monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

What did you win, slick? You want to ban the Democratic party. You want to put people you call progressives in labor camps (can you say arbeit macht frei?). You're an irrational nationalist who never admits that the United States has done wrong. You're an irrational militarist, no matter how much the corruption of the military-industrial complex costs the nation.

If it looks like a duck, and it walks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck . . .

Bullshit--you lie like a rug.

A week ago, Trump said 50,000 to 60,000. Then on Sunday...

Next week, of course, it will be higher.

Months from now, "We're certain to have some Americans still alive in Alaska like I've always said"

He’s trying to control the narrative so that no matter how many die it will not be as bad as it would’ve been without him. A real POS, this guy.

You're all talk. You can't back up your empty talking by actually pointing out an untrue statement in any of my posts.

I and many others point out your errors on a regular basis. That you are unwilling to ever admit that you are wrong, does not mean that you are never wrong.

You can bet the scumbag doesn't care who dies, as long as no infected person comes close to him. I'd be willing to bet that he'd be philosophical about family members being infected, as long as they stay the hell away from him.

Yes he is. But he would not have gotten anywhere near the WH if the American right and the GOP had not become as vile and corrupted as it is.

I’d say that would be a safe bet.

I don't agree with you here. Many Republicans were appalled that he got the nomination. But the Plump experience has taught them that the "fake news" trope can work, and that lies don't matter as long as you have a MAGA crowd out there enamored of the message. I also don't for a moment subscribe to your vile and corrupted message--you've got no business smearing politicians just because you don't agree with their political views. It would be a mistake to take a line like that in the campaign, and I certainly hope Mr. Biden understands that. The electoral battle since 1948 has been for the unaligned middle, and they don't like smear campaigns.

More of your empty talking. No matter how loudly you claim that you've pointed out errors in my posts, you can't back up any of your empty talking with actual examples of a supposed error of mine.

You're bluffing, and I call your bluff. No matter how you respond to my post, your response won't have any examples of an error from my posts. It will just be another round of empty bluffing.

I would prefer to see Biden take on Harris. Of course, being black and female will help, and being young and energetic will help, too. The Democratic Party needs to promote the political future of younger candidates. Harris was the Attorney General of California, and she has Senate experience. The Vice President presides over the Senate, and it would be the equivalent of having another Pelosi in the leadership.

They need to campaign smart. Work on the states that Mr. Obama won in 2012. Although they need to campaign in states like Florida and Texas, because a well-run campaign will also want to promote Democratic candidates in all the states. But Clinton squandered far top much time and resources in Florida, a state it is unlikely that the Democrats will win. Once again, they need to campaign smart.

On the other hand the right considers facts to be smears. One doesn't have to lie to point out what a lying prick our president is. The facts speak for themselves when pointed out to rational citizens.

That's true.

Let me clarify. Note that I made reference to the American right and the GOP. The shape or nature of the modern right (let's stipulate it as something like the voting base and the RW media entities pushing it and the vast contingent of funders and lobbyists) are not really separate from the party itself because the party has been deeply complicit in the degradation of prior standards and processes of government. That the party has, with notable but relatively few exceptions, fallen in behind Trump seems clear evidence that it was already very badly degraded before Trump's arrival.

The "fake news" trope was not a Trump creation (aside from the phrase itself). This is important - There is a central or overarching premise that talk radio and a few print publications (NY Post, etc) then Fox, then various online startups have been pushing for decades - that all news entities which aren't loudly rightwing are not to be trusted because they are (must be by the logic of this premise) biased for the left and are not to be attended to because of that. This either/or framing automatically discounts the possibility of objective knowledge, expertise, and scientific method as a valid epistemological tool. There is not an hour of Limbaugh or Fox which passes without this premise being dead center in all rhetoric and it is explicitly repeated over and over each hour. You're certainly correct in isolating Trump for the radical use of this sort of claim but its current power or efficacy in his hands only comes about because of the long right wing and GOP history pushing this framing. Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media was published 17 years ago and in it he detailed, even then, the pervasive and long-standing propagandist techniques that had been in use much earlier.


Political views are a separate issue. There are important differences between Fox and The American Conservative magazine, for example. Or between Mitch McConnell and GHW Bush. Hacker and Pierson's Winner Take All Politics and Ornstein and Mann's It's Even Worse Than It Looks are two very good books on how the modern GOP has evolved into a very radical and dangerous outlier in the politics of the US.


I suspect you're right on this. But that's a concern for the PR function in elections which isn't my concern.

I agree with Blatham more than Set on this point - That there is a rot that has permeated the Republicans that allowed them to look the other way at every sordid thing that was revealed about Trump during his campaign, and continues to influence their judgement when they are confronted with this hellish administration.

Also, I don’t agree that Dem campaigning should focus on some putative “undecided middle” voters. There were millions - millions - of eligible Democratic voters that simply didn’t show up in 2016. They are the ones that need to be courted. Yes I’m talking about preaching to the choir. There is a hell of a lot of material generated in just the last few months that can be used to effectively campaign against Trump that those voters already predisposed against Trump are primed to hear.

I know this is just anecdotal, but in my own conversations with younger people who will be voting for the first or second time, their attention focuses when I tell them about all the harm that Trump is doing to their environment and their finances. When I personalize it to telling them how Biden would be so much better for them and their lives than Trump, they engage in the conversation with interest. And that’s before even breaching with POC the issue about what a racist
he is. If a fraction of those young people take the trouble to vote it means big trouble for the orange slime.

GOTV is now of supreme importance as most everyone recognizes. And here, I think, the Dems are looking good. Trump is so vilified so broadly that, even before the pandemic and economic crash, Dems have been performing very well in midterms and special elections. It's almost impossible to imagine how Trump's polling goes anywhere but down over the next months and even more impossible to imagine how this fails to become even worse for him now.

If there ever was an earlier period where there was a set of factors more likely to engage a "Get the bums out!" dynamic, I don't know what that would have been.

Since such is mentioned today in the US and European media with some astonishment (we have the same "problem" in most of not all countries). here again, as quote translated from a paper:


Similar was said about e.g. the numbers of infected persons in Germany. But also everyone tried to explain the reason for it (and it's noted on the official website like the CDC does) the right-wing conspirators still still can't read it.

Fine t shirt that one.