Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): Barack Obama, still the godfather of this machine. He gave us Joe Biden, his VP. He gave us Hillary, his secretary of state. Then he couped Joe, put all his boys with Kamala's team, and had his wingman Holder vet Walz. Now, the guy's a young 63, he's going to be doing this for the next 25 years.

He's definitely going to interfere in this election. That's why we'll be sending Johnny to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certificate. This time, we will dig deep and find out what really happened.

And please announce it when you see it - I sure don't want to miss that.

"There is some strategy to it [bashing the 'liberal' media]...If you watch any great coach, what they do is try to 'work the refs'. Maybe the ref will cut you a little slack on the next one."

It all goes back to Reagan and his legislation removing broadcast media's impartiality.

This fetishisation of free speech has allowed lies and half truths to be given the same status as the truth.

@izzythepush,
Good point – re-imposition of the fairness doctrine would be a great start, but it would have to be modified to cover digital platforms as well as broadcasts. With all the profits made from dispensing conservative propaganda, however, it would never get past the current Supreme Court. Nor would anything else that might accomplish similar goals.

Quote:

And here's where I'm hoping that the mainstream media grasps the threat that is posed by the deep corruption that marks the modern GOP and its media/propaganda system and how dire of a threat it is.

You're hoping the MSM grasps that, huh? Tell me Blatham, how exactly do you envision that would look - when the MSM somehow finally woke up to the decades long corrosion of the GOP and their media cesspools? Would they drastically alter their programming, to openly combat the constant stream of lies? Would they engage the GOP and its tentacles Fox, Newsmax, Daily Wire, Washington Times, etc., etc, in legal battles over their constant libels and slanders? How exactly will you know when they "grasp" the nature of the ugly, destructive monster? And please announce it when you see it - I sure don't want to miss that.

The mainstream press is in a tough position. It has published reams of excellent reporting on Trump’s scandals and no shortage of op-eds denouncing him. The plurality of voters who support Trump over Biden in many recent polls are not ignorant of the ex-president’s contempt for election results or threats against federal law enforcement. Rather, they either believe that Trump’s conduct is justified given the deep state’s treachery, or they simply don’t care. Therefore, the electorate, the Republican Party, and every organ of mainstream conservatism are treating Trump as though he were an ordinary presidential candidate.

In this context, a news outlet can cover Trump’s affronts to democracy. But it can’t quite internalize them. For such a publication to fully behave as though it has a working memory — and a capacity to rationally weigh the significance of disparate pieces of information — would be for it to resemble a partisan rag.

The most salient truth about the 2024 election is that the Republican Party is poised to nominate an authoritarian thug who publishes rationalizations for political violence and promises to abuse presidential authority on a near-daily basis. There is no way for a paper or news channel to appropriately emphasize this reality without sounding like a shrill, dull, Democratic propaganda outlet. So, like the nation writ large, the press comports itself as an amnesiac, or an abusive household committed to keeping up appearances, losing itself in the old routines, in an effortful approximation of normality until it almost forgets what it doesn’t want to know.

Who Are the Democrats?

Who are they? Let me answer that question in a revealing way. The Democrats are one of the most powerful institutions on the planet. They are a political party so moneyed, so powerful, and so connected, that there are barely just a handful of other institutions on planet earth which come close—mega-banks, mega-corporations, etcetera.

Why do I raise that point? Because…it hasn’t felt like it. Has it? When I say “The Democrats,” until very recently, people would be expected to shrug, grimace, frown in disappointment, maybe sigh in irritation. The Democrats act powerless, and make people feel powerless.

Now let me say it again. The Democrats are one of the most powerful institutions on the planet. Yet for some reason—many reasons, which we’re about to explore—they haven’t acted like it. They’ve acted, instead, like the opposite. Everything from weak to supine to beaten-before-they-fought to hesitant to unsure. Choose the word that fits best, the point is that…

Until the last few weeks, nobody much except die-hard party insiders and loyalists would have used any of the following words to describe the Democrats. Bold. Assertive. Confident. Brave. Courageous. Principled. Fierce.

No fucks given.

But now? Everything’s changed.

And because the Democrats are suddenly different, people are euphoric. Where have these guys been all my life, people wonder? This is a party that suddenly doesn’t just claim to “represent” me in some meaningless way, but will fight for me, take it to the mat, and win. No wonder there’s been a huge influx of money, accompanied by the feeling of a Taylor Swift concert.

Let me now sum up why.

The Democrats are one of the most powerful institutions on the planet. And for the first time in a very long time, they’re finally acting like it. That’s electrifying people. And it’s dramatically changing the face of not just politics, but everything it’s made of, culture, society, attitudes, expectations, beliefs. Suddenly, the Democrats are a party that we can believe in.

Not just settle half-heartedly for.

And that’s making the GOP have a meltdown, because for decades? Their opponents haven’t been anything like this.

Strategy, Purpose, and Transformation, or When Institutions Rediscover Their Meaning

Think back to the birth of the modern Democrats. Suffering three terrible defeats in a row—Reagan, twice, landslides, and then Bush Senior—the Democrats came up with a new strategy. Do you remember what it was called? I do: triangulation.

“Triangulation” was a fancy buzzword. It just meant, in plainer English, that the Democrats were going to act…a whole lot more like the…Republicans.
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"In politics, triangulation is a strategy associated with U.S. President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The politician presents a position as being above or between the left and right sides or wings of a democratic political spectrum. It involves adopting for oneself some of the ideas of one's political opponent."

That summary’s a little unfair—it was Clinton’s advisors who came up with it. So what did triangulation yield? The beast we’d later come to know as “neoliberalism.” The “neo” in there meant that neoliberalism was in fact deeply skewed towards the right. It wasn’t, for example, about FDR’s famous Second Bill of Rights.

Think for a moment about how different those were.
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"The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education."

Neoliberalism, the bastard child of triangulation, wasn’t about any of that. It ended up being about adopting “free markets,” privatizing and deregulating everything from energy to finance, making prices paramount over public goods, and creating a society where everyone “lifted themselves up by the bootstraps,” and that stuff today is sometimes called “The Washington Consensus.”

But that consensus failed disastrously. It is precisely what yielded Trump, in turn, as America’s once vaunted middle class fell apart, shrank, and became a minority for the first time in history.

So. Let’s connect some of those dots. The strategy the Democrats adopted in contemporary history was triangulation, or moving to the right, in order to create a paradigm known as neoliberalism.

And that put on the defensive. Because if you’re tacking right, of course, those further right can always look at you, and in scorn, shout, “but these guys aren’t as extreme as us!”

This is why the Democrats ended up being so weak. So supine, so hesitant, so unsure. Their strategy was failing, because their paradigm hadn’t worked. And they didn’t know what to do about it. Meanwhile, the GOP was there to rub salt in their wounds, and portray them as watered-down versions of the macho, manly, aggressive real thing, which, if neoliberalism is what you’re selling, was probably fair enough.

As that happened, a new class arose in society. The punditry. You know who they are. Pundits all share one curious thing in common: they’re neoliberals. That’s because neoliberalism came to occupy a position of power, and pundits didn’t just associate themselves with it, power defined itself as legitimate through punditry. Only the opinions of neoliberals were to count—everything else was lunacy, irrationality, hysteria, “communism,” “socialism,” and so forth.

And so the pundits did what their class was designed to do. Every time the Democrats would have the dim spark of a new idea with which to go on the offensive with, the pundits would shout them down. Warn them off. No deviation from the neoliberal orthodoxy was to be allowed.

Decades passed that way. The Democrats found themselves trapped, in this prison of their own making, a failed strategy their jail, and pundits their jailers. Every once in a while, they’d try to make a break for freedom—and found themselves quickly punished back into line.

And as that happened, more and more people began to roll their eyes at them. Who were they? What was the point of such a party? It seemed faded. It felt obsolete. It was old, incompetent, ineffective. It couldn’t fight for anything much.

Until now.

This Is What a Party on the Offensive Looks Like

Now, the Democrats have a new strategy. Triangulation has been left far behind. They’re not on the defensive anymore. They’re on the offensive.

And that’s electrifying people.

You can see it in…everything. The way that Barack Obama spoke contemptuously of Trump. The way righteous fury poured forth from Michelle Obama. That’s different, too. The first time around, Obama would say things like “there are differences between us.” That’s not going on the offensive—but mocking Trump for being a petty, angry old man is.

You can see it, too, in Kamala’s approach, which is about “joy.” But that joy isn’t just some kind of naive happiness as in ignorance-is-bliss. It’s the laughter of poking fun at fascists. Of dancing as they splutter in rage. Of her comms teams just roasting Trump again and again, to everyone online’s amazement. That’s joyful, too, the idea of going on the offensive against a movement that’s so inimical to democracy and peace and justice and truth. It feels good because it’s right.

The Democrats’ new strategy is to go on the offensive, then, in…every way. There they are, slamming Trump, making JD Vance look like a fool, absolutely shredding the GOP. All that’s summed up in Tim Walz’s now legendary line: “weird.” How simple is that? And yet it illustrates just how powerful going on the offensive is, and how long the Democrats have lacked this approach, and how much people have longed for it from them.

It’s not just about rhetoric. The policy couldn’t be more different, too. Instead of triangulation’s paeans to neoliberalism, we have a muscular form of a new approach to liberalism that begins to take America, step by step, closer to social democracy. Millions of new homes. Making it easier to have a family. Combatting monopolies and making life affordable again. Neoliberalism didn’t care about any of this stuff. You were on your own, in the jungle, left to fend for yourself, and that was what was morally right.

All of that adds up. It connects with people, because it’s something different, new, and what they’ve been hungering for. This is a party that will fight for me. Will fight for me. That won’t be cowed into just being a lightweight version of the other guys. That will actually take on fascism, inequality, lies, hate, spite, violence. That’ll openly champion values like peace, justice, truth, dignity, decency, equality—not sort of simper about them, here and there, and then back cautiously away from them when it counts.

The Institution The Democrats Were Meant to Be

So these are two absolutely tectonic transformations we’re not just witnessing, but that we’re invited to be a part of, if we choose to be, and more and more people are doing just that. A transformation in purpose: who the Democrats are, and what they’re for. And a transformation in strategy—going from meek, befuddled defense, to no-fucks-given offense.

No wonder all that’s sparking euphoria. Like I said: one of the most powerful institutions on planet earth is finally acting like it. No wonder the GOP’s running scared. This is the party Americans have wanted the Democrats to be, for a very long time now. The party the Democrats have been afraid to be. But now they’re finally maturing. Stepping into their adult shoes. Embracing their destiny. And when we see that sort of courage, strength, determination, especially from an institution as beaten and lost as the Democrats—we cheer it on, because that’s what leadership is about.

The Democrats are finally becoming the party they were meant to be. They’re maturing, operating at a higher order now, in terms of purpose and strategy and leadership. That’s why the GOP feels beaten. It doesn’t know how to respond. It’s on the back foot, stumbling, off balance.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the third tectonic shift for the Democrats—leadership. The incredibly poignant moments from Biden. From Obama. From Kamala. This essay’s gotten too long already. I just wanted to share these thoughts with you. Fire away in the comments. And by the way, old friends among you know—I’m not a die-hard fan of the Democrats. Far from it. But I am delighted to see them becoming the party they should have been long ago.

The streets of Chicago have been bustling with visitors, law enforcement officers, and a few protesters for the Democratic National Convention. This is the twenty-sixth convention that’s been held in Chicago, first because the Republican Party was centered here in its early days and because Chicago was a major railroad hub, and then because Democrats had a power base here in the twentieth century. Baltimore, Maryland, is second on the list of host cities, with thirteen conventions under its belt.

While we are now so accustomed to political conventions that they seem to be part of the landscape, they were not part of the original framework of American democracy. They grew out of the expansion of the suffrage in the early 1800s, and their development was an important part of the evolution of our democratic system.

In the early years of the American Republic, political leaders were faced with the practical problem of how, exactly, to create a democratic government. The Constitution provided a framework for how such a government should work, but it didn’t lay out how voters would interact with that framework. At first, that gap between voters and the machinery of politics didn’t seem to be much of a problem, since George Washington was so popular he essentially ran unopposed and the presidential electors voted for him unanimously. But then President Washington announced he would not run for a third term, and there was no consensus on who should take his place.

The men who framed the Constitution opposed political parties, but partisanship had sprung up during Washington’s administration nonetheless as voters divided into the Federalist Party, which generally supported the Washington administration, and the Democratic-Republicans, who worried that Washington’s supporters were leading the country toward aristocracy. (Despite their name, the Democratic-Republicans were not analogous to today’s Democrats or Republicans.)

In 1796 the congressional delegations of each party met informally to figure out which candidate they would support. The rule of “King Caucus,” as its detractors would call this system, was short lived. The Federalists flirted with secession in 1815 and never recovered. By 1820, they didn’t even nominate a candidate, permitting incumbent president James Monroe, a Democratic-Republican, to run virtually unopposed.

Many political observers believed that the triumph of the Democratic-Republicans would mean that the nation had finally outgrown partisanship, and they boasted of Monroe’s “Era of Good Feelings.” With politics seemingly in harmony, states extended the vote far more widely than they had done before, dumping the property qualifications that had previously excluded significant numbers of white men. By the 1840s, virtually all white men could vote. (By 1858, free Black men could vote only in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, and women could not vote.)

Universal white male suffrage changed the American political scene. Early political leaders had assumed that elites like them would always run the government, but that idea exploded in 1824 when the dominant Democratic-Republican party split into factions. Only a quarter of the party’s congressmen showed up at that year’s caucus, and four different candidates ran for office.

Andrew Jackson won a plurality of both the popular vote and the electoral vote—although not enough to win—and yet lost the election when it went to the House of Representatives. Americans watched as established politicians overrode their votes in order to put John Quincy Adams, the son of former president John Adams, into the presidency. For all politicians talked of equality, it seemed a wealthy elite was taking over the country.

When Jackson handily won the 1828 election, he declared that the president is the direct representative of the people.

Voters approved that sentiment and began to demand more of a voice in the choosing of their presidential candidates. In 1831, using a convention model that men used at the state and local level for choosing political candidates, the Anti-Masonic Party called supporters together to choose a presidential and vice presidential candidate. Jackson’s new political party, the Democrats, and the party that rose to oppose the Democrats, known as the Whigs, followed suit.

Conventions did more than give voters a say in their presidential and vice presidential candidates, though. They created a national party structure that whipped up enthusiasm for candidates, so that all those new voters would work to get their candidates into office. That structure and enthusiasm, in turn, brought ordinary voters into the previously bloodless machinery of democracy the Framers engineered.

Campaigns ceased to be dignified affairs in which elite politicians allowed themselves to be drafted to serve. While until the end of the nineteenth century it would be considered unseemly for a candidate to campaign personally, other political leaders barnstormed the country on behalf of their candidates, and voters held parades and barbecues and vocally demonstrated their support for candidates who worked to show that they were men of the people. The patrician William Henry Harrison set the standard for such a show when he won the White House by adopting the symbols of hard cider and a log cabin.

But for all the growing reputation of political conventions as the place where voters made their will heard, professional politicians still carefully managed delegations to jockey their candidates into the best possible positions for nomination. Famously, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln began plotting his own elevation at least by early 1860. In his insightful and thorough examination of the 1860 convention, political historian Michael S. Green laid out how Lincoln outmaneuvered the many more popular candidates contending for the Republican presidential nomination that year:

In 1859, Lincoln worked with a colleague, Norman B. Judd, to get the Republican convention of the next year held in Chicago, where Lincoln would have a home court advantage. Then his friends helped push the Illinois Republicans to support him unanimously and, in keeping with the idea that he was a man of the people, dubbed him “The Railsplitter.” Still, Lincoln knew he was not a leading candidate. “My name is new in the field; and I suppose I am not the first choice of a great many,” he wrote to a political operative in spring 1860. “Our policy, then, is to give no offence to others—leave them in a mood to come to us, if they shall be compelled to give up their first love.”

When Republican delegates met at the hastily constructed hall at the intersection of Lake Street and Market Street in Chicago that held about 10,000 people, Lincoln’s allies sang his praises and negotiated. Perhaps as important, as Green explains, one of Lincoln’s key men got the right to seat the delegations. He isolated New York’s, whose members were strong for their own William Henry Seward, keeping it apart from the state delegations that might be persuaded to climb on board the Seward bandwagon. Those undecided delegations Lincoln’s ally kept close to the Lincoln supporters.

As the balloting got underway, the first ballot had Seward ahead with 173.5 votes but without enough to get the nomination, and Lincoln second with 102. On the second ballot, Lincoln’s numbers climbed until they were almost equal to Seward’s, and midway through the counting of the third ballot, it was clear Lincoln would be the 1860 Republican nominee.

The minutiae of politics had given the country a candidate who would change the course of history.

Green quotes journalist Murat Halstead, who was at the convention: “There was a moment’s silence,” Halstead wrote. “The nerves of the thousands, which through the hours of suspense had been subjected to terrible tension, relaxed, and as deep breaths of relief were taken, there was a noise in the wigwam like the rush of a great wind, in the van of a storm—and in another breath, the storm was there. There were thousands cheering with the energy of insanity.”

I'll offer my view of the MSM, for whatever it's worth.

I sent you a PM back in April of 2023. You never responded...and I really wanted to hear what you have to say about my message.

Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social@TrumpDailyPosts
Aug 4
STOCK MARKETS CRASHING. I TOLD YOU SO!!! KAMALA DOESN’T HAVE A CLUE. BIDEN IS SOUND ASLEEP. ALL CAUSED BY INEPT U.S. LEADERSHIP!

Donald Trump Truth Social 11:07 PM EST 08/04/24 @realDonaldTrump

Disaffected Republicans and former Trump officials spoke at the DNC. Fox News didn't air a second of any of their speeches.

Fox News did not air a second of the speeches from alienated GOP leaders and former Trump officials who endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris at this week’s Democratic National Convention.

The DNC speakers included former Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who spoke in prime-time before Harris’ Thursday keynote; former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan; former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham; Olivia Troye, who served as a homeland security aide to former Vice President Mike Pence; and Mesa, Arizona, Mayor John Giles.

MSNBC and CNN treated those speeches as newsworthy, airing each of them in full, according to a Media Matters review of the networks’ convention coverage. But Fox hid the content of all of those speeches from their viewers, often displaying the video on screen without audio as the network’s on-air hosts and guests offered commentary.

It’s not hard to figure out why: Fox is a Trumpist propaganda organ that helped the former president purge the GOP of his critics and is working tirelessly to return him to the White House.

The network typically shies away from highlighting dissension in the party’s ranks. Fox virtually ignored former Vice President Mike Pence’s refusal to endorse Trump and former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s denunciation of the former president as “unfit for office” — both of which originated in Fox interviews.

At the DNC, lifelong Republicans and people who served in Trump’s administration offered scathing reviews of Trump’s personal and presidential conduct, describing him as a “felonous thug” who lacks empathy, turned their party into “a cult,” and is “laying the groundwork to undermine this election."

They also provided a permission structure for Republicans to join them in abandoning former President Donald Trump and instead back Harris. Kinzinger, for example, said that he is supporting Harris because “whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamentals matters of principle, of decency, and of fidelity to this nation.”

All of that is anathema to Fox, and so the network simply avoided letting them make that case to their viewers.