2:10 p.m. is not a normal time for me to be blogging. I tend to blog between 4 a.m. and 10 a.m. Sometimes I come back to the computer in the afternoon or evening, but usually not to analyze something complicated. And if other people are jumping on a new item, there's less and less reason, as the hours wear on, to blog the link just to show it to you. I feel more and more obligated to get into some of the complicated layers.
2:10 p.m. yesterday was when I first saw the article and decided it was very important. It's 9:36 a.m. the next day now, and I've put up 7 posts, beginning at 5:30 a.m. But the entire time, I've been putting off what I know I need to do and completely intend to do, blog "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election."
This is a long article, and understanding it, for me, involves figuring out why Time published it and understanding the possible bias of the author, Molly Ball. It's hard not to read "saved the... election" as rigged the election. Why is this coming out now, just before the weekend before the impeachment trial begins? Time is openly proclaiming that something "secret" happened in the "shadow"?
ANTHONY SALVANTO, CBS NEWS ELECTIONS & SURVEYS DIRECTOR: [The people who were conditional supporters of Trump have] an increasing feeling of nervousness that they say that they feel this is back to the idea that -- that this relates -- this investigation relates to the president's judgement and temperament…. But that said, everyone that we re-interviewed [was] increasingly nervous, saying that's the word they consistently use, that they're getting more and more nervous about what the administration is doing… [F]olks who were on the fence are sort of coming over to that firmer opposition, in part because of... that nervousness....
MOLLY BALL, "THE ATLANTIC": … I spent most of my week talking to Republicans on Capitol hill and their staff and people around the Congress and… they're very nervous when -- when Anthony was talking about the -- the nervous Trump curious voters out there in the country, that was very much the vibe I got from Capitol Hill Republicans. They really still want him to be something that he hasn't been so far. They are incredibly nervous by all of these things happening….
RAMESH PONNURU, "THE NATIONAL REVIEW": [O]ne of the things that's happening with congressional Republicans is, look, they've got this feeling in the pit of their stomach. They wish the president would act in different ways, but they are keenly aware that the vast majority of Republican voters across the country, including the voters in their districts, still supports this president. And you will see a pattern where the House Republicans who are in swing seats are more nervous. The senators who are in blue or purple states are more nervous. But the bulk of Republicans don't fit into either of those categories and they're nervous but they're still going to be supporting this president....
JOHN DICKERSON, HOST: [T]hey're nervous and what about the agenda? Are they nervous about that too?… They're nervous about an unpredictable president, but what about the future in terms of getting stuff done?
The Sanders movement has become impervious to reality. Some have even called into question the nature of reality itself: “Bernie Sanders’ ‘political revolution’ is political only inasmuch as thought is political,” a self-described “metamodernist creative writer” named Seth Abramson wrote in the Huffington Post a few days ago. “By the very nature of things—we might call it perceptual entropy—the impossible, once perceived, enters a chain of causation whose natural conclusion is realization.” By this logic, Abramson reasons, Sanders is actually winning. It’s, like, the Matrix, man, or something....
Clinton, for her part, has taken to pretending Sanders does not exist....
Just stop believing and he'll go away.
Sanders was introduced [in Anaheim] by a blind Filipino delegate and a gay actress who... compared Sanders to a unicorn, because “he seems too good to be true.”...
Ball is pushing the Hillary theory: It can't be true. A blind lady can see that he looks like a unicorn. Why won't everyone just stop?!!
That tag arose from a comic take we had at Meadhouse, which was, in longer form, "Obama's in trouble! We need to help!" I thought that was the tone of the news around Obama, and we were — I am not kidding — riffing on the old TV show "Lassie," where Lassie would bark about someone being in trouble and people would then know to spring into action and help.
But with Hillary, we don't have that instinct: If she's in trouble, then that means we need to help. She just doesn't inspire us that way. Few politicians do.
On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd interviewed Glenn Beck. Beck, a Cruz supporter, was there to argue that if there's an open convention, the delegates should be limited to choosing between Trump and Cruz (and should pick Cruz). Todd does enough to show Beck's incoherence but doesn't really nail him down:
CHUCK TODD: Let me start with this concern. We've heard it from many people that are Cruz supporters and that Trump supporters over the airwaves, who are concerned that somehow the party establishment may deny both of them. What would happen do you think to, what would your listeners, how would they react?
GLENN BECK: I think it would be the end of the G.O.P. ...
CHUCK TODD: So you think if Paul Ryan is somehow plucked as the Republican nominee, that it would be the end of the G.O.P. --
GLENN BECK: -- I think it would be very bad. You can't disenfranchise people. We've all gone out. We've been passionate about it. We've all been going back and forth and voted on the people that we believe. I really think it has to be one of the two frontrunners. I just think people would feel very betrayed....
I know he wants Cruz, but he's mischaracterizing what the people are doing. We were enfranchised when we voted in a primary and our vote was given the effect that we were told it would have toward selecting delegates who would vote on our behalf at a convention. And let's be clear about where the passion is and is not. Many of us in Wisconsin who voted for Cruz were voting to stop Trump and to get to an open convention where we hope to see Paul Ryan selected. Don't imagine some passion on our part that augments that passion of yours. If the GOP convention picks Paul Ryan, I wouldn't feel betrayed. I'd feel vindicated.
On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd called attention to that NYT article we were talking about yesterday, about how GOP leaders are about to unleash a 100-day campaign to block Trump from getting the nomination. But, Todd said, "there is no strategy that they can unite around."
Molly Ball (of The Atlantic) said:
Well, and this whole thing has been a Keystone-Cops operation from the start. I mean, if there were a Republican establishment that had its stuff together...
Trump would say "shit together"...
... and really wanted to make sure Donald Trump didn't get the nomination, the time would have been six months ago. Instead, they've been running around like chickens with their heads cut off, going in different directions. Even now, this is not unified. And the chances of stopping him are very, very small. And as Donald Trump said, you know, he's gotten a lot of flak for saying, "Oh, there'll be riots." But I think it's true that you can't just say to his voters, this large so-far plurality of the Republican party that you don't count, and that we're not going to listen to you. Donald Trump doesn't go away if there's some kind of weird contested convention and they take it away from him.
Todd observed that none of the GOP leaders were talking about actually trying to "woo the Trump voter." No, those are the people who are supposed to step back and wait until their betters manipulate things to produce a non-Trump candidate they're told to vote for. There's no plan to deal with the outrage and resentment these people will feel.
On "Meet the Press" today, Chuck Todd was talking to Molly Ball (The Atlantic) and Jose Diaz-Balart (Telemundo and NBC News)on the subject of whether some of the criticism Hillary Clinton is based on her gender.
Molly Ball said that the political science research shows that women don't get more comments about their looks than men do and that controlled experiments show people are more likely to trust the woman (mainly because women seem like outsiders). The unstated implication is that Hillary Clinton is a specific woman and the dislike for her isn't about women generally but her specifically.
But there's a difference between what's really true and what is useful. If women — notably older women — believe discrimination against women is a problem, that belief might be leveraged. Chuck Todd asked Jose Diaz-Balart if Hillary would be able to "galvanize women." (Putting the "gal" in "galvanize.")
Diaz-Balart just said: "When was the last time that we heard a criticism of a man screaming too much?" And Chuck Todd said "Howard Dean" (referring to this). I couldn't believe it! How did they suddenly forget the man they otherwise can't stop talking about — Donald Trump? Donald Trump's manner of speaking is continually criticized. He's yelling. It sounds mean. It incites violence! It's coming out of a mouth that looks like Mussolini's mouth!
Diaz-Balart said: "I don't understand why Hillary Clinton has to be said she's screaming, she has to smile more. I don't hear men being asked that in the same way." But the speech styles of male candidates are often the subject of criticism. For example, just a few days ago, Chris Matthews said:
"I find Cruz very hard to listen to. He’s relentless, and he whines... He’s got this same angry edge to his voice all the time... There’s no, there’s no lift in it. There’s no hope in it. It’s just this grinding negativity toward anyone he’s competing with."
Molly Ball said that Hillary Clinton is trying "very hard to turn herself into a sort of feminist-identity politics candidate... has really leaned into the woman thing this year, and it hasn't worked." But there's this idea that if/when she gets to a one-on-one fight with Trump, the gender politics will get "really intense."
Chuck Todd brought up that anti-Trump ad we were talking about yesterday — the one with various women reading out-of-context quotes from Donald Trump (e.g., "That must be a pretty picture, you dropping to your knees"). Todd enthuses: "Can you imagine if they put money behind that ad and ran it for two weeks?"
There's no recognition of any incoherence and hypocrisy. I'm seeing — in Todd and the others on his show — a willingness to use overt gender politics against Republicans whenever it seems it will work, but Republicans are criticized for using gender politics even whenever it's just an argument that some criticism of Hillary could have something to do with her femaleness.
ADDED: Let me put that "dropping to your knees" quote in its proper context, which isn't a general statement about women, but a specific situation in which someone else had used the expression and he was cracking a mildly smutty joke:
It permeated "Meet the Press" today. The worst part was in this segment of the interview with Ben Carson:
CHUCK TODD: There was this shooting in Colorado Springs. And overnight, there's now been reports that the shooter was yelling about baby parts.
Yelling? I thought "no more baby parts" only appeared somewhere in the shooter's rambling, unfocused interview with the police. Todd is making it seem like an Allahu-Akbar-type battle cry.
CHUCK TODD: Planned Parenthood put out this statement, "We've seen an alarming increase in hateful rhetoric and smear campaigns against abortion providers and patients over the last few months. That environment breeds acts of violence. Americans reject the hatred and vitriol that fueled this tragedy." That was, again, from a Planned Parenthood Rocky Mountain spokesperson. Do you believe that the rhetoric got too heated on Planned Parenthood? And are you concerned that it may have motivated a mentally disturbed individual?
Carson handled the question by going utterly generic — rejecting "any hateful rhetoric directed at anyone from any source" and recommending that we "stop trying to destroy each other" and "work constructively."
Earlier, Todd asked a similar question of Donald Trump, albeit without the inappropriate reference to "yelling."
CHUCK TODD: Now, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood is concerned that the heated rhetoric around the Planned Parenthood debate could've had an adverse effect, basically, on this mentally disturbed individual. Do you think the rhetoric got out of hand on Planned Parenthood?
Trump stuck to his idea that the man (Robert Lewis Dear) is mentally ill. And that's when Todd brought up that "he was talking about baby parts and things like that... during his interview." Todd seemed to be trying to get Trump to back off on the political headway that anti-abortion forces have made with the undercover Planned Parenthood videos. Trump did not give him that (though he took a sideswipe at Republicans):
2. I haven't read this article, and yet somehow I feel pressured to care about it. I'm not enjoying this feeling.
3. I'm very familiar with the idea that right-wingers are "toxic," that anything at all right-wing is "toxic," whether there's excessive anger or edge or not. Any whiff of right-wingedness can cause left-liberals to view you as toxic, no matter how conciliatory and moderation-oriented you are. That's my personal experience.
4. I've never liked any of the yelling and sneering in politics, this "punch back twice as hard" business. I don't like it from lefties or righties. I've always had an aversion to politics, going all the way back to the time when the yippies moved in on the hippies.
So I did the math: If Romney flips those six states [Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, and Virginia] and no others, how many electoral votes would he end up with? Romney starts from a baseline of 179 electoral votes -- McCain actually won 173 electoral votes, but Census-based reapportionment has added electoral votes to red states and subtracted them from blue states. Add to that Colorado's 9 votes, Florida's 29 votes, Iowa's 6 votes, Nevada's 6 votes, Ohio's 18 votes and Virginia's 13 votes, and you get 260.
So you need 10 more electoral votes? Hmmm.... can we think of a state that has 10 electoral votes? Let me think really hard, because for the last year and a half, I've just been so distracted by....
By the way, do we usually shift over to talking in Electoral College terms this early in the election season? It seems to me that June 7th is really early for ruminating over how the challenger to the incumbent gets to 270.
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