The (no longer) much too early 2024 election thread

[N.E. Brigand]

Biden may have trouble getting on Ohio’s general election ballot, state’s top election official warns

Now Alabama's Secretary of State is engaging in the same nonsensical ploy, despite that state having let presidential candidates whose party conventions post-dated this deadline appear on the ballot on thirteen previous occasions (for eight Republicans and five Democrats).

Dave Weigel reports on Democrats' options to get President Biden and Vice President Harris on the Alabama and Ohio ballots, which in brief are: "1) DNC sends a provisional nomination letter, confirming that they'll be nominees; 2) state legislature changes deadline; 3) lawsuit; 4) DNC holds online delegate vote in late June, so ticket is nominated before convention."

[N.E. Brigand]

Rep. Dan Crenshaw of Texas was elected as a pretty far-right Republican in 2019 and has remained so, but because he's sometimes capable of behaving rationally, he's frequently at odds with the conspiratorially-minded MAGA movement. I am odds with Crenshaw on most issues, but I do appreciate him writing today that Tucker Carlson's "MO is simple: defend America's enemies and attack America's allies ... Mindless contrarianism is his guiding principle, buttressed by his childish tactic of 'just asking questions ... he uses his platform to sow doubt and paranoia and false narratives ... for one simple reason: clicks and engagement, which of course translate to monetary benefit'".

[N.E. Brigand]

In 2015, Tom Sheehy, now the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Montana, "was cited for illegally discharging a weapon in a national park". But in campaign ads, Sheehy has said "I got thick skin — though it’s not thick enough. I have a bullet stuck in this arm still from Afghanistan."

Confronted with this discrepancy by the Washington Post, Sheehy now "says he made up the gunshot to cover up a bullet wound he received as a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan that he never reported to superiors." Why wasn't it reported? Sheehy says he thought he might have been accidentally shot by a platoonmate during a 2012 firefight, and he didn't want that person to be the subject of an investigation. Why did he report the wound to a park ranger in 2015? Because, he says, he had injured himself while hiking and had to explain why there was a bullet in his arm. That said:

The Sheehy campaign did not make available any witnesses who were with Sheehy when he said he was hiking with his family and did not provide medical records from the 2015 hospital visit, saying he had requested them but was unable to obtain them immediately. The campaign also declined to give permission for hospital officials to discuss his treatment.

Also Sheehy's 2023 memoir says in one place that he was shot once in Afghanistan and in another place that he was shot multiple times in Afghanistan.

Josh Marshall has heard from trauma surgeons who say that Tom Sheey's revised bullet-wound story is still phony. They would not have reported an old wound to law enforcement: "People come in with 'retained missiles' all the time. If there's a healed scar over it, it doesn't matter at all –- it just means they can't get an MRI." So apparently he was shot in Montana in 2015, either accidentally by himself (as he reported to the park ranger) or by someone in his family (for whom he was covering), and it would seem he's revising his story now to avoid a story about "stolen valor."

[N.E. Brigand]

The New Hampshire Union-Leader and various other outlets have reported over the past few days that newly available employment records (released by order of the state's Supreme Court) reveal that State Representative Jonathan Stone, who describes himself as "tough on crime," wasn't so fond of law and order when he was employed as a police officer in the early 2000s, during which time he "openly talked about killing the city’s police chief and raping his wife, and staging a mass shooting at the police station". He also "repeatedly socialized with a 16-year-old girl while on-and-off duty, including discussions about going to bars together when she was old enough to drink legally." His co-workers feared that he would "go postal" if he was fired. The records are based on a 2016 investigation that interviewed 18 people, most of them Stone's co-workers, of whom 15 said they'd heard him make threatening remarks. (He subsequently left the police department in a negotiated settlement.)

Stone is a county chair for Donald Trump's election campaign and has been involved in Trump campaigns since 2016 when he personally presented Trump with a signed AR-15.

[N.E. Brigand]

I heard later yesterday that RFK Jr. was backing away from this email [that referred to January 6th insurrectionists as "activists"] and blaming it on some misguided associates. But today he issued a statement that, in the guise of "listening to people of diverse viewpoints," rather whitewashes January 6th. ... Also today, there was reporting in Mother Jones on Steve and Tracy Slepcevic, who hosted a reasonably pricy fundraising event for RFK Jr. in San Diego two weeks ago (the low price for tickets was $575). The Slepcevics have ties "to J6ers, QAnoners, Christian Nationalists, and Far-Right Extremists". These connections appear to stem from their longtime anti-vaccination stance (their son has autism which they blame on vaccines), which was one motivating factor for some January 6th insurrectionists (never mind that one of the few decent things that Trump did as president was Operation Warp Speed). Finally, later today, RFK Jr. made comments weirdly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin, saying that Putin's goal is to "de-nazify" Ukraine.

Since this is the most recent reference to QAnon here, I'll use it to note the sad case of Danielle Johnson, an astrologer who apparently believed QAnon posts that claimed Monday's eclipse heralded an imminent apocalypse. Her last tweet, on Sunday, is a retweet of a QAnon post that reads, in all caps, "Alert: This is the final warning. Turn notifications on. Do not look at the eclipse. Something big is coming...". (She also seems to have been anti-vax and pro-horse paste.) Early Monday morning, she "stabbed her partner to death and pushed her two kids out of a moving car on a busy L.A. Freeway before crashing her own car". She died, as did her eight-month-old child. Her nine-year-old child survived.

[N.E. Brigand]

Axios today tweeted about a new article. The headline and introduction of the article match the tweet, which reads: "The latest Axios-Ipsos Latino poll, in partnership with Noticias Telemundo, finds that more Latinos are saying they support building a border wall and deporting all undocumented immigrants."

So does that mean that Democrats will get more Latino votes if they "support building a border wall and deporting all undocumented immigrants"?

Nope. Because "more Latinos" means a larger minority than before, not a majority. But you have to drill down into the article or go to the poll itself to learn that:

Roughly two in three Latinos say they support providing a path to U.S. citizenship for all people currently in the U.S. illegally (65%) and allowing refugees fleeing crime and violence in Latin American to claim asylum in the U.S. (59%). These levels are roughly unchanged since December 2021 (68%, 60% respectively).

That said, 64% support giving the president authority to shut U.S. borders if there are too many migrants trying to enter the country.

A minority supports building a wall or fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border (42%) or sending all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. back to their country of origin (38%). Compared to December 2021, more Latinos support building a wall (30% in December 2021) and sending all undocumented immigrants back to their country of origin (28%).

Half of respondents (52%) say they agree that they worry that if the government starts mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, they will target all Latinos, including native and legal residents, not only the undocumented. These levels are highest among respondents who speak only Spanish (59%) as well as first generation respondents (57%).

A majority of Latinos say they think that improving border security (62%) and reforming the immigration system (70%) is important for the U.S. government to prioritize. Around one in four say that improving border security (24%) or reforming the immigration system (26%) should be the most important priority for the government.

[N.E. Brigand]

Democrats have a lot of work to educate potential voters. The media could help out by writing stories that make it clear which party supports which positions:



Because who will she be "punishing"? Not most Democratic politicians but regular people like women who will see even more limits on the right to control their own bodies.

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Edited to note this comment on that story:

"I'm willing to help out this arsonist if it means the fire department will finally get its act together. Finally teach them a lesson!"

[N.E. Brigand]

From last year, but not linked here before, as far as I can tell: "Trump Asks Advisors for 'Battle Plans' to 'Attack Mexico' If Reelected" (Rolling Stone).

[N.E. Brigand]

The Biden campaign certainly seems to believe that access to abortion remains a potent issue for voters:

[N.E. Brigand]

I think this advice (written more than twelve hours before Biden's speeech) is right:

President Biden has improved people's lives and they haven't noticed. That's because people's understanding of the world is determined by their information diet, not their material conditions. President Biden needs to take up more space in their information diet, which means starting arguments. ...

Biden should make controversial, sweeping, but unambiguously true claims (“Donald Trump betrayed the nation and tried to overthrow the government”; “I produced the best economy in human history”) so they rile people up in huge debates, but debates where you start out ahead.

This is a classic troll tactic for dominating the discourse for a reason: it works. Say something that a lot of people will object to but is, when you dig into it, incontestably correct. The result: everyone argues a bunch, getting all the attention, and then you’re right.

Apart from referring to Donald Trump as "my predecessor", that's what a lot of Biden's State of the Union address consisted of. But he could go farther.

I'd say President Biden is using the recommended technique as regards student loan forgiveness with tweets like this one from the White House feed:



Journalists are aghast that the White House is comparing PPP loans, which included a forgiveness component from the outset, to student loans, which did not. And so there has been a lot of pushback from mainstream reporters about how the White House's tweets are "disingenuous." But guess what? Nothing in the tweet is false. Everything in it is already public information. Those members of Congress did receive substantial loans that they never had to pay back. And now the media is talking about Biden's student loan forgiveness.

Anyway, here's the Biden's newest student loan initiative, announced earlier today:

Biden announces more than $7B in student debt relief for 277,000 borrowers (NBC).

"With its latest move, the administration has now canceled $153 billion for 4.3 million Americans, the White House said."

[Frelga]

In this election, it's the choice between a vaccine and a virus. A vaccine has side effects and it doesn't help everyone, but getting sick is so much worse, the choice should be obvious but somehow isn't.

Someone posted a screenshot that is supposedly trump posting on truth social how he used to play football with OJ Simpson in college, and the entire comment thread can't figure out whether it's a parody or not.

[RoseMorninStar]

Not with those bone spurs he didn't!! LOL

[N.E. Brigand]

In 2015, Tom Sheehy, now the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Montana, "was cited for illegally discharging a weapon in a national park". But in campaign ads, Sheehy has said "I got thick skin — though it’s not thick enough. I have a bullet stuck in this arm still from Afghanistan."

Tom Sheehy, the Montanan who is that state's Republican candidate for U.S. Senate (challenging the incumbent Democrat, Sen. Jon Tester), is not only a Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan and lied to a law enforcement agent about where he was shot, but he also owns a company, Bridger Aerospace, that reported losses of $73 million in 2023. Bridger is an aerial firefighting company whose annual report shows it to be "deeply in debt, hemorrhaging cash and at risk of failing to meet its financial obligations in the coming year."

Republican Senate candidate Tom Sheehy of Montana has described himself as having grown up amidst Minnesota farmland. He didn't. He grew up in a well-to-do Minneapolis suburb of Shoreview and attended a pricy private school.

[N.E. Brigand]

In a campaign speech tonight, Donald Trump again fixated on wind turbines and also more or less admitted that he doesn't really care if biological males participate in women's sports (but he'll ban that anyway to make his base happy).

[N.E. Brigand]

Also, in that speech in Pennsylvania, Trump noted the state's historic significance. For example, George Washington and his army famously wintered at Valley Forge in 1777-78, and Pennsylvania is also:

where our union was saved vy [sic] the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg: what an unbelievable battle that was, the battle of Gettsyburg. What an unbelievable, I mean, it was so much and so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways. It, it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow. I go to Gettysurg, Pennsylvania to look and to watch, and, uh, the statement of Robert E. Lee, who's no longer in favor -- did you ever notice that? -- no longer in favor: 'Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.' They were fighting uphill, he said. Wow. That was a big mistake. He lost his great general. And, uh, they were fighting. 'Never fight uphill, me boys!' But it was too late.

Edited to add the part about Lee.

[N.E. Brigand]

Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch attended Trump's windswept rally in an effort to understand the "74 million people who want to live under a dictator." Two quotes:

A Trump rally has become an Orwellian celebration of an upside-down world where the lowest unemployment rate in more than 50 years is actually the worst U.S. economy ever, the nation’s cities are cesspools of violence despite a plunging crime rate, and the only person wronged on Jan. 6 was not the scores of injured cops but Ashli Babbitt, shot by “a Black police officer.”

“We’re all executives here!” was the battle cry when I mentioned White Rural Rage [a new book] to the Canadian American, and others in his posse piped up they were from affluent Montgomery County, or were in college studying criminal justice. One wanted to make sure I knew that the father of her child is Black. Another said of her companion: “I brought my au pair, who is from Italy, so I could show her how we do things in America.”

[N.E. Brigand]

Also this:*



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Donald Trump also said the U.S. should follow China's tough-on-crime approach to drugs: "Quick trial!"

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Curiously, he didn't say much if anything about abortion, which was a big story in the news this past week.

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*Edited to add: Trump has been "glitching" in that way for years. I wrote to a couple reporters, in 2019 I think, asking them to please try and figure out what was going on that made him do that. I note then that when it happened, he frequently corrected himself by making an accordion move with his hands.

[N.E. Brigand]

Also, in that speech in Pennsylvania, Trump noted the state's historic significance. For example, George Washington and his army famously wintered at Valley Forge in 1777-78, and Pennsylvania is also:

where our union was saved vy [sic] the immortal heroes at Gettysburg. Gettysburg: what an unbelievable battle that was, the battle of Gettsyburg. What an unbelievable, I mean, it was so much and so interesting and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways. It, it represented such a big portion of the success of this country. Gettysburg, wow. I go to Gettysurg, Pennsylvania to look and to watch, and, uh, the statement of Robert E. Lee, who's no longer in favor -- did you ever notice that? -- no longer in favor: 'Never fight uphill, me boys, never fight uphill.' They were fighting uphill, he said. Wow. That was a big mistake. He lost his great general. And, uh, they were fighting. 'Never fight uphill, me boys!' But it was too late.

Edited to add the part about Lee.

I see that Donald Trump previously mentioned this (aprocyphal?) quotation of Lee in a Sep. 2020 rally in Minnesota:

Now people are starting to say, "You know, it's probably true. I think you've got the worst." Now they used to say, "No, no." Newt Gingrich, great guy. He said, "Nope, Abraham Lincoln got the worst press. They were worse to him than anybody. He was a very depressed person. His wife was very depressed." It was a depressed kind of a thing, you know, he's in a war, he's in a revolution. And he was getting beaten a lot by Robert E. Lee. They wanna rip his statue down all over the place. But Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Lee was a—Whether you like him or not, whether you like statues or not, you know, they don't rip statues down anymore. I signed a law. [cheers and applause] Ten years in jail if they rip them down.

But Robert E. Lee won many, many battles in a row and it was supposed to be over in one day. You know, it was supposed to end immediately because the North was too powerful for the South. But it just shows when you have leaders, when you have a great general. And Robert E. Lee, he would have won except for Gettysburg. And that was because his general was killed who's going to lead Gettysburg. "Never fight uphill, me boys. Never fight uphill." He heard they were going uphill. "Stop them, stop them." But we had no cell phones in that day, right, congressmen? No cell phones.

So they sent the horses to stop them, stop them, but it was too late. They fought uphill and they got slaughtered. That's what happened. But Robert E. Lee, these were incredible things. But I hope you, I hope you appreciate that we had a period of time when they were ripping down all of the statues and monuments. And I said to my people four months ago, I said, "This is crazy. These people."

And they don't even know. You know, they started ripping down Abraham Lincoln. When they hit Lincoln I said, "Wait a minute. This is the man. And you can't do—" Then they hit George Washington, Thomas Jefferson. They hit everybody. They even hit Gandhi. All Gandhi wanted was one thing. Peace. "May we have peace." Ripped down the statue, "We don't like it." I don't think they have any idea what they're doing. I think they're just a bunch of thugs. Okay? You wanna know the truth? I think they are a bunch of thugs. [cheers and applause]

[N.E. Brigand]

"Governor, if Valerie Sununu were raped and murdered by Donald Trump, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?"

No that's not what George Stephanopoulos asked New Hampshire's governor, Chris Sununu this morning, but I do wonder, given Sununu saying today that, as a Republican, he is obliged to support Trump regardless of whether or not Trump is convicted in his espionage and insurrection trials, how he would react to that question (modeled on the much-lampooned question that CNN's Bernard Shaw put to Governor Mike Dukakis in an October 1988 presidential debate that was widely seen as a key moment in Mike Dukakis's loss to George H.W. Bush).

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Meanwhile, the "man bites dog" problem continues:

[N.E. Brigand]

A picture taken at almost the same time that Donald Trump was reported to have fallen asleep in court: