Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has responded to news stories about his plan to get rid of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare) by claiming his comments at the closed-door campaign event on Monday were taken out of context. But they weren’t. The tape is clear. Johnson said that Republicans want “massive reform” to the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” When an attendee asked, “No Obamacare?” Johnson laughed and agreed: “No Obamacare. The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

MAGA Utah senator Mike Lee reposted the video of Johnson and commented: “Kill Obamacare now[.]”

Trump today posted on social media that he never mentioned repealing the Affordable Care Act, “never even thought of such a thing.” But this was either a memory lapse or a lie, because in 2016 he ran on repealing the ACA and his 2016 platform called for “a full repeal of Obamacare.” Within hours of taking office in 2017, Trump issued an executive order weakening the law, and when the Republican-dominated House voted to repeal the law, Trump held a celebration in the Rose Garden and declared the ACA “essentially dead.”

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) bucked Trump to protect the ACA then, and Trump began this year’s campaign with a promise to get rid of it before backing off. Even still, the vague promise in the 2024 platform to “increase Transparency, promote Choice and Competition, and expand access to new Affordable Healthcare” sounds a lot like Johnson’s promise to restore “the free market” to health care.

While Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris has been campaigning in the swing states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Trump today held a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a state President Joe Biden won by almost 11 points in 2020 and that Democrats are likely to win in 2024. Trump had to hold the rally at a private airplane hangar after city officials refused to rent the Albuquerque Convention Center to the campaign because it still owes Albuquerque almost $445,000 from a similar rally in 2019.

Once there, he made it clear he was trying to repair some of the damage caused by the extraordinary racism and sexism on display at his Sunday rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, where a comedian called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.”

Courting offended voters, he said: “Don’t make me waste a whole damn half a day here, OK? Look, I came here. We can be nice to each other, or we can talk turkey. I’m here for one simple reason: I like you very much, and it’s good for my credentials with the Hispanic or Latino community.” That outreach might not be enough to bring back the voters lost after the Madison Square Garden event.

The campaign is seeing other weaknesses, as well. Meredith McGraw and Jessica Piper of Politico reported today that nearly half of the ballots already cast in Pennsylvania have come from voters over the age of 65, and although the numbers of registered older voters are divided evenly between the parties, registered Democrats have made up about 58% of Pennsylvania’s early votes, compared to 35% for Republicans. Those numbers might well simply reflect different approaches to mail-in ballots, but they also might explain why Trump is already claiming fraud in Pennsylvania.

He is also seemingly nervous about Pennsylvania because women are voting there at a much higher rate than men in the early vote: 56% to 43%. And Democratic women are the biggest group of new voters in the state. New voters who were too young eight years ago to hear the Access Hollywood tape, in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women, have been hearing it on TikTok lately, as younger users record their reactions to it and call out their older male relatives for voting for anyone who would talk as Trump did.

“I moved on her, and I failed,” Trump says in the tape. “I’ll admit it. I did try and f*ck her…. I moved on her like a b*tch, but I couldn’t get there, and she was married,” Trump said. “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful— I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ‘em by the p*ssy. You can do anything,” he said.

The Harris campaign and pro-Harris organizations leaned into the history of women’s suffrage today with videos highlighting those who fought so that women could vote and reiterating: “We are not going back.” To assist those women who might not feel safe letting their husbands know how they voted, women have been posting notes in women’s public bathrooms assuring other women that their vote is secret. A Democratic advertisement voiced by actress Julia Roberts powerfully makes the point that women do not have to tell their husbands how they vote.

Right-wing figures like Charlie Kirk have expressed alarm at the gender gap in voting. As well, there has been a right-wing backlash to the idea that women will vote for Harris while letting their husbands assume they’re voting for Trump.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA), who famously cheated on both of his first two wives, expressed dismay at the idea that a woman might need to keep her vote secret from her husband. “For them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption,” he said. “How do you run a country…saying wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives? I mean, what kind of a totally amoral, corrupt, sick system have the Democrats developed?”

On the Fox News Channel’s The Five this morning, host Jesse Watters said that if he found out his wife “was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair…. That violates the sanctity of our marriage.” Christian pastor Dale Partridge posted: “In a Christian marriage, a wife should vote according to her husband’s direction. He is the head and they are one. Unity extends to politics. This is not controversial.” But, he added, “submission does have limits. A wife doesn’t need to submit to her husband in sin (in this case voting democrat).”

Tonight, at an event with right-wing host Tucker Carlson in Glendale, Arizona, Trump seemed to move beyond misogyny to murderous intent. He turned his increasingly violent rhetoric against former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who has urged Republican women to vote against Trump. “She’s a radical war hawk,” he said, “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face.”

Carlson is friendly with authoritarian Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has undermined democracy in his own country and is close to Russian president Vladimir Putin. Today Orbán posted that he had “Just got off the phone with President [Trump]. I wished him the best of luck for next Tuesday. Only five days to go. Fingers crossed[.]“

Meanwhile, a lot more major endorsements for Harris have been coming in.

Today basketball legend LeBron James released a powerful one-minute ad with clips of Trump’s many racist statements and drawing a straight line from him back to the most violent days of the civil rights movement. “HATE TAKES US BACK,” it says. In a post sharing the video, James wrote: “When I think about my kids and my family and how they will grow up, the choice is clear to me. VOTE KAMALA HARRIS!!!” James has 53 million followers on X.

The Economist today endorsed Harris, warning that “a second Trump term comes with unacceptable risks.” Former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg also posted on social media that he had voted for Harris “without hesitation,” and added that he hoped undecided voters would join him. “Trump is not fit for high office,” he wrote in a Bloomberg op-ed. He praised Harris’s positive vision and bipartisan outreach.

Conservative judge J. Michael Luttig published an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday, titled: “My Fellow Republicans, It’s Time to Say ‘Enough’ With Trump.” The former president is unfit for office, Luttig wrote. “When we entrusted our Constitution and our democracy to him before, he betrayed us.” Luttig assured readers that “[t]here could be no higher duty of American citizenship than to decisively repudiate” Trump.

He reminded his fellow Republicans that they had always “proudly claimed they would be the first to put the country above all else when the time came. That time has come…. ​​All Americans, but especially Republicans, will live with their decision the rest of their lives.” “The choice for America next Tuesday,” Luttig wrote, “could not be clearer.”

Ever since Vice President Harris tapped Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, Democratic governors have been demonstrating their support for one of their own. Today, for Halloween, Democratic governors Wes Moore of Maryland, Janet Mills of Maine, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and Phil Murphy of New Jersey each dressed to match a photograph of Walz.

“No tricks this Halloween!” Whitmer posted. “Just dressing up as our friend [Tim Walz]—excited to elect him and [Kamala Harris]. If you haven’t yet, make a plan to vote.”

Is anyone else finding that their state of mind and emotional equilibrium are suffering some unusual stresses as this election approaches? That's certainly the case for me and those in this household. I'm not at the point where I'm hoarding guns, gold and edibles but I'm not all that far off.

It's not confined to America.

Lord only knows what mischief he could cause over here and in the ME.

How anyone can still be planning to vote for him is beyond comprehension.

It’s not just Democrats who fear a Trump victory – it would be a disaster for Europe too
Nathalie Tocci

The Republican candidate poses the biggest threat to the continent. But we’re also not prepared for a Kamala Harris win

I've just returned from Washington DC, where the level of anxiety about the presidential election is sky high. Almost as high as it is in Europe. Elections in the US are by far the most influential globally and the region that will be affected most is Europe (followed by Asia Pacific). The ripples from the election on security, the economy and democracy will be felt across the continent more than in any other part of the world.

Aware of this, European policymakers and pundits in Brussels and national capitals have been fretting for more than a year. But we have worried more than we have taken action. And we have focused on some possible repercussions more than others.

Furthermore, while we have concentrated almost exclusively on what Donald Trump’s re-election might mean, we actually believe deep down that Kamala Harris will scrape through even though we have not put much thought into what a Harris administration might look like.

Most European planning has gone into the potential impact on the economy, such as detailed thought on how the EU might react to a tariff war with the US under a second Trump presidency. It would probably start with a mix of generous offers at the negotiating table, followed by retaliatory measures were these to fail. However, two questions remain.

If the US did ramp up tariffs on the EU, how would European countries manage this against the backdrop of an already escalating EU trade war against China? And how would they react to a possible three-way economic war, for instance with the US applying secondary sanctions on EU products that rely on Chinese components or technology?

If the worst is averted and Harris is elected, Europeans have rather lazily assumed that Joe Biden’s (mildly protectionist) approach to trade, investment and industry would continue. While this may or may not be true, it is unclear what kind of coordination could be established or strengthened with the US to ensure that Europeans would not find themselves on the back foot, as they were in 2022 with the passing of the US inflation reduction act, which threatened the EU’s burgeoning green industries by shifting investment to the US.

Turning to security, this is the area that triggers by far the most European anxiety. Understandably so. Whereas few of us believe that the US would actually pull out of Nato under a second Trump term, few of us doubt that Washington would abandon Ukraine to its fate, possibly leading to a Russia-US deal over the heads of Ukrainians and other Europeans. Couching this surrender as “peace” might also lead to European division between those who would (wisely) see this as a stitch-up that would allow Vladimir Putin to prepare to take his next gulp of European territory, and others who, whether out of weakness or conviction, would follow the Trump-JD Vance line of surrendering Ukraine.

Precisely because the security and political implications for Europe could be so grave, Trump’s re-election might be sufficiently traumatic for Europeans to actually make a leap in defence integration. This is something the French president Emmanuel Macron has been promoting for many years under the headline of European strategic autonomy. More practically, the issue is how EU funding and regulations – as well as a possible EU-UK security pact – could be harnessed to support a European pillar within Nato.

Tragically, hardly any thought has gone into what the security implications of a Harris presidency might be. For sure, there would be no abrupt US disengagement from Ukraine and Nato. But there would probably be a gradual US pullback, making the jump-start on an integrated European defence strategy just as important.

And here comes the catch-22: whereas a Trump presidency would make Europeans much more willing to pull together on defence but less likely to succeed with a hostile administration across the Atlantic, a Harris presidency would make Europeans much less willing to integrate their defence even though success is more likely given that Europeans would have an ally in the White House.

The shock waves of the US election and its aftermath will also reverberate across the continent’s democratic institutions. When Trump first came to power in 2016, Europe had passed the peak of its first wave of nationalist populism, fuelled by economic and migration crises in the 2010s. Then Trump’s election galvanised European unity and democracy, with German chancellor Angela Merkel depicted as the leader of the free world. Those days are gone. Europe today is on its second, arguably much larger, nationalist-populist wave, as evidenced by national elections across several countries in the past couple of years and the European election in June.

A win for Harris, with her emphasis on freedom, the separation of powers and civil rights, would strengthen liberal democrats in Europe and could even tip the European nationalist-populist wave into stagnation or decline. It would certainly make it harder for nationalist governments, not just in Hungary, but also in Slovakia, Italy, the Netherlands and perhaps Austria, to plough on with illiberal reforms on issues such as LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, asylum, media freedoms and the independence of the judiciary. Liberal democrats in Europe would be galvanised to fight back, probably supported by Harris’s administration.

Trump’s election, however, would have the exact opposite effect, accelerating the “Orbánisation” of Europe and emboldening far-right leaders, parties and governments across the continent. Little wonder then that Europeans are feeling so anxious. Not only is our economy and security in grave danger, but our future existence as liberal democracies hangs in the balance.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

European voters – even some on far-right – want Harris victory, poll finds
YouGov survey suggests fewer are confident that Harris will win and most expect violence if Trump is not elected

Most western Europeans – and even many who vote for far-right parties – would like Kamala Harris to win the US presidential election, polling suggests, but fewer are confident that she will and most expect violence if Donald Trump is not elected.

The YouGov Eurotrack survey of voters in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Denmark found that the Democratic vice-president was the preferred winner in every country , with sizeable majorities in favour of Harris in all except Italy.

Denmark’s voters were the most eager to see Harris in the White House at 81%, followed by 71% in Germany, 65% in Spain, 62% in France and 61% in the UK; the 46% of Italians who shared the same view was still almost double the percentage of those who instead opted for Trump.

Unsurprisingly, support for the Democratic candidate was strongest among Europe’s left-leaning and centrist voters, reaching 80% to 90% among backers of parties such as the Social Democrats and the Greens in Germany, Sumar in Spain, Emmanuel Macron in France, the Social Democrats in Sweden, and the Liberal Democrats in the UK.

However, those who recently cast their votes for traditional centre-right parties also preferred Harris over Trump, by often significant margins: 89% of Venstre voters in Denmark, 78% of Christian Democrat (CDU/CSU) voters in Germany, 66% of People party voters in Spain and 58% of Conservative party voters in Britain.

And even among western Europeans who recently voted for far-right, nationalist and populist parties, sizeable numbers of respondents in all seven countries said they would rather see Harris elected president than her Republican rival.

Trump was the favoured candidate of far-right voters in Spain, the UK, Germany and Italy, with 54% of Vox voters (against 23% who preferred Harris), 51% (27%) of Reform UK voters, 50% (36%) of Alternative for Germany voters in Germany and 44% (32%) of Brothers of Italy voters saying they wanted the former president to secure a second term.

I read George Will's column in today's WaPo (they are continuing my subscription until the end of the year)...and wanted to throw up.

A coalition of European Greens have urged the US Green party’s nominee, Jill Stein, to pull out of next week’s election and endorse Kamala Harris to stop Donald Trump from becoming president.

Green parties in 16 European countries from Portugal to Ukraine distanced themselves from their US counterparts in a statement on Friday, and called for Stein to withdraw from the race.

“We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House,” they wrote.

The signatories include Green parties from several countries in which they govern as part of coalitions, such as Germany, Ireland, Belgium and Spain. The parties said there was “no link” between the Greens in Europe and the US.

“The US Greens are no longer a member of the global organisation of Green parties,” they wrote. “In part, this fissure resulted from their relationship with parties with authoritarian leaders, and serious policy differences on key issues including Russia’s full scale assault on Ukraine.”
[...]
In the US, the Green party has been called “not serious” by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive Democratic congresswoman from New York. “All you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious,” Ocasio-Cortez posted on Instagram last month. “To me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory.”
The US Greens said the European Greens were reiterating “intense partisan invective, smears, misinformation, and Democratic Party talking points.” They criticised the Democrats for increasing oil and gas production and providing military aid to Israel.

They also suggested the US Greens were drawing support from people who had no desire to vote for either of the two main candidates.

“European Greens can endorse whomever they please in a US election but we invite them to communicate directly with us to understand our positions and participation in elections, and to support our demand for a national popular vote by ranked-choice voting (RCV) for president, which would eliminate the alleged spoiler factor.”

“The Democratic Party has ignored and rejected this demand, which leads us to suspect that Democrats would rather lose to Republicans like Trump than tolerate the presence of more than two parties in US elections.”
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