US Politics: July 2020 - "Denigrating this Luxury Avenue"

Hmm:

Online donors poured a record $392 million into campaigns and causes via ActBlue in June, a sign of surging activism and political enthusiasm on the left that smashed the previous monthly high, from just before the 2018 election, by a whopping 50 percent.

The eye-popping numbers on ActBlue, the favored digital fundraising platform for the Democratic Party as well as a growing host of left-leaning nonprofits, make for a startling split-screen next to Great Depression-level unemployment and spiking coronavirus cases across the country.

But the left’s online giving surge is blunting one of President Donald Trump's remaining advantages in the presidential election, as his poll numbers sink: his financial edge. Small-dollar donors are filling up Joe Biden’s campaign coffers, giving Democratic Senate and House candidates a financial cushion in many of the biggest 2020 elections, and pouring resources into newly emboldened civil rights organizations, which are scaling up rapidly amid rising support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

newly emboldened civil rights organizations

peculiar turn of phrase there

who the fuck is gonna pay $88 for a fucking baseball is the thing

I think you can get a signed Pete rose for 50

Yeah, but he's been disgraced, unlike Trump.

Herman Cain Hospitalized After Testing Positive For Coronavirus Ten Days After Attending Tulsa Rally https://t.co/P8Nw7Aig7h via @TPM

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 2, 2020

(cough)

Here’s just a few of the #BlackVoicesForTrump at tonight’s rally! Having a fantastic time!#TulsaRally2020 #Trumptulsa #TulsaTrumprally #MAGA #Trump2020 #Trump2020Landslide pic.twitter.com/27mUzkg7kL

— Herman Cain (@THEHermanCain) June 20, 2020

I'm kind of worried about myself spiritually
I really deeply want these deniers to get COVID and die, can't be good for the soul

when you’re up 28-3 in the Super Bowl with 2 mins remaining in the 3rd quarter pic.twitter.com/J1CX8W4tvy

— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) July 2, 2020

ok, i just noticed the original poster and lol'd hard

Herman Cain's temperature was reported to be nine nine nine

ok come on just for pure comedic/trolling value this is vg, I say keep 'em coming

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUBAAeuBpPQ

Not strictly politics but yikes
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/us/china-hair-uyghur-cpb-trnd/index.html

Wax Poetics, RIP.

xxp

“It’s not just pissing off Donald Trump. Anybody could do that,” Galen said. “It’s, to what effect? Like, why are you doing it? And the point is to take him off his game and take his campaign off their game, strategically and tactically, so that the Biden campaign and Joe Biden can have the freedom of movement and the green air to do the things that they need to do.”

This is an absurdly self-aggrandizing argument. The idea that the Biden campaign needs the aid of a group of former Republicans to “take [Trump’s] campaign off their game” doesn’t track with anything that has happened over the last three-and-a-half years. The president is constantly distracted and disheveled. The Lincoln Project may be the flavor of the month, but the president would still be rage-tweeting about minor slights if the PAC had never come into being. There is an argument, moreover, that advertisements mocking the president’s physical fitness and calling for attacks on Russian troops distract from the Biden campaign’s core message: the economy, the coronavirus, and Trump’s temperament.

What, then, is the Lincoln Project up to? Going viral is, more than ever, its own reward, something surely not lost on a group of political consultants who have been sidelined as Trump and his allies have taken over a GOP that used to listen to them. The success of their ads on social media is a claim of relevancy and could easily lead to more work—which is to say, more money.

Well, duh. All political ads are ultimately about money. But I'm sure the Biden campaign would rather have their help than have them try to hurt him, not least because I don't exactly see people circulating Biden campaign ads. If they can do better, they should.

yeah, duh is right. I read that article the first time it was posted and it's bracingly dumb. How the argument they're making applies any more to these Lincoln Project ads than any other stupid low-rent throw-them-off-their-game ads is entirely lost on me.

Just say it pisses you off that Republicans are doing it.

anyone arguing it's not "helpful" to Biden that Republicans are spending money sniping at Trump is just being disingenuous and should instead spend that energy making the case for publicly funded elections

of course it fucking "helps" him, if only to the extent that it doesn't hurt him

I remain convinced that the “beer summit” was the effective end of the Obama administration, whether they knew it then or not. That was the moment Republicans looked at the Obama WH and said “oh shit, this is how they’re going to handle our bullshit, happy days are here again” https://t.co/eg0MfFU62O

— August J. Pollak (@AugustJPollak) July 1, 2020

I dunno. Jedd Fessions sure seemed mad about it.

I might be generous enough to grandfather in some people who've left the flock but I'd never trust any motherfucker who currently identifies as a republican no matter how they may try in the future to kick dirt over their current affiliation with abject evil.

totally agreed, just not sure what that has to do w/ the efficacy of these ads

"liberals trained on years of west wing believe that if biden wins the gop will have a come to jesus moment"

afaict some bot absorbed twitter and spat out this sentence

there aren't actually that many years of west wing

am i allowed to suggest that the left have been brain-poisoned by resistance pundits

here's how much mental energy i've devoted to the fucking lincoln project:

youre a new yorker not a liberal, honeychile

i guess i have been here for a decade and hate the mayor

j, that show debuted in '99 and has been a lodestone for a large sect ever since

and we're not even counting spinoffs like The Obama Fantasy

xp that and $29 will get you a mask and a subway token

the Beer Summit was the Obama era's most embarrassing moment, yes, and predictable.

My only concern with Lincoln Whatever is: someone who's an anti-Trumper while remaining a loyal Republican might split their ballot and vote against Trump while voting R downticket. In which case, fuck them slightly less than a straight-ticket R voter, but still fuck them.

As far as the Gates episode goes, were Sessions' comments merely just extreme ignorance or was he knowingly slandering Gates?

One asshole says to another asshole, 'About this asshole...'

It sounded like he heard about it 2nd hand and didn't really grasp what happened, but maybe that's giving him way more credit than he deserves.

How is that giving him credit?

[i]On Wednesday, three Trump confidants told Axios that the president regrets heeding Jared Kushner’s advice to broaden his appeal by embracing milquetoast police and criminal-justice reforms; as one source summarized Trump’s thinking, he wants “no more of Jared’s woke shit.”

This account of Trump’s private reasoning comports with his public actions in recent days. Just this week, the president has:

• Described New York’s plan to paint “Black Lives Matter” down Fifth Avenue as a plot to affix a “symbol of hate” onto the city’s “greatest street.”

• Threatened to end an Obama-era policy that bars local governments from accessing federal housing funds unless they make affirmative efforts to track and reduce racial segregation in their communities. Trump said that he was reviewing this regulation on behalf of the “great Americans who live in the Suburbs,” and lamented that the policy is “not fair to homeowners.”

• Vowed to veto the Defense Authorization Act unless an amendment requiring the renaming of U.S. military bases that presently honor Confederate generals is stripped from the bill. (In announcing this position, Trump made sure to note that the amendment was sponsored by “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren.”)

If one imagines Trump to be a rational political actor, it is difficult to make sense of these actions. According to Axios, Trump soured on Kushner’s calls for triangulation on criminal justice out of concern that indulging such reforms might be “seen as undercutting police” — as though anti-reform cops and Blue Lives Matter bumper-sticker owners were swing constituencies. George Floyd’s death has created plenty of political challenges for Trump. But one thing it absolutely hasn’t done is jeopardize the Republican Party’s grip on single-issue, “unshackle the police” voters.[/i[

“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”“no more of Jared’s woke shit.”

^ quoting the unnamed source, not Trump directly.

Well, yeah.

Still an amazing collection of words worth highlighting.

Partially because a lot of MAGA chuds have co-opted 'Woke', and Q-followers have gone further with 'The Great Awakening' against the 'Deep State'.

trump is making “woke” hats pic.twitter.com/myOP8itXUe

— Meena Harris (@meenaharris) February 27, 2020

$35!

We've known Trump is Mr. 'Double Down Whenever I Shit the Bed' for at least the past several centuries of his endless misrule.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eb81HY_U4AAhwWv?format=jpg&name=900x900

lol

notorious woke SJW and civil rights extremist Jared Kushner

$35 is crazy. You could get a baseball for 2.5 of those hats.

NEW: Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, the likely Democratic candidate against GOP Sen. Susan Collins, raised an astounding $9 million in the second quarter.

— Kevin Robillard (@Robillard) July 2, 2020

I really deeply want these deniers to get COVID and die, can't be good for the soul

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, July 2, 2020 4:16 PM bookmarkflaglink

what's funny is I forget how much more jaded most of us are than the rest of the people I know so I'll say shit like this out loud and people say "that's fucked up, you shouldn't wish death on people!"

actually makes me feel bad for a moment.....until I remember my brothers and sisters used to kill each other over squirrel meat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=701nEE_aSlY