A Trump defender "could point to a prior president, maybe there was a Nixon thing here, maybe there was a Carter thing here, a Clinton thing here, a couple of Obama things here...."

"And they'll say, aha, here's this is analogous or this is analogous or this is analogous. And then they expand and extend and move way beyond that precedent. But then when challenged on it, they can go back and say, well, Clinton did X or Obama did Y. Now two things are true at once. Number one, Clinton often did X or Obama often did do Y.... That doesn't excuse Donald Trump at all. And it doesn't mean that... what Donald Trump is doing is the same level of wrongness. It can be more wrongness. But what he does tactically and what he tries to do legally, which often doesn't fly, but what often flies tactically, especially with his base, is he's constantly pulling from these prior examples that are scattered all throughout modern American history.... [I]f you're an administration that is pulling all of the wrongdoing from say five previous administrations, putting it under one administration and then amplifying all of it, then you do have an issue.... But guys, political fandom should be over, let's not do this, okay?"

Said David French in the new episode of "Advisory Opinions," "All the Things Wrong with Trump’s Billion-Dollar Fund."

The whole discussion there is very good, examining many legal issues and precedents. I'm just selecting that one thing, which is something I've observed again and again. It's not Trump's way to say it stops with me, I see what's wrong, and I'm going to set us straight and get back to what is soundly legal and in line with the intent of the Framers. That might seem to fit his slogan "Make American Great Again," but that's not what he does. He's in the middle of a big fight, and he's going tit for tat and beyond. He's one of those guys who say "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."

Of course, that's Obama's line — "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" — but he was paraphrasing the Sean Connery character in "The Untouchables":

: 

"Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way!"

"Donald Trump will launch a 'revenge' attack on the White House media when he confronts them in person at a Washington dinner on Saturday night—then flee before there can be revenge...."

"Trump will leave the White House Correspondents’ Association event after making his speech, so he will miss the presentation of press awards—one of which would be certain to embarrass him. He has told aides he has no intention of still being in the International Ballroom at the Washington Hilton when the Wall Street Journal is honored with the Katherine Graham award for its scoop about a bawdy letter Trump allegedly wrote for Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday card.... Mentalist Oz Pearlman is performing this year, replacing the usual comedian and avoiding a potential Trump roast...."

From "Trump’s Plans for ‘Mic-Drop’ Media Confrontation Are Leaked/The president is planning a rage-fueled moment at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner" (Daily Beast).

"Donald Trump will launch a 'revenge' attack" — why is "revenge" in quotes? The article doesn't have Trump or anybody else using that word.

They've replaced the comedian with a mentalist?

"How do we squash the prejudice against female presidential nominees, which has always been with us, but became even worse after Kamala Harris got whomped by Donald Trump?"

Asks Gail Collins in a column with a title that asks a different question, "Where, oh Where, Will the First Female President Come From?"

Maybe it would be better to ask this other question, my question: When will we ever get to evaluate a female presidential candidate as just another presidential candidate? We've been nudged too many times to pick the woman because she is a woman. It makes people wary. I mean, really, why was Kamala Harris foisted on us?

So, yeah, she got "whomped." I'm collecting these colorful words that make losing seem violent but also fun. I'm thinking of George W. Bush taking what he called a "thumping" in the 2006 midterms, and Obama, after the 2010 midterms, saying he'd experienced "a shellacking."

Gail Collins is talking about whomping and squashing. Brutal words, but still polite. Euphemisms.

What's the etymology of "whomp"? It's the sound. A heavy, low sound. From the OED, quoting a 1960 issue of New Scientist: "The Sunday edition of the New York Times..whomped to the floor outside my apartment door."

"For reasons I don’t need to go into, you may feel that now is a bad time to visit the once United States. I thought the same..."

"... but having just returned from a tour of Arizona, I’d argue that it’s the perfect time. What Barack Obama described as 'an inflection point' is America’s worst domestic crisis since the civil rights movement of the 1960s: the relationship problems of a democracy still a few months short of its 250th birthday. For curious travellers and for those who prefer to make up their minds based on what they’ve seen rather than what they’ve been told, now offers the opportunity to witness not only history in the making but the events that brought America to where it stands today. Arizona is the place to start. Everywhere is open, everyone is delighted to see you...."

I'm reading, in The London Times, "My week taking America’s temperature in the Grand Canyon state/The history is fascinating and the scenery is astonishing but is the welcome as warm as it used to be? Chris Haslam finds out on a slow drive through Arizona."

Sample text:

"Every other recent president has said that he saw his role as transcending partisanship at least some of the time, to serve as leader of all Americans..."

"... even those who disagreed with him. George H.W. Bush talked of ushering in a 'kinder and gentler nation.' Mr. Clinton vowed to be the 'repairer of the breach.' The younger Mr. Bush spoke of being 'a uniter, not a divider.' Barack Obama rejected the idea of a red America and blue America, saying there was only 'the United States of America.' Joseph R. Biden Jr. called for ending 'this uncivil war.' None of them succeeded at achieving such lofty aspirations, and each of them to different degrees played the politics of division at times. Politics, after all, is about division — debating big ideas vigorously until one side wins an election or carries the vote in Congress. But none of them practiced the politics of division as ferociously and consistently as Mr. Trump...."

From "In an Era of Deep Polarization, Unity Is Not Trump’s Mission/President Trump does not subscribe to the traditional notion of being president for all Americans" by Peter Baker, in the NYT.

Who is taking an accurate measure of the consistency and ferocity of the divisiveness of the various Presidents?

My prompt to ChatGPT: "What are the most ferociously divisive things Presidents have said in all of American history? Give me a top 10, with just the quotes, not the explanations."

The list [NOTE: I did not verify the accuracy of these quotes. What follows is with ChatGPT gave me and the entire thing could be hallucination. Proceed with care!]

"I think it’s going to require a little bit less navel-gazing and a little less whining and being in fetal positions. And it’s going to require Democrats to just toughen up."

Said — guess who? — Barack Obama.

This is another one of those statements to fundraisers that you weren't supposed to hear, but they manage to leak out somehow.

In this case, the statement was "exclusively obtained by CNN."

The reputedly amiable but often crabby ex-President also said: "You know, don’t tell me you’re a Democrat, but you’re kind of disappointed right now, so you’re not doing anything. No, now is exactly the time that you get in there and do something. Don’t say that you care deeply about free speech and then you’re quiet. No, you stand up for free speech when it’s hard. When somebody says something that you don’t like, but you still say, 'You know what, that person has the right to speak.' … What’s needed now is courage."

What have they got that I ain't got? 

Obama's remarks made me think of this "printed, foldable card that can fit right into your ID badge holder" given out by the UW School of Medicine and Public Health, developed by the Office of Social Impact and Belonging:

"Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani."

The headline for a Michelle Goldberg column. Excerpt:

“His campaign has attracted Jewish New Yorkers of all types,” wrote Jay Michaelson, a columnist at the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The rabbi who runs my son’s Hebrew school put Mamdani on his ballot, though he didn’t rank him first. And while Mamdani undoubtedly did best among left-leaning and largely secular Jews, he made a point of reaching out to others....

So it has been maddening to see people claim that Mamdani’s win was a victory for antisemitism.... Ultimately.... New York’s Democratic primary wasn’t about Israel.... 

The attacks on Mamdani during the primary were brutal, but now that he’s a national figure, those coming his way will be worse. His foes will try to leverage Jewish anxieties to smash the Democratic coalition.... But don’t forget that the vision of this city at the heart of Mamdani’s campaign — a city that embraces immigrants and hates autocrats, that’s at once earthy and cosmopolitan — is one that many Jews, myself included, find inspiring....

Earthy.  

I was moved to unearth every "earthy" in the 21-year archive of this blog. They're all quotes of other people. I've never once used the word (except for one instance, now corrected, where I clearly meant to type "earthly" ("I didn't think you would be terribly sad to see that Robert Blake has left the earthy scene")).

"We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program," said JD Vance.

Quoted in "Vance says U.S. 'not at war with Iran, we're at war with Iran's nuclear program'/President Donald Trump said Saturday night that the U.S. had dropped bombs on three Iranian nuclear sites, the first time the U.S. has directly attacked Iran" (NBC News).

I'm interested in that rhetorical device: "We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program." 

I believe it's called paradiastole — or redescription. Other examples: 

George W. Bush, 2003: "We’re not occupying Iraq. We’re liberating it."

Barack Obama, 2013: "This is not a war on terror. It’s a campaign against specific networks like al-Qaeda."

Bill Clinton, 1999: "This is not a war. It’s a humanitarian intervention."

Benjamin Netanyahu, 2014: "We’re not fighting the Palestinian people. We’re fighting Hamas.”

Ronald Reagan, 1980s: "We’re not waging war against Nicaragua. We’re supporting freedom fighters."

"In a rambling, conspiratorial letter addressed to the FBI, alleged assassin Vance Boelter claimed Gov. Tim Walz instructed him to kill U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar so that Walz could run for the U.S. Senate..."

"... according to two people familiar with the contents of the letter. The letter... is incoherent, one and a half pages long, confusing and hard to read, according to two people familiar with the letter’s contents.... Federal prosecutors allege the letter was left behind in a Buick that Boelter deserted near his home in Green Isle, Minn. It also allegedly contained Boelter’s confession that he carried out the shootings that killed state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and injured Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette...."

From "Letter to FBI from shooting suspect made wild claims about Klobuchar and Walz, sources say/People with direct knowledge of a letter Vance Boelter addressed to the FBI say it is rambling and conspiratorial" (Minnesota Star Tribune).

Show us the letter. I'd like to form my own opinion and not just hear an assertion that it's "incoherent." The other day, I wasted time reading a prominent column with the headline stating that a new Supreme Court opinion was "incoherent." I almost blogged about it just to critique the deceptive use of the concept of incoherence.

"We want diversity of opinion. We don't want diversity of facts. And how do we train and teach our kids to distinguish between those things?"

"That, I think, is one of the big tasks of social media. By the way, it will require some government, I believe, some government regulatory constraints around some of these business models in a way that's consistent with the First Amendment, but that also says, look, there is a difference between these platforms letting all voices be heard versus a business model that elevates the most hateful voices or the most polarizing voices or the most dangerous, in the sense of inciting violence...."

Said Barack Obama, in a conversation with a historian a few days ago. Video at the link.

So it seems he thinks it's "the big task of social media" to teach children to distinguish between fact and opinion. But what does it mean to say "We don't want diversity of facts"? Does it mean you don't want differences of opinion about what the facts are?

It must, because facts are facts. There is no diversity of facts. Whatever is true is true, even if not one human being knows the truth. The facts are out there, to be found, and you can think you've found the facts and be wrong. There's a sense in which to say "We don't want diversity of facts" is to say we want to be able to be able to cling to mistaken findings of fact and even to silence those who want to continue to search for the truth.

I'm irritated by how casually Obama dropped in "By the way, it will require some government." Perhaps he knew his audience at the event was eager to hear about a role for government. But he did not say that government should enforce an official version of the facts — e.g., the covid vaccine is safe and effective, the 2020 election was fair and square. Instead of content-based regulation of speech, he's talking about the manner of the speech. Is it "hateful," "polarizing," or "dangerous"? He adds the phrase "in the sense of inciting violence" to gesture at some concern for the First Amendment.

Obama's speech is incredibly convoluted and mushy. That sentence that begins "By the way" — what is he proposing? Government control of the social media algorithm to suppress the voices it deems polarizing? Yeah, I think we know what that means: Suppress my political opponents, like you did before Elon Musk bought Twitter. Can we agree about that fact or is that an opinion?

***

I'm giving this post my old "alternative facts" tag. Remember "alternative facts"?

If only the Democratic Party could be more like a megachurch.

An idea thrown out by Barack Obama, speaking on "the power of pluralism," at the Democracy Forum in Chicago last Thursday:

[M]ega churches understand that belonging precedes belief. If you show up at one of these churches, they don’t start off peppering you with questions about whether you’ve accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. They don’t quiz you on the Bible. They invite you in, introduce you around, give you something to eat, tell you all about the activities and groups you can be a part of from the young adult social club to the ballroom dance group to the men’s choir which for those of you not familiar that’s where they put folks whose voices aren’t quite good enough to be in the main choir.... The point is megachurches are built around ‘let’s get you if here, doing stuff, meeting people, and showing you how you can participate and be active.’ It is about agency and relationships, it is not about theology or handouts. And they’re trying to create a big tent where lots of different people can feel comfortable. Once that happens, then they can have a deeper conversation about faith in a way that folks aren’t spooked by....

The ideas are creepy and offputting, so hold off on the ideas and give people a place to sing and dance and socialize. 

"Pluralism... is about recognizing that, in a democracy, power comes from forging alliances and building coalitions, and making room in those coalitions not only for the woke, but the waking."

Said Barack Obama, quoted in "In First Post-Election Speech, Obama Calls for ‘Forging Alliances and Building Coalitions’/'Purity tests are not a recipe for long-term success,' the former president said in the speech in Chicago" (NYT).

For Mr. Obama’s friends, he said, talk of bridging differences in a bitterly divided country seemed like an academic exercise.

“It felt far-fetched, even naïve, especially since, as far as they were concerned, the election proved that democracy’s down pretty far on people’s priority lists,” he said. But, he said, “it’s easy to give democracy lip service when it delivers the outcomes we want,” adding, “it’s when we don’t get what we want that our commitment to democracy is tested.”...

There's a special meaning to "democracy" in Obama's world, it seems — something like: It's democracy when we win. It seems to me that the election proved that we have a democracy and the people delivered their opinion. Obama seems to be saying that democracy is a background value, not the process of going through an election, and when that value is properly in place, people vote against Donald Trump.

Speaking of words, I wonder if "the waking" will catch on. It sounds like the title of a zombie movie.

ADDED: The meaning of "the waking" is like that special meaning of democracy. It's not a process that might go anywhere. It's a process toward a particular outcome. Those who are not progressing toward the prescribed outcome all outside of the process of democracy or waking. The "pluralism" is illusory.

ALSO: "Woke" and "waking" use the metaphor of sleep. When you are asleep, you have no consciousness or the illusion of dreams, which could be highly individualistic and include all sorts of unreal, unlikely, and impossible things. If you wake up, you have only one place to go: reality. 

Is Obama helping Kamala by vocalizing about vomit on his sweater?

I'm reading "Obama raps lyrics to Eminem’s ‘Lose Yourself’ at Detroit rally/'Love me some Eminem,' Obama said after rapping lyrics to the hit song 'Lose Yourself; during a rally in Detroit as Michigan begins early voting" (WaPo)(free-access link so you can watch the video).

“I have done a lot of rallies, so I don’t usually get nervous,” Obama said as he took to the stage to promote Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. “But I was feeling some kind of way following Eminem.... I notice my palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy, vomit on my sweater already, mom’s spaghetti, I’m nervous but on the surface I look calm and ready to drop bombs but I keep on forgetting,” Obama rapped as the crowd cheered. “Love, love me some Eminem,” he added.

I'm not sure who he hopes to influence with that, but what do I know? I'm only an undecided voter in Wisconsin. I'm not awed by celebrities, and everyone acknowledges that Kamala is the candidate with the most celebrities. Does it augment or diminish her? 

But I just want to say that I do not like the picture of mom's spaghetti vomited onto Obama's sweater. I can barely picture Obama wearing a sweater — as opposed to a beautifully ironed shirt with a casually unbuttoned collar and rolled up sleeves. 

And I don't like thinking about spaghetti-vomit on that sweater. I get Eminem's lyric about his pathetic self, who's not only vomiting onto his bad clothes but stuck eating his mother's home-cooked food. I saw the movie "8 Mile" when it came out. I understand the context of the lyrics

But Obama is not so in thrall to Eminem that the thought of encountering Eminem would physically overwhelm him. Obama was President and had to go head-to-head with Putin and Xi, and he's supposed to be vouching for Kamala, who's asking to do the same, so I don't want to hear about his getting weak-kneed over a pop star.

And most of all, I don't like "mom's spaghetti" as a marker of wretchedness. Many of us are bereft of a mother — including you, Barack Obama. To have mom's spaghetti, even upchucked, would be to experience one's mother alive in the world again.  

The lack of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris "seems to be more pronounced with the brothers."

Said Barack Obama, quoted in "Obama admonishes Black men for hesitancy in supporting Harris/Former president suggests some in the Black community are uncomfortable voting for a woman and are coming up with excuses" (WaPo).

“And you’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses, I’ve got a problem with that,” he said. “Because part of it makes me think — and I’m speaking to men directly — part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that.”...

The “women in our lives have been getting our backs this entire time,” Obama said. “When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting. And now, you’re thinking about sitting out or supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you, because you think that’s a sign of strength, because that’s what being a man is? Putting women down? That’s not acceptable.”

It looked like this:

Former President Barack Obama has a “tough talk” at the Black voters for Harris event in East Liberty. He addressed that Black men have not been as enthused about Harris as during his first run, and he sought to encourage them to join Harris’ movement pic.twitter.com/gDFZhsdLxC

— Ryan Deto (@RyanDeto) October 10, 2024

This gets my "Obama and manliness" tag.

And it made me think of the old "talking down to black people" controversy of 2008 when Jesse Jackson was caught on an open microphone expressing hostility toward Obama, because he had said, in a Father’s Day speech, addressing black men: "Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father."

But there, Obama was, I believe, attempting to appeal to white voters by displaying a bit of social conservatism. These new remarks of Obama's are, it seems, very directly aimed getting out the black male vote. It's very close to the election, and he's coming forward, at risk of overshadowing Harris, to deliver a strong push to the black men who might tip the balance in the 3 must-win states. Is his rhetoric effective? It's not for me to say. We'll find out.

ADDED: Harris is black because her father is black, but her non-black mother kept the father from participating in the upbringing of his daughters, and Harris continued the estrangement after her mother died and continues it to this day. We never get to hear from this man, Donald Harris, who is still alive. Do the black men who are hearing Obama's instruction to vote for Kamala Harris think about her relationship to her father? And does Obama think about his own father, who's gone now, but who barely took the trouble to know him?

Oliver Willis. Remember him? Remember Daily Kos! I did a search and clicked on my favorite headline.

My search was barack obama with kamala harris today and elon musk with trump.

I wanted something to link to for a post about how both presidential candidates are suddenly appearing with their most prominent supporter. Today's a big day and their pulling out their biggest... celebrity.

Here's the headline at Daily Kos that made me laugh: "Obama hits the trail for Harris as Trump teams up with notorious troll."

Obama’s first event for Harris will take place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on Thursday....

Why is he only appearing now? My hypothesis would be that it was thought that he would overshadow Harris, but now there's a new desperation. Something is needed. Will Obama say we should elect her as a way to have continuity with the Obama Administration? But she's said many times "We're not going back." You're supposed to understand that we're not going back to the Trump Administration, but lately it seems to have meant we're not going back to the Biden Administration, which seems incoherent, give that her performance as Vice President is her primary credential. But how can we believe we could go back — without going back — to the Obama Administration? Oh! It's easy, with Obama speaking. He can make these ideas fit together, with his fine rhetoric and mellifluous voice.

Back to Willis:

On the same day Obama’s plans were revealed, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk announced that he will attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Musk is worth an estimated $261 billion, and has a history of anti-union views.... On social media, Musk has frequently promoted conspiracy theories and racist memes in support of Trump and other conservative causes. The social media platform X, formerly Twitter, which Musk owns, has seen a resurgence of pro-Nazi accounts since Musk took over the business.

That's the view from Daily Kos. 

I'll watch both rallies. I'm interested in seeing how the 2 great men share the stage with their presidential candidate, and I'll judge them by what they do today. 

Bill Maher explains to Democrats that they are giving people "the ick."

The classic "Fear and" title is "Fear and Loathing," but somehow, in these days of loathing, we've got "Fear and Joy."

I'm so skeptical... as I'm reading "Fear and Joy in Chicago/The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair" by Fintan O'Toole (NYRB).

[T]he Democrats in Chicago were singing a redemption song. It had three parts: valediction, malediction, and benediction....

Having taken a break to listen to "Redemption Song" (see below), I will concentrate on the malediction:

[B]ad-mouthing Trump at a Democratic convention is not that hard. Yet it too had its complications. Just as the Democrats had to navigate between loving Joe and giving him a jubilant cheerio, they had to figure out how to manage another contradictory feat: cutting Trump down to size while retaining a clear sense of the threat he poses to the very existence of the American republic...

They seemed — to O'Toole — to be trying "to reconfigure Trump as the Wizard of Oz, a little man who has conjured an illusion of MAGA magnitude." 

Even the renegade Republican Adam Kinzinger was entirely on message when he called Trump “a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big…. He puts on quite a show, but there is no real strength there.”

I add my favorite blog tag, "big and small." 

"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.

"If I were advising the candidates, I’d tell them to double down on weirdness."

Says David Brooks, on September 8, 2008.

Blogging that at the time, here, I said that Brooks observed that "Obama started out weird and did well, then got conventional and did less well, especially with McCain getting weird. 'Weirdness wins,' [Brooks] says."

I thought you might like to see that today, when so many people are saying "weird" at the same time and as if it's a bad thing.

Let me give you a bit more of Brooks:

"Netanyahu 'peed on my leg,' Obama replied, according to two people familiar with the exchange..."

"... who spoke on the condition of anonymity to disclose a private conversation. The moment [in 2014] was emblematic of a dynamic that is culminating in the bitter debates over Israel now erupting across the American political landscape. Over the past 16 years, Netanyahu has departed sharply from his predecessors’ studious bipartisanship to embrace Republicans and disdain Democrats, an attitude increasingly mirrored in each party’s approach to Israel...."

From "Netanyahu’s split with Biden and the Democrats was years in the making/The Israeli leader’s longtime strategy of aligning with the GOP has helped shatter the American consensus behind Israel" (WaPo).