#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.

[yourdailyqueer]

Sarah Longwell

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: N/A

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Political strategist, entrepreneur, publisher, activist

Note: According to The New Yorker, Longwell has "dedicated her career to fighting Trump's takeover of her party (Republican)."

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[topazthecat]

LIVE! The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell Interviews Kamala Harris & Liz Cheney...