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Tuesday, November 5, 2024
Sunday, October 20, 2024
On Our "Virtual Route 66" (Special Edition) : As Nov 5 Looms in the United States
Please enjoy a sampling of the discourse courtesy the Coop Scoop, The Bulwark, and Heather Cox Richarsdon as we look forward to releasing guidance on the day after starting November 6th:
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October 17, 2024
By Marc Cooper
Less than three weeks left as it is all hands on deck to stop American fascism and prevent the The Laughing Stock of the World from being elected and wrecking Ameican democracy. Our Anti-Trump coalition stretching from Bernie to Cheney is much bigger than MAGA and its zombie followers. After we win we can argue it out peacefully with any Republicans who are voting Harris. In the meantime, more, please!
We easily win this election if we get out out OUR voters. We have no time to waste trying to persuade brain washed MAGAS, “the undecided” who either are not going to vote or are are really Trump supporters. We are not rummaging trash bins seeking “low information voters” (the dumbasses, the uneducated, and the racist bigots) swayed by Tump’s Hitler cosplay.
We have no time for that. And nervous bedwetters will be sent to the principal’s office for a swat or two.
We have less than 20 days to turn out the votes we already have. Just got to get them to the voting booths or get their ballots into the post office. Personal contact is the best way. But there are other modes perhaps less effective but still strategic.
Social media properly deployed can reach anti-Trumpers and nudge them to vote. In that context, this edition is ONLY memes for you to share and use. They are not copyrighted. I am hoping to see some of these pop up on different platforms you use soon and and in many places. And yes of course you can edit or modify them.
Thanks to my long time friend Mark Schubb who produced them and to my great friend Richie Ray Harris who tossed in a couple of doozies (Fraulein Melania and the White House Casino).
Some very easy technical tips. You can screen shoot or download any that you see below. Or to make it easier you can visit THIS FACEBOOK PAGE LINK where you will find all of them ready for your use as well. The versions you will see below or a little more high-res than the FB copies but it works fine either way.
Let’s have some fun and let’s win!
PLEASE NOTE: YOUR EMAIL WILL TRUNCATE THIS LONG EDITION BUT ON MOST MAIL APPS INCLUDING GMAIL YOU WILL SEE A LINK ALLOWING YOU TO “VIEW THE ENTIRE POST.” IF THAT WILL NOT WORK FOR YOU, SIMPLY GO TO THIS FACEBOOK PAGE WEHERE THE ENTIRE COLLECTION CAN BE FOUND AND YOU CAN COPY OR DOWNLOAD FROM THERE.
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Hope u have some fun with these and spread them around as you warn others what the table stakes are for November.
One more time, thanks to Mark Schubb and Richard Ray Harris. And, again, if u are having any trouble with this email edition go to the Truth Unsocial Facebook Page and you will find the whole collection.
Fight. Fight! Fight! Smash the Fascists! ++++
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DONALD TRUMP’S JET, colloquially known as Trump Force One, is built for transcontinental flights, replete with seating, couches, and even a master bed in private quarters.
But there’s an unspoken rule on the Boeing 757: No one should lie down to sleep because Trump isn’t a napper.
“The boss doesn’t sleep. So you try not to sleep,” explained a weary Trump adviser. “The pace is punishing.”
In the 18 days since the beginning of October, Trump has held at least 28 in-person public events in 25 cities spread across 12 states on both coasts, according to a review of his public schedule and press accounts. And because Trump also likes to sleep in his own bed (usually in Mar-a-Lago), the campaign often flies in and out in a day and seldom spends 48 hours away from Florida. That adds extra sleepless hours on the campaign trail. So too does Trump’s penchant for calling confidants or posting on Truth Social well after midnight.
But the high-octane, no-sleep-till-Election-Day pace has come at a cost for the 78-year-old Trump.
In the past week, he’s sounded and looked more tired on the campaign trail. In a bizarre scene Monday, he cut a town hall short after two attendees had medical emergencies that interrupted the event, ordering up music and dancing on stage for 39 minutes. On Friday night, after his microphone stopped working at a rally in Detroit, Trump paced the stage, grimacing and shaking his head for nearly 19 minutes in obvious irritation. Meanwhile, on Friday morning, Politico reported he canceled an interview with the podcast The Shade Room because he was “exhausted,” which his campaign denied.
The truth, according to those who have spoken with and know Trump, is that the exhaustion is real. But it’s also explainable, given the long hours that would wear down anyone—and have worn down many on staff. One’s just not allowed to acknowledge it, let alone complain about it, during a frantic finish to a high-stakes campaign.
“Of course he’s tired,” said one adviser. “Who wouldn’t be tired? I know the campaign isn’t supposed to say that. But it’s true. And it’s also true he’s kicking ass.”
Inside Trump world, acknowledging that the campaign’s most punishing leg may, indeed, be taking a toll on the elderly ex-president is verboten. It’s not just that Trump personally recoils at the perception that he’s anything but a horse, it’s that the workaholic, high-energy brand is central to his political appeal.
It’s why aides responded so caustically this past week, as Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign drilled down on the he’s-exhausted attack line in an effort to frame him as weak and unstable. The vice president has launched a new phase of her campaign questioning Trump’s fitness for the campaign trail and accusing him of “hiding.”
“I’ve been hearing reports that his team . . . says he’s suffering from ‘exhaustion,’ and that’s apparently the excuse for why he isn’t doing interviews,” Harris told reporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan on Friday as she chided him for not debating her or participating in a CNN town hall. “We really do need to ask: If he’s exhausted being on the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?”
A short while later, Trump made sure to take questions from the press on the tarmac in Romulus, Michigan where he bashed Harris for failing to show up the night before at the Al Smith dinner for Catholic charities in New York City.
“She doesn't go to any events. She's a loser,” Trump said, pointing out he sat earlier that day for a Fox & Friends interview and campaigned without rest for 48 straight days.
“Tell me when you’ve seen me take even a little bit of a rest,” he asked. “I’m not even tired, I’m really exhilarated. You know why we’re killing her in the polls?”
The truth is somewhere in between. For starters, the race is essentially deadlocked, according to the polling averages in the seven swing states. Secondarily, Trump has been keeping a brisker pace of events and interviews than Harris, according to recent media analyses. Since October 1, Trump has conducted 21 media interviews, including 7 separate longform podcasts that sometimes last an hour or more, according to his staff.
Harris’s campaign did not provide comparable numbers, even as it has stepped up questioning Trump’s mental stability by pointing out his slip-ups and nonsensical rambling. “You would be worried if your grandpa acted like this,” former President Barack Obama said of Trump on Friday.
If Trump’s “hiding,” as Harris has said, he’s doing a poor job of it. But he has scaled back on the type of places where he will go. His interviews are now almost exclusively in friendly forums. He skipped a 60 Minutes sitdown, unlike Harris, who also ventured into hostile territory for a tense Thursday interview with Fox News’s Bret Baier. Trump also rescheduled or canceled interviews on CNBC and NBC.
Unlike Harris, Trump did sit on stage Tuesday with Bloomberg editor-in-chief John Micklethwait at the Economic Club of Chicago, where he engaged in a contentious discussion about the economy, tariffs, and trade.
But he also subsequently acknowledged that he got “hoodwinked” into doing the event—not having known it was an interview beforehand. Trump fumed about the event later on Trump Force One, according to a source who heard him bitterly complain about it: “Let’s just say he wasn’t happy.”
By that point, Trump had been on the campaign trail for seven straight days in six other cities. A stop in Coachella Valley in California was followed by two events in Arizona on Sunday and then a swing to Oaks, Pennsylvania for the town hall that he wound up ending early with musical accompaniment. On the way there, at 12:48 a.m., Trump posted to Truth Social to trash a new movie about his relationship with infamous attorney Roy Cohn.
“A FAKE and CLASSLESS Movie written about me, called, The Apprentice (Do they even have the right to use that name without approval?), will hopefully ‘bomb,’” Trump ranted. The X account for The Apprentice happily recirculated Trump’s post and called it “an endorsement.”
That Trump in the waning days of his campaign would be up in the early morning hours trashing a little-known movie came as no surprise to those who know him. And it’s not because they believe he’s in some sleep-deprived stupor. Rather, he can’t resist swinging at every pitch.
“He’s a counterpuncher. That’s his nature,” said an adviser who didn’t want Trump to post about the movie. “Even if he was fully rested, he still would have done it.”
According to those who have flown with Trump, he’s in high spirits about the campaign. None expressed fears about his health. They said Trump refuses to sleep by lying down in his Trump Force One private quarters, on a bed adorned with Parisian silk sheets. Instead, chin down, he catnaps while sitting upright in a plush leather chair embroidered with his family crest.
The only staffer who has managed to stay with Trump on virtually every leg of every flight is Taylor Budowich, who turns 35 next week, and serves as a combination of top strategist, Mr. Fix It, and traveling companion with whom the ex-president can bro out.
“Only Taylor, the thirtysomething, can keep up with him,” said a campaign adviser.
By contrast, Trump’s campaign co-managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita take turns flying with the candidate as the other recharges at home.
“Chris and Susie know you don’t sleep in front of the boss. It’s like Nightmare on Elm Street,” said one of Trump’s traveling companions. That companion recalled how during the 2016 campaign Rudy Giuliani was widely laughed at on Trump Force One because of his habit of taking boozy naps.
“Nobody wants to look like Sleepy Rudy,” the person said. “We’ll sleep after we win.”
The events of January 6, 2021, overshadowed those of January 5, 2021, but that day was crucially important in a different way: Georgia voters elected two Democrats, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, to the U.S. Senate. Warnock and Ossoff brought the total of Democrats in the Senate to 48, and since two Independents—Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont—caucus with the Democrats and because in an evenly split Senate the majority goes to the party in the White House, their election gave Democrats control of the Senate.
Without that majority, the Biden-Harris agenda that built the U.S. economy into what The Economist this week called “the envy of the world” would never have passed. There would have been no American Rescue Plan, no Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, no CHIPS and Science Act, no Safer Communities Act, no PACT Act, no Inflation Reduction Act.
In an era when Republicans refuse to vote for any Democratic measures no matter how popular they are, control of the Senate is vital. The Senate majority leader decides what measures can come to the floor for consideration, so a leader can shut out anything his party doesn’t like. The Senate also controls the confirmation of federal judges, including members of the Supreme Court.
During the Trump years, then–Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stacked the courts with MAGA judges, some of whom are now so reliably handing down right-wing decisions that plaintiffs routinely “shop” for them to get the decisions they want. And with Trump’s three hand-picked extremists at the Supreme Court, challenging those decisions simply writes that extremism more fully into law.
As Trump continues to crumble—he canceled another appearance today, and in a statement almost certainly designed to leak, an advisor said he was “exhausted”—and as Democrats are favored to take the House, Republicans are waging a fierce battle to take control of the Senate.
They are starting with an advantage. There are 34 Senate seats on the ballot this year, and Democrats are defending 23 of them while Republicans are defending just 11. Republicans need to pick up one seat to control the Senate if Trump wins the White House, and two if Harris wins.
The McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund PAC has, so far, spent more than $140 million in this year’s Senate races, with more than $136 million going to attack ads. In the four races that are most vulnerable for Democrats—Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—the Senate Leadership Fund has spent $17.85 million (MT), $55.5 million (OH), $38.1 million (PA), and $23.6 million (WI).
In each of those four races, that money is bolstering extremely wealthy Republican challengers. In Montana, Republican Tim Sheehy, running against Senator Jon Tester, would be among the ten wealthiest senators if elected: his financial disclosures put his net worth at between $74 million and $260 million. Republican Bernie Moreno, who is challenging Senator Sherrod Brown in Ohio, has a net worth between $38 million and $172.7 million. In the Pennsylvania race, David McCormick (who actually appears to live in Connecticut) reported assets of $116 million to $290 million in 2022. In Wisconsin’s race, Republican Eric Hovde (who lived in an ocean-view mansion in Laguna Beach, California, until he decided to run for the Senate from Wisconsin) would also be one of the Senate’s richest members. His financial disclosures say his net worth is between $195.5 million and $564.4 million.
This is not a coincidence. Knowing that fundraising would be difficult this year with Trump steering funds from the Republican National Committee primarily to himself, Republican Party leaders actively recruited candidates who could pour their own money into their campaigns. By the end of June, Sheehy had put $10.7 million into his own race; Moreno had put in $4.5 million by mid-October. McCormick had loaned his campaign more than $4 million by the end of June; Hovde put in $8 million by the end of March.
This moment echoes the late nineteenth century, when wealthy businessmen sought a Senate seat as a capstone to their success, a perch from which they could protect the interests of other men like themselves. In that era it was relatively easy for a man like Nevada’s William Sharon to buy himself a Senate seat because the Constitution had established that state legislatures would elect their state’s senators. Determined to win a Senate seat to protect his railroad interests “regardless of expense,” Sharon bought a newspaper to flood the state capital with his own praise. The legislature gave him the seat in 1874.
By the 1880s, even the staunchly pro-business Chicago Tribune complained: “Behind every one of half of the portly and well dressed members of the Senate can be seen the outlines of some corporation interested in getting or preventing legislation.” In 1892 the newly formed Populist Party met in Omaha, Nebraska, “to restore the government of the Republic to the hands of ‘the plain people,’ with which class it originated.” They called for the people to bypass the corrupt legislatures and elect senators directly.
In 1900, William A. Clark of Montana provided the kick their proposal needed.
Clark had arrived at the newly opened gold fields in Montana Territory in 1863 and transferred the money he made as a mule trader into banking. He made a fortune repossessing mining properties when owners defaulted on their loans. He invested that fortune in smelters, railroads, a newspaper, and copper mining, becoming one of the state’s famous Copper Kings. In 1889 he was the president of the Montana constitutional convention, where he made sure that mine owners could run the state as they wished.
By 1890, Clark had his eyes on a Senate seat. He failed to get the support of the legislature in that year, and for the next decade he and his rival copper magnate Marcus Daly of the Anaconda Company poured vast sums of money into influencing the economy of the state, the location of the capital, and the state’s politics.
Clark finally won his election in 1899, but on the same day he presented his credentials to the Senate, his opponents filed a petition charging him with bribery. An extensive investigation revealed that Clark had bought his seat with bribes ranging from $240 to $100,000, equivalent to almost $4 million today. His representatives had paid debts, bought ranches, and even handed envelopes of cash to legislators. The investigation also showed that Daly had spent a fortune trying to block Clark’s election.
Montana politics, it seemed, had become a rich man’s game.
Aware that the Senate would vote to remove him from his seat, Clark resigned in May 1900. In January 1901 a new Montana legislature containing many of the same men Clark had paid off in 1899 elected him again to the same term from which he had been forced to resign. After an undistinguished term, he retired from the Senate in 1907.
Clark’s blatant purchase of a Senate seat added momentum to the demand for the direct election of senators, and in 1913 the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution established that the power to elect senators must rest in the hands of voters. That measure was supposed to make sure that wealth could not buy a Senate seat.
That the ability to self-fund a campaign is once again a key factor in winning a Senate seat from Montana—and Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—seems to be history repeating.
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Notes:
https://www.opensecrets.org/
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/
https://mtprof.msun.edu/
https://news.yahoo.com/news/
https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/
Chicago Tribune quoted in Harper’s Weekly, February 9, 1884, p. 86.
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