"What a blast from the past! The New York Times hasn’t pulled out the infamous 'beer test' for a political candidate since May 22, 2015..."

"... when it ran ['Finding a Candidate You’d Like to Have a Beer With.'] The 'beer test' was once a massively overused campaign reporting cliché. It grew out of a Sam Adams ad campaign in the 2000 race, and from Bush-Gore through the 2016 cycle it was nearly impossible to escape 'beer test' coverage. Then Donald Trump won the 2016 beer test by default — it was hard to imagine Hillary Clinton having a beer at all — leading even Slate to pronounce 'there has never been and perhaps never will be a candidate you’d be more eager to have a beer with than Donald Trump.'

That's Matt Taibbi, in "Cliché Alert: Return of the 'Beer Test'/The New York Times reverts to old form, thanks to a blue-party schism" (Racket).

Here's the NYT article that set Taibbi off: "He’s Not a Democrat. Democrats Love Him Anyway."

"I like Graham Platner. You like Graham Platner"/"That's my kind of man."

SUPERCUT!

Dems explain why Nazi tattoos & sexually aggressive behavior are fine actually pic.twitter.com/xeLPHh9fwN

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 8, 2026

"No one could have seen this coming."

I can’t believe they made a Graham Platner biopic where he’s a sexting nazi rapist graham cracker… pic.twitter.com/gYDy7fAnAh

— TBC (@TBC_on_X) July 8, 2026

"You said: He's your kind of man."

CNBC host calls out Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Host: "You campaigned with Graham Platner… you said, 'He's your kind of man.' … This is a guy who had a chest tattoo with a N*zi symbol… It's a guy that reportedly wrote 'people concerned about r*pe should take some responsibility… pic.twitter.com/zcy7r7BqnW

— Resist the Mainstream (@ResisttheMS) April 22, 2026

You can see that's from back in April, but it appeared at the top of the feed when I clicked on the "Platner" trend in the sidebar at X.

The timing of all of this matters. What did they know and when did they know it? Did they hold the accuser back and then let her loose? Look at Jake Tapper seeming to want something of an answer:

NEW: Woman who accused Graham Platner of r*ping her says America needs someone with his political stances in office, says his videos fired her up.

Jake Tapper: There are gonna be people who say this is politically motivated. What would you say to that?

Accuser Jenny Racicot:… pic.twitter.com/7jYk2i7oBg

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 6, 2026

I'm less interested in the random oysterman than I am in the Democratic Party leadership, what they were up to, and what they are doing now. It's so much like the story of Joe Biden's candidacy in 2024. They let the primary process occur, propped the guy up while democracy was in play, let the people expend their power to choose, and then and only then a fatal defect got exposed, and the people's choice had to withdraw himself. The Party got to insert their candidate, someone who never had to face the test of the primary. I want to hold the Party responsible for what it did. Was it just idiotically searching around for a "masculine" man and infatuated with his oysters? Did it cynically select him and think the people don't care about sexual misdeeds anymore — the #MeToo era is over and it's time to go for those "manosphere" votes?

ADDED: When I first clicked on this, I thought it was a humor sketch. The creaky voice on this Moraff character is something else: 

Graham Platner was recruited to run for Senate by a pair of socialist political operatives, Daniel Moraff and Leanne Fan, who determined that another prospective candidate had “a skeleton in the closet.”

The Wall Street Journal published a rare interview with the duo on Sunday… pic.twitter.com/tbmOE5nxJX

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 8, 2026

AND: Scott Jennings puts it well:

Democrats fully vetted Graham Platner, happily signed off on his incredibly disturbing history to win a Senate seat, and are only pretending to be shocked now because they can no longer rationalize the hypocrisy. pic.twitter.com/jkp12Gwv16

— Scott Jennings (@ScottJenningsKY) July 7, 2026

"CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump..."

"... a deal that looks like bribery. America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons."

Tweets Elizabeth Warren, showing us this clip of Colbert critiquing the $16 million deal:

CBS canceled Colbert’s show just THREE DAYS after Colbert called out CBS parent company Paramount for its $16M settlement with Trump – a deal that looks like bribery.

America deserves to know if his show was canceled for political reasons.

Watch and share his message. pic.twitter.com/Rz7HcWFLYM

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 18, 2025

AND: From last night's show:

"The F.B.I.’s increasingly pervasive use of the polygraph, or a lie-detector test, has only intensified a culture of intimidation."

"Mr. Patel has wielded the polygraph to keep agents or other employees from discussing a number of topics, including his decision-making or internal moves. Former agents say he is doing so in ways not typically seen in the F.B.I.... Jim Stern, who conducted hundreds of polygraphs while an F.B.I. agent, said... that if someone violated policy, the F.B.I. could polygraph them. But if an agent who legitimately talked to the news media in a previous role had to take one, he said, 'that’s going to be an issue.' 'I never used them to suss out gossip,' he said. At a recent meeting, senior executives were told that the news leaks were increasing in priority — even though they do not involve open cases or the disclosure of classified information. Former officials say senior executives, among others, were being polygraphed at a 'rapid rate.' In May, one senior official was forced out, at least in part because he had not disclosed to Mr. Patel that his wife had taken a knee during demonstrations protesting police violence...."

From "Unease at F.B.I. Intensifies as Patel Ousts Top Officials/Senior executives are being pushed out and the director, Kash Patel, is more freely using polygraph tests to tamp down on news leaks about leadership decisions and behavior" (NYT).

I've made a new tag — "lie detector" — and gone back and applied it to old posts. Interesting to see how many times the topic has come up:

April 2004: "[E]ven if the lie detector was not to be used on [Omarosa], and, indeed, even if lie detector tests are not reliable, if she believed it was to be used on her and believed it was reliable, her running off at the sight of it is some evidence that she had lied in her accusation about the other contestant....."

April 2005:  "Everyone on TV was into analyzing why [the groom-to-be of the Runaway Bride] would take a private lie detector test, but wanted special conditions before he'd take the police test. He wanted it videotaped, and the police refused...."

July 2005: "Some researchers attached sensors to 101 penises and then showed the possessors of these penises either all-male or all-female porn movies. It was kind of a lie detector test, because the men had all professed to being heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual...."

October 2008: Ashley Todd, the woman who claimed a black man had carved the letter "B" on her face.

June 2012: "'$1.1 million-plus Gates grants: "Galvanic" bracelets that measure student engagement.'... [I]sn't this basically a lie detector? And if so, won't students train themselves to fool the authorities?"

April 2013:

"Senators Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker released videos on their social media accounts simultaneously, using identical scripts..."

"... to criticize former President Donald Trump's policies on economic management and social issues. The videos claim that under Trump's leadership, inflation and costs of living have increased, while he allegedly prioritized pardons for violent criminals and allowed for data privacy concerns. This coordinated effort highlights a strategic messaging tactic within political discourse.".

So says a summary of X posts.

Listen to the chorus:

Chuck Schumer, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker posted identical videos—word for word—right before Trump’s speech. pic.twitter.com/1iYUuuhaEN

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 4, 2025

It's ludicrous. But that got our attention and made it viral. And yet, I think that what is viral is the fakeness — the rote performance — and not the substantive message. I watched the whole thing intently, but I didn't notice what they said, only the bizarre overlap.

It reminded me of my favorite sequence in one of my favorite movies — "The Idea of North" (in "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould"):

"Kamala Harris and Tim Walz were both born in 1964, the very last year of the Baby Boom."

"Yet many in that cohort feel no identification with baby boomers. But neither are they Gen Xers. They are people in-between. Perhaps in 2024, this status now enables public figures to be 'in between' in new ways, to wear their gender more lightly."

Those are the last few sentences of "Paying More Attention to His Appearance Than Hers/They’re the same age, but pundits and voters can’t stop talking about how much older Tim Walz looks than Kamala Harris. It’s not the only way her running mate seems to be absorbing some of the scrutiny usually heaped on female candidates" by Rhonda Garelick in the NYT.

That's from August 12th. I was looking for something else when I ran into that, and I got engrossed.

The idea of wearing one's gender lightly intrigues me.

What was I actually looking for? I was thinking about the time President Bill Clinton, running for reelection, wanted to use federal spending to incentivize public schools to require their students to wear uniforms.

My search terms — Clinton, school, and uniform — all came up in that Harris/Walz article:

... Hillary Clinton... came to prominence as first lady, as a “wife,” and was assailed for her hair and style, her presumed disrespect for “cookie baking” and for tolerating her husband’s transgressions.

... Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard law professor, was called “a hectoring schoolmarm” for offering expert policy explanations, and advised to change her glasses and hair.

... Ms. Harris hews generally toward a sleek uniform of pantsuit, silk blouse, pearls and heels, which “suggest fashion without being too fashionable”...

"And multiple speakers delighted the crowd by alluding to the fabricated viral claim that Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance, wrote in his memoir about having sex with furniture."

"'I wouldn’t trust them to move my couch,' Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said of the GOP ticket on the final night. 'I know a couch commando when I see one,' Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said minutes later. The jabs were just part of a more expansive case against Trump that Democrats laid out over four nights in Chicago. But they reflected a broader shift in tone for Democrats toward a no-holds-barred kind of rhetorical warfare many in the party once eschewed. Eight years after the Philadelphia convention cheered Michelle Obama’s famous line 'When they go low, we go high' — and with Trump still waging a campaign full of personal insults and baseless accusations... some Democrats said they are tired of being polite...."

From "Democrats once strove to ‘go high’ against Trump. Not anymore. This year’s convention culminated recent efforts to needle Trump on topics known to strike a nerve in the former president, with some Democrats saying they are tired of being polite" (WaPo)(free-access link).

This gets my "civility bullshit" tag, which in this case reflects my belief that the old "When they go low, we go high" was just a strategy choice, to be abandoned when it didn't seem effective... or when the low material is tantalizing enough, like that well-upholstered couch that seems be calling out to you.

Trump says he thinks that Biden withdrew because he was "threatened... violently."

From the Theo Von podcast embedded in the previous post — at 44:31. Von asked about what pushed Biden to let go of the nomination he had won in the primaries. Trump said:

"I know what happened, and you're not supposed to do that. It's not supposed to be probably constitutional. She got no votes. He got 14 million votes. All of a sudden they're telling him to get out. or they threatened him. And he is an angry person."

Von breaks in to ask, "But who are 'they'?" and Trump responds:  

"Well, I would say Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party, yeah — and they did, they threatened him violently, I think. And he didn't want to get out. Remember he said only God will get me out — right? Only God... Yeah, and what happened is they went to him, and they said — this was after the debate — now, if he didn't have the debate he would still be running...."

What violence is Trump talking about?  

Haven't I looked into the word "violence" before? Yes, I did the OED routine back in 2019 when Elizabeth Warren introduced the term "traffic violence":

To what extent does "violence" mean that the damaging action was intentional? The first definition is, as expected, "The deliberate exercise of physical force..."

But then there's "Great strength or power of a natural force or physical action" — for example, a storm or an earthquake. There's no mind deliberating there (though maybe there's an implication of human will and the usage is metaphorical, such as when corny writers tell you the sea was "angry").

"Violence" is also "Great intensity or severity, esp. of something destructive or undesirable. Example: " Mrs. Viveash had been reduced, by the violence of her headache, to coming home..for a rest." (That's Aldous Huxley.)

Similarly, there's "Vehemence or intensity of emotion, behaviour, or language; extreme fervour; passion." Example, from Shakespeare, "Marke me, with what violence she first lou'd the Moore." But now we've got the human mind in play again. I don't think what's being called "traffic violence" is any intensity in the traffic, just accidents, by people who didn't mean to do that (if we set aside the very tiny proportion of car damage done by an evildoer deliberately running somebody down).

"Violence" is also used to refer to restrictions imposed on nature, as in "He was obliged to attend near a Quarter of an Hour, though with great Violence to his natural Impetuosity, before he was suffered to speak" (Henry Fielding, "Tom Jones" (1749)).

And then there's the "Improper treatment or use of a word or text; misinterpretation; misapplication; alteration of meaning or intention." Again, from "Tom Jones": "A Passion which might, without any great Violence to the Word, be called Love."

Back then, the issue was the lack of intentionality in car accidents. Pressuring Biden to drop out was completely intentional, so the issue here is whether "violently" connotes physically injuring him. I find it very hard to believe anyone threatened to physically injure him, but perhaps it's not so hard to believe that Trump thinks that or that Trump would lie and say that he thinks that. 

But let's look at the fact that Trump did say that he thinks Schumer, Pelosi, and numerous other people — the heads of the Democrat Party — threatened Biden violently.

Now, maybe the word "violently" was used in a different sense that doesn't involve physical injury, that aligns with the OED's definition of "violence" in terms of great intensity, severity, vehemence, fervor, and passion. Maybe Trump just meant to say They threatened him very strongly. Then his use of "violently" may be easy to accept... depending on what the meaning of "threatened" is.

Of course, Trump has been accused of inciting violence on January 6, 2021. That word looms large in his subjective experience of persecution. So I don't think he uses it lightly. I think he feels mistreated in these accusations of violence. Perhaps he thinks: If they're going to use that word wildly as they come for me, I'm using it against them. Very strongly.

"While the FDIC guarantees deposits up to $250,000, the overwhelming majority of SVB deposits exceeded that amount."

"It was the bank of choice for many tech start-ups. Without access to their cash, those companies would have difficulty meeting payroll. Additionally, the sudden collapse of SVB could lead companies and individuals who have deposits in other similar financial institutions to withdraw their money starting on Monday, triggering more bank runs, and more bank collapses.... Defenders of this decision will try to make it seem as if it’s an extraordinary, one-off decision by regulators, but in practice, it has created a huge moral hazard by signaling that the $250,000 FDIC limit on deposit insurance does not exist in practice...."

From "Silicon Valley Bank Depositor Bailout Makes Mockery of ‘Too Big to Fail'" by Philip Klein (National Review).

I'm not linking to this because I agree with it. I don't know what the right answer was or what the real risks were. 

Here's what Elizabeth Warren says, "Silicon Valley Bank Is Gone. We Know Who Is Responsible" (NYT):

"At a moment when Congress is finally debating whether and how to seriously regulate the cryptocurrency industry, a split appears to have formed in the Democratic Party."

"Some of its lawmakers are contemplating how to harness blockchain technology into a force for innovation, while scaling back its early excesses. Then there’s a group you might call the 'bullshit caucus.' 'It’s all bullshit,' Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. told Semafor.... 'Finally, there are more people blowing the bullshit whistle,' Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. said in a Wednesday interview. 'There's been a lot of lobbying around Congress and an effort to try to scare off lawmakers. To say "Oh, crypto is just so complicated. No one can understand it. Let the crypto world remain unregulated." That is precisely the argument that was made in the run-up to the 2008 crash.'"

Writes Joseph Zeballos-Roig (Semafor).

"The Commerce Department, under Ms. Raimondo’s leadership, is now poised to begin distributing nearly $100 billion — roughly 10 times the department’s annual budget..."

"... to build up the U.S. chip industry and expand broadband access throughout the country.... Many view the effort as the best — and only — bet for the United States to position itself in industries of the future, like artificial intelligence and supercomputing, and ensure that the country has a secure supply of the chips necessary for national security. But the risks are similarly huge. Critics of the Biden administration’s plans have noted that the federal government may not be the best judge of which technologies to back.... The outcome could also have ramifications for Ms. Raimondo’s political ambitions.... Her supporters say she could ascend to another cabinet position, run for the Senate or perhaps mount a presidential bid. But she is under close watch by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and some other left-wing Democrats, who have criticized her as being too solicitous of corporate interests...."

From "A Rising Star in the Biden Administration Faces a $100 Billion Test/Gina Raimondo, the commerce secretary, has made a career of tackling increasingly larger challenges. Could the next one be too big?" (NYT).

"The Senate has trouble keeping up with things that lobbyists prefer the Senate not keep up with."

Said Elizabeth Warren, quoted in "Congress took millions from FTX. Now lawmakers face a crypto reckoning. The stunning collapse of the world’s third-largest exchange has forced politicians to grapple with the costs of legislative inaction" (WaPo).

Since January alone, cryptocurrency exchanges and their advocates have spent more than $14.8 million to influence regulators and lawmakers, according to lobbying data compiled by OpenSecrets. Bankman-Fried and other FTX leaders... also donated more than $70 million in the 2022 election, the analysis showed.

"With Trump frequently in the news, Democrats are increasingly accepting — if not enthusiastic — that the president will likely be their 2024 standard-bearer."

So says this Washington Post column by Yasmeen Abutaleb. 

How does she know what "Democrats are increasingly accepting" and that it's a consequence of Trump's frequent presence in the news? Is keeping Trump in the news a way to assist Biden in deterring a primary challenger?

"Littlefeather’s 60-second plea for justice resulted in immediate and enduring personal backlash. She says that in the wings, John Wayne had to be restrained..."

"... from storming the stage to physically attack her, while in the aftermath, her identity and integrity were impugned (the rumors were so abiding that in 2012, Dennis Miller mocked Elizabeth Warren by calling her 'as much Indian as that stripper chick Brando sent to pick up his Oscar'). Littlefeather, who had acted in a few films before her infamous moment, says that the federal government threatened to shut down any talk shows or productions that put her on the air."

 From "Academy Apologizes to Sacheen Littlefeather for Her Mistreatment at the 1973 Oscars/Nearly 50 years after suffering harassment and discrimination for protesting Native American mistreatment, the activist will be the guest of honor at an evening of healing and Indigenous celebration hosted by the Academy Museum on Sept. 17" (Hollywood Reporter).

From the Academy's apology letter: “The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”

"[Elizabeth] Warren called on Biden to declare a national medical emergency, and she said the administration could establish Planned Parenthood outposts on the edge of national parks."

"'The point is the acknowledgment of the emergency situation and the urgency of getting help out,' she said in an interview. 'People need help immediately.' Biden and his team have signaled discomfort with many of these ideas.... A senior White House official said Biden is simply being honest with the public about what he can do unilaterally.... The official said that while the proposal to set up abortion clinics on federal lands was 'well-intentioned,' it could put pregnant people and providers at risk, and that in states where abortion is illegal, women and providers who are not federal employees could be prosecuted. Some legal experts have also raised questions about whether such a proposal would stand up in court, and White House officials worry it would violate the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion except if a pregnant person’s life is in danger or if the pregnancy results from rape or incest.... If Biden pursued aggressive executive actions to expand abortion access, even if those moves were ultimately overturned by a court, it would energize supporters and signal to voters that Democrats are putting up a fight, advocates said.... Some Democrats... say it’s critical to show voters what the party would do if it had even slightly bigger majorities...."

 
From "Frustration, anger rising among Democrats over caution on abortion/A growing number of Democrats are voicing anger at what they see as the passivity of Biden and other party leaders in the face of hard-hitting GOP tactics on abortion and other issues" (WaPo).

ADDED: She should have said national forests. 

"Elizabeth Warren is one of the only national Democrats I've seen even come close to channeling the rage so so so so many are feeling."

Good. Elizabeth Warren is one of the only national Democrats I've seen even come close to channeling the rage so so so so many are feeling. https://t.co/Z10A2IUpv4

— Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) May 3, 2022

"Left splits over Supreme Court pick pushed by top Biden ally/Rep. Jim Clyburn is stumping for judge Michelle Childs to get the president's nod. While labor interests are skeptical, not every progressive senator is."

 Politico reports. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) declined to talk about Childs at all: “I’m not going to comment. Nope.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)... offered a subtle warning.... “You want somebody who is going to be reflective of the needs of working families and understands that we are moving towards an oligarchy in this country"...

"She can paint a compelling portrait of what the inside of the Democratic Party activist bubble looked like, but shows no awareness that there is anything outside of the bubble..."

"... or even that she was inside of one. Warren does deal extensively with campaign questions about her electability. But she treats these as largely, and even axiomatically, sexist.... But sexism alone has a hard time explaining why Warren took the lead in national polls of primary voters before collapsing in the fall of 2019. Surely, the reason many of the voters who were prepared to nominate her changed their mind is not that they learned her gender.... At the outset of her campaign, Warren staked her ground closer to the ideological center of the party.... [But] the competition with Sanders pulled her farther and farther left.... In February 2020, at a moment Biden’s campaign was bottoming out... the balance of power within the Democratic primary was held by voters with 'somewhat liberal' views. Warren’s campaign, though, has spent a year sprinting away from those voters, as if the party was actually torn between social democracy and democratic socialism.... [She should have learned] to treat the cadres of activists on Twitter and in academia as just one small yet vocal constituency within the party, not the party itself.... [T]he same misread of the electorate tripped up most of the field, with the famously Not Online Joe Biden being an exception."

From "Elizabeth Warren’s Book Shows She Has No Idea Why Her Campaign Failed" by Jonathan Chait (NY Magazine).

Elizabeth Warren tells a joke... tells the truth...

I didn’t write the loopholes you exploit, @amazon – your armies of lawyers and lobbyists did. But you bet I’ll fight to make you pay your fair share. And fight your union-busting. And fight to break up Big Tech so you’re not powerful enough to heckle senators with snotty tweets. https://t.co/3vCAI93MST

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 26, 2021

Via "Elizabeth Warren Wants To Break Up Amazon So It's 'Not Powerful Enough To Heckle Senators With Snotty Tweets'/She said the quiet part out loud" (Reason).

How much do powerful people enjoy their power? Ah! I have crushed my enemies!! How much of that sort of thing goes on in their head? 

I feel rather certain that they must get emotional thrills, because — unless they came into their power by birth — they have to go through so much struggle to get their power. I would never do it, and I know I don't get pleasure from exerting power. I have a distaste for it. I know these people who pursue it are emotionally different from me, and I wonder how does it feel? I'm saying this on the occasion of Elizabeth Warren's tweet because I'm certain that if I were a U.S. Senator — if somehow that awful role were foisted on me — and I thought of that wisecrack, I would never write it out and publish. 

But Warren thought it was good — openly triumphing at power. I think of this: