.

Pollster Tom Bonier today continued his examination of new registrants to vote. This time his focus was North Carolina. The pattern he has found across the country continues: “surges in registration are being driven by women.” In North Carolina, he writes, the number of registrants was almost 50% higher during the week of July 21 than in the same week in 2020, and the gender gap was +12 women, compared to +6 women in 2020. The new registrants were +6 Democratic, and 43% were younger than 30.

The Harris-Walz campaign today joined the Democratic National Committee in announcing a transfer of nearly $25 million to support Democratic candidates in down-ballot state and federal races. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will get $10 million each in hopes of supporting a Democratic majority in each chamber of Congress in the new administration.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the organization devoted to winning state legislatures, will receive $2.5 million. The Democratic Governors Association and the Democratic Attorneys General Association will get $1 million each.

Finally, today, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction to stop the Trump campaign from playing the song he likes to dance to at his rallies: “Hold On, I’m Coming.” The estate of Isaac Hayes Jr., the artist who co-wrote the song, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Trump, his campaign, and a number of his allies, noting that they have never obtained a public performance license for the song although they have used it at least 133 times.

[nodynasty4us]

I would guess that when [Nikki Haley's campaign staff] test an electability argument, they get pushback from two-time Trump voters. Because she can’t say that Trump lost last time—if you say that, you’ve broken a cardinal rule. Voters see Trump as perfectly electable.

Republican consultant Sarah Longwell, quoted in Slate

[tomorrowusa]

House Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson is making a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to ceremonially kiss Donald Trump's butt. This is another example of how the Republican Party is now nothing more than a cult which worships the Orange One.

Johnson is hoping that his record on election denial will impress Trump and will encourage the latter to support Johnson against Marjorie Taylor Greene's challenge to his leadership.

Of course Trump demands total loyalty from everybody but gives it to nobody. Ask Kevin McCarthy if you don't believe me.

[mariacallous]

Sarah Longwell: “On paper, Nikki Haley should be a top-tier contender in the 2024 Republican primary. She’s a successful former governor from an important, early primary state. She has an impressive personal backstory, solid foreign policy chops, and great candidate skills, too. This used to be an extremely attractive package for GOP primary voters.”

“Used to be. But not anymore.”

“Instead, Haley’s candidacy represents the best of the “meh” middle tier of 2024 candidates, which for now includes the likely notional campaigns of Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Chris Christie. No one is really asking any of those guys to run. But they don’t have anything better to do. So they’ll eventually put exploratory committees together and take a joy ride that may or may not make it to Iowa.”

“And Haley, despite how good she is on paper, finds herself in that same tier: No one is asking for what she’s selling. Why is that?”

fucking drag her, slay her, sipping on that true tea hunty

any ways I'd throw Tim Scott in there too, people who stand less than 0 chance with the party of 2023-4, people who represent the party the GOP image makers wanted people to believe it was in 2014-15 when really it was the party dying for Trump.

I mean, all she and those other will do is fragment the anti-Trump vote in the primaries (such as it is and might be) unless they do what the Dems did relatively quickly in 2020 and coalesce around a single non-Trump candidate. Trump is like a more dominant Bernie in terms of current primary field strength and support (he has a solid core but may not grow that strength and so would rely on the alternatives to be split so he can get the most delegates and wins), though I also think more republicans are likely to go for him if their particular other candidate drops out or loses.

[coochiequeens]

How about instead of blaming women for no matter how the vote hold both parties accountable for failing women in different ways. The Republican Party needs to see that access to birth control and abortion is healthcare. And the Democratic Party needs to realize that women are still impacted by the wage gap, were hit harder by the economic impact of Covid and are much more likely to be single parents raising a family alone. So yeah the economy is a woman’s issue.

On Monday, a New York Times/Siena College poll indicated that 49 percent of likely voters would back their district’s Republican congressional candidate—a supposed swing toward red in a close race for control over the House. But perhaps the most headline-generating result was that the poll also found that women who identified as independent voters now backed Republicans by 18 points—when in September they favored Democrats by 14 points.

The poll results threw Democrats into a tizzy, after a summer of stories that promised that anger over Roe v. Wade being overturned would benefit the party this fall. As we get to November, is that momentum really fading?

Maybe! But also—maybe not. There are plenty of reasons to not read too much into this slight outlier of a poll. For one thing, the New York Times asked likely voters on how they would vote on a generic ballot, not incorporating individual candidates of the numerous local races, including the House, Senate, governorships and more. That’s important because most Republicans currently running local races across the country are not considered generic Republicans, according to Sarah Longwell, a longtime Republican strategist and host of the podcast The Focus Group. Instead, there are countless extreme Trumpers, including multiple election deniers and those who carry hardline stances on abortion. That includes the likes of Republican candidate Hershel Walker running for a Senate seat in Georgia, J.D. Vance in Ohio and Kari Lake for governor in Arizona.

In the swing voting focus groups Longwell conducts across the country, she hasn’t seen much evidence to suggest that women are swinging back towards Republicans. Instead, they’ve told Longwell, they want to avoid the extreme candidates, especially with stringent pro-life stances.

To further understand this voting bloc—independent women voters who might be particularly mad over Dobbs—and what they’re thinking now, I spoke to Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. The first thing she told me is that she questions the swing reported in the New York Times poll. Then we dug into everything else—our conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

Shirin Ali: How do you think women voters view big ticket issues like abortion, the economy and inflation this November?

Debbie Walsh: What we’ve known and what we’ve seen since 1980, is that women vote differently than men. And whether they’re registered as Democrats or not, they’re more likely to support Democratic candidates than men are, less likely to support Republican candidates than men are. And then there’s variation among women, right? Women are not monolithic. So white women have leaned more Republican, while Black women are the strongest Democratic voters out there. And then there’s variation among white women, college educated white women versus non-college educated white women. College educated white women are more likely to support Democratic candidates than non-college educated white women. So again, women are not this monolithic bloc that vote en masse in any one way, but there are differences in the way they vote and that vote in close elections, sometimes can make a difference in the outcome of the election.

I think for women, just like for men, if you ask, ‘what’s the most important issue?,’ the economy always rises to the top. But I think in some ways, we’ve found that women think about the economy in different ways and they’re thinking about it more as kitchen table economics. How am I making ends meet in my family? How am I stretching that dollar? There’s also more economic insecurity that women face, women make less money than men, they have less money saved for retirement. They have felt historically more employment insecure, and women also live longer than men. And so what the government provides in their lives in terms of that social safety net, whether they’re using it now or they think they will need it in the future,things like social security, Medicare are things they think about. Whether it’s unemployment insurance because of employment insecurity or whether it’s family leave, paid family leave or not, depending on where you live, if you happen to live in one of the three states that actually have some form of paid family leave. But all of those issues really rise to the top.

Abortion has been an issue that’s been out there and it matters to women. But I think the question in this election cycle is at the end of the day, not so much will women go to the polls solely because of abortion, but can the abortion issue be the thing that energizes them and motivates them to go to the polls? We know that a lot of those young women are very energized around the abortion issue. I think we’re really trying to understand and see what will happen with those women voters.

What about the Kansas ballot measure in August, when voters overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to the state’s constitution that would have allowed an abortion ban. Was that outlier? Or did Democrats get ahead of themselves?

I think when it’s a standalone issue and a question just out on abortion, there’s a different kind of a vote than when you’re voting for a candidate of a party. The reality is the majority of Americans basically support Roe. And when a case like the Kansas case comes up, you’re not voting for a person who will then implement some law. Here’s something that’s going to be a constitutional question. I think it’s a different kind of a vote.

I do think that the abortion issue may have the potential to energize some voters, particularly some women voters out there who might not have been as engaged before, who might have sat out in midterm election. I think for a lot of folks, they don’t necessarily think that they have a stake in the outcome of elections, whether they think the government doesn’t really do anything, the government can’t solve anything. You know, they can’t fix the problems. However, this was one of those examples where it really, I think, for the Dobbs decision was a big illustration of ‘elections have consequences,’ right? It meant courts being appointed, particularly the Supreme Court, obviously, and the implications of that on women’s lives. And so it was one of those examples, which then may in fact, energize some women to show up in November.

Do you think Democrats can effectively message to swing voters on the issue of abortion?

I happen to live in Pennsylvania. So I’m sitting in Philadelphia, where I’m deluged by ads on both sides. On the Democratic side, abortion has been front and center and always couched in the frame of, particularly in the gubernatorial race for Doug Mastriano, “he’s too extreme for Pennsylvania.” And abortion is one of those examples, and Fetterman is using some of that same language. as well.

They have gone a full court press on putting abortion front and center, which is interesting because in the past, I think, Democratic candidates didn’t want to go near that issue. And now this time around, I think Republicans don’t want to talk about the abortion issue. They want to keep the voters focused and centered on the economy. And the economic news is bleak, and it’s hard to counter that.

I think the Democrats need to go at both of those things. They need to talk about what they’re going to do with the economy and inflation costs. They also need to at the same time talk about the abortion issue, because I still think it is an issue that energizes and motivates groups of voters to turn out. I think what Republicans might have underestimated was the intensity of the reaction to the Dobbs decision. As it was something that took away a right that women had for 50 years, and it’s very rare. I can’t remember a time when or having a right to something was taken away. Think about the vehemence with which gun owners react to any mention of the possibility of losing their guts, right? So I think you can’t underestimate the power of that.

We’ve seen from polling and focus groups that the issue of abortion sometimes knows no party lines. Even people who consider themselves conservative Republicans, can still want the right to choose when it comes to abortion. What do you make of that?

I think Kansas is a great example of that. Given the party registration of the state of Kansas, for that to have won the way it did, or to have been defeated in the way it was, there had to have been conservative Republicans. In many ways, the most conservative position, within the old school definition of conservative, smaller government, less government in your life, [is] a pro choice position. It used to not even be part of the Republican platform, a pro-life plank, and then the party shifted. There are many, moderate to conservative Republicans who think the government should not be in your bedroom, not in your doctor’s office. They don’t want more government and this is more government.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Davies :: @MatttDavies

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 11, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 12, 2024

Today’s fallout from last night’s presidential debate between Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican nominee former president Donald Trump has shown Harris solidifying her dominant position. Trump increasingly looks as if the anger he has been displaying is a way to hide the fear that he is losing control. 

After debates, surrogates for a nominee talk to journalists in what’s known as a “spin room,” where they try to spin the event in favor of their candidate. John Bowden of The Independent described his time in last night’s spin room as “the strangest moments of my political career.” As usual, Republican surrogates immediately attacked the moderators for fact-checking the debate.

But it was clear, Bowden wrote, that the campaign officials were panicking. Even Fox News Channel reporters said that Trump had performed badly, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) called the debate a “disaster.” But MAGA Republicans, whom Trump has elevated far beyond any position they could achieve without him, were lashing out on his behalf. 

Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance attacked the moderators and doubled down on the lie that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets, despite statements from Springfield police and the town manager that there is no evidence for such a statement. Anti-immigrant Trump advisor Stephen Miller melted down when Hispanic reporter José María Del Pino asked him where he got his figures saying that crime in Venezuela had dropped dramatically. 

The Trump campaign had told reporters that Vance would be the top surrogate for the evening, but after the debate, Trump himself appeared in the spin room to override his surrogates’ attempts to blame his performance on the moderators and instead assure reporters that he had won the debate. It is highly unusual for a candidate to go to the spin room in person, and his appearance demonstrated that Trump was aware that he was in trouble. Reporters seemed to agree: “If you won tonight, why are you here?” one can be heard saying to him. “Why not let the performance speak for itself?”

“Trump has come in the spin room and he is desperately trying to get the attention that I think he needs as oxygen at this point,” an MSNBC reporter told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. “Is he literally standing there like he’s his own surrogate trying to get people to talk to him about his own performance?” Maddow asked. “Wow. That’s something. That is not a sign of strength or confidence in your own performance when you’re trying to extend past the final bell….” 

Answering questions did not appear to help him. When asked once again to answer whether he would veto a national abortion bill, he answered: “It was a perfect answer on abortion, and I’ve done a great job on that, and I’ve brought our country together.” And then he walked out.

All day today, he posted and reposted statements that he had won the debate—including a message of support from former Tenet Media commentator Benny Johnson, whose paycheck was paid by Russia—but it was hard to miss that Trump’s performance was historically bad. Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark, who studies focus groups, said that “[a]cross the board,’ a “focus group of swing voters from swing states” thought Harris won the debate. Longtime Republican pollster Frank Luntz went on record saying that Trump’s debate performance would cost him the presidential race. The Harris campaign’s ongoing trolling of Trump was perhaps even harsher: it posted the entire hour and forty minute debate as a campaign ad.

Meanwhile, by 2:00 this afternoon, Taylor Swift’s endorsement had prompted 337,826 people to start the process of registering to vote. 

All day today, reporters fact checked Trump’s statements, proving them lies. But lies have never damaged him; they reinforce his dominance by forcing subordinates to agree that the person in charge gets to determine what reality is. Victims must surrender either their integrity or their ownership of their own perceptions; in either case, once they have agreed to a deliberate lie, it becomes harder to challenge later ones since that means acknowledging the other times they caved.

That’s why the lie about the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration is so important: it is the foundational lie on which all the others stand. Harris, who spent her legal career dealing with criminals and abusers who depend on this technique, knew exactly how to undermine it. She made fun of it, making his “obsession with crowd sizes” a national joke. The jokes set him off not only because he cannot bear to be laughed at, but also because challenging that lie challenges all the others. 

Following Harris’s lead, posters on social media turned to memes today, setting Trump’s assertion that “they’re eating the cats,” to Vince Guaraldi’s theme “Linus and Lucy” from the Peanuts movies, for example, and designing the same statement as a Dr. Seuss book, as well as posting pictures of live pets wrapped in bread and rolls. 

Observers correctly noted that the racist trope of immigrants eating pets dehumanizes marginalized people who are already vulnerable, putting them in danger. While posters and media have repeatedly pointed out that the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are there legally and have revitalized the city, making fun of those sharing such a stupid lie has a different kind of potential to defang it.  

And, aside from Trump’s evident worry, there are signs that Trump is vulnerable. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had scheduled a vote today on the continuing resolution to fund the government before the government will have to shut down on October 1. That measure included the voter suppression measure Trump demanded yesterday in all caps. Today, Johnson pulled the vote. 

Republicans are also breaking with Trump over the idea of an interest rate cut. Trump does not want the Fed to lower the cost of borrowing money before the election despite the softening job market—cheaper money should bolster the economy and provide more jobs—and has vowed that if he is reelected, he will take control of the Fed, which is now an independent institution. But Republicans are backing away from his demands. Representative Dan Meuser, a Trump supporter from the swing state of Pennsylvania, told Jasper Goodman and Eleanor Mueller of Politico that he supports a cut. “You’ve got to put the greater good ahead of looking political,” he said. 

Today the share price of Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT), the owner of the Truth Social platform, fell to new lows. The stock fell more than 10% today, ending the day at $16.68 from a high over $60 a share in April. In May, Trump’s stock was valued at more than $6 billion, although the company is losing money and has very few users. The drop over the last several months has wiped away more than $4 billion of that value. Trump needs money for his legal bills and settlements, as well as his businesses, and can begin to cash out on his stock soon, but selling much of it was always going to be a problem because if he dumped it, the bottom would fall out. Now selling is a problem because its value is dropping. 

In the face of concern that Trump and Vance have been suggesting they would challenge the results of the 2024 election, the Department of Homeland Security took steps to protect the January 6, 2025, session of Congress that will count the electoral votes that will decide the presidency. They have put January 6, 2025, on the same security level as the Super Bowl or a major event like the U.N. General Assembly. 

Finally, today is the 23rd anniversary of 9/11, the day terrorists from the al-Qaeda network used four civilian airplanes as weapons against the United States, and Trump used its commemoration to demonstrate another dominance trait: that he will behave however he wishes. Trump attended a remembrance with right-wing extremist Laura Loomer, who has shared not only the false pet-eating conspiracy theory, but also the false theory that “9/11 was an Inside Job!” Recently, she posted an appalling attack on Vice President Harris. Today she posted that she joined Trump because “I believe in unconditional loyalty to those who are deserving. And there is nobody more deserving of our loyalty and unwavering support than Donald Trump."

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris each issued statements about the anniversary. Biden vowed that the nation will never forget the attack, those lost, their families, and “the heroic citizens and survivors who rushed to help their fellow Americans. And never forget that when faced with evil—and an enemy that sought to tear us apart—we endured.”

Harris echoed Biden. She also emphasized the national unity the crisis created as people came together to deny the terrorists the achievement of their goal “to attack and destroy our way of life—our democracy, our freedoms, and everything we hold dear as Americans.” She thanked the military personnel who served in Afghanistan and elsewhere to root out terrorism, and urged Americans to “reflect on what binds us together as one: the greatest privilege on Earth, the pride and privilege of being an American.” 

All three were at a commemoration of 9/11 today. Trump and Harris shook hands, and he tried the dominance trick of using the handshake to pull Harris toward him, which she firmly resisted. His social media website confirmed that the world of professional wrestling is very much on Trump’s mind as he apparently tried to reassure himself he, and not Kamala Harris, is the dominant political figure in the country. He clearly doesn’t want to agree to another debate and is trying to spin his reluctance as a show of power. 

“In the World of Boxing or U[ltimate] F[ighting] C[hampionship] when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’” he wrote. “Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING, in one case, 92–8, so why would I do a Rematch?”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON