The Conversation -- October 11, 2024

Presidential Race

Nicholas Nehamas, et al., of the New York Times: At a town hall in Las Vegas, aired on Univision, Kamala Harris took “emotional questions from voters on health care and the economy — and displayed the balance [she] is seeking on tough border rules and paths to citizenship.... Many questions were asked in Spanish and translated for her.... Polls show Ms. Harris with less support from Hispanic voters than Mr. Biden carried four years ago.

“On Thursday evening, Ms. Harris held a get-out-the-vote rally outside Phoenix. There, she criticized Mr. Trump for threatening to undo the Affordable Care Act, and got raucous applause when she mentioned how the late Senator John McCain, a longtime Arizona Republican, had cast a decisive vote in 2017 thwarting efforts by Mr. Trump and Republicans to repeal it.”

Andrew Harris of Politico: “Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in a town hall with CNN on Oct. 23, her campaign announced Thursday. Harris’ participation comes after ... Donald Trump has declined to face the vice president in another debate before the Nov. 5 election. CNN also offered Trump a town hall, and his campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Politico.”

Stephen Collinson of CNN: At a campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pa., on Thursday, former President Barack “Obama ... painted a searing picture of Trump as a malicious, ridiculous and incompetent menace, while trying to weave a rhetorical case for voters who are feeling economically insecure to vote for Harris, who is part of an incumbent administration, nonetheless.... The ex-president savagely mocked Trump, asking whether his successor had ever changed a tire or a diaper and condemning his single term and 'mean and ugly' border policies.... The 44th and 45th presidents have waged a political feud for more than a decade, since Trump built the foundation of his populist movement on false claims that Obama was not US-born. Birtherism was the earliest indication of the potency of Trump’s political cocktail of racial aspersions and untruths, which has reached new heights in the 2024 election.” ~~~

~~~ Marie: If you or your children or your grandchildren aspire to a career in retail politics, here's how it's done. If you have time while you're washing your socks, or as my old priest once said, "cleaning out the corners in the glory of God," (a turn of phrase I have remembered for 65 years) start up this video and turn up the volumn: ~~~

~~~ Here's something President Obama said during his Pittsburgh speech that I wish the Harris campaign would emphasize. ~~~

     ~~~ Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "Former President Barack Obama knocked down one of ... Donald Trump's most central pitches to voters for re-election at a Pittsburgh rally Thursday evening: that Trump was a masterful steward of the economy.... 'Some think, I remember that economy when he first came in being pretty good,' said Obama. 'Yeah, it was pretty good — because it was my economy. It wasn't something he did. I spent eight years cleaning up the mess that the Republicans had left me.' The economy continued to grow after Obama left office under Trump. However, Trump also presided over one of the worst single-year economic disasters in U.S. history, as the COVID-19 pandemic first hit in 2020. Supply shortages crippled supermarkets around the country and unemployment peaked at 15 percent. Under President Joe Biden, the job market trend returned to pre-pandemic levels."

You’re coming up with all kinds of reasons and excuses. I’ve got a problem with that. 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. When we get in trouble and the system isn’t working for us, they’re the ones out there marching and protesting. -- Barack Obama, in a message to Black men, delivered at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh, Pa. ~~~

~~~ Erica Green & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: “Former President Barack Obama traveled to Pittsburgh on Thursday to urge voters there to choose Vice President Kamala Harris in November, aiming a message at one group in particular: Black men. The decision voters have between the vice president and ... Donald J. Trump, her Republican opponent, 'isn’t a close call,' Mr. Obama said as he visited with a group of campaign volunteers and officials at a field office just ahead of his appearance at a Harris rally.” The AP's report is here.

If you're interested in what Tim Walz has been up to the last couple of days, Rebecca O'Brien of the New York Times has a run-down. HOWEVER, you'll have to wade through the first several paragraphs of what the paper considers a thrilling mini-scandal: Walz's remarks, made on the West Coast, that he wanted to get rid of the Electoral College. The problem apparently is that abolishing the Electoral College is not the Harris campaign's position because they don't want to offend voters in the only states that matter: swing states like Pennsylvania & Michigan.

Chris Cameron & Rebecca O'Brien of the New York Times: “Senator JD Vance of Ohio and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota opened the first day of voting in Arizona on Wednesday with a spree of campaign events across the state.... Arizona, with its 11 Electoral College votes, has no clear favorite in the presidential race — even as polls there show a slight lead by ... Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris.... Mr. Vance first held a rally in Tucson before attending a town-hall event hosted by the Conservative Political Action Conference in Mesa, near Phoenix. Mr. Walz visited a Veterans of Foreign Wars post and met with tribal leaders on tribal land, near Phoenix, before holding a campaign rally in the evening at a high school gym in Tucson.... In Arizona on Wednesday morning, he linked up for breakfast with Doug Emhoff, Ms. Harris’s husband.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Getting Out the Incel Vote??? Simon Levien of the New York Times: “Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign bridged the real world with World of Warcraft on Wednesday, livestreaming Gov. Tim Walz’s rally in Arizona via Twitch, while a Twitch streamer played the role-playing game and provided commentary about his rally.... This was the first time the Harris campaign has livestreamed gameplay from its Twitch account, which was created in August, and roughly 5,000 viewers were tuned in.... Preheat, a Twitch streamer and World of Warcraft player with about 50,000 followers, hosted the stream from the Harris campaign’s account and encouraged the viewers to vote for her. The screen was split, with Mr. Walz’s rally in Tucson on the left and gameplay on the right.” (Also linked yesterday.)

Michael Gold & Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: “... Donald J. Trump was roughly an hour and a half into a nearly two-hour speech to the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday afternoon before he got to his main new policy proposal: a call to make car loan interest fully tax deductible. The proposal, which came late during a circuitous speech to business leaders, merged two of Mr. Trump’s favored efforts to win voters: targeted tax cuts aimed at key voting blocs nationwide and promises to revitalize the auto industry in Michigan, a critical battleground state. Even before this latest tax cut proposal, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that Mr. Trump’s agenda could add as much as $15 trillion to the nation’s debt over a decade.... But before he got to his new proposal..., he took a pointed dig at the city that was hosting him. 'Our whole country will end up being like Detroit if she’s your president,' he said. 'You’re going to have a mess on your hands.' Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, blasted Mr. Trump’s comments in a social media post, saying that 'you better believe Detroiters won’t forget this in November.' As Mr. Trump spoke about his proposals to revive the auto industry, he used some of the same kind of violent, cataclysmic language he often uses to vilify immigrants.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: You might wonder why Trump would go to a city in a swing state and slam that city right in the faces of its proud leaders. Answer: He's a racist. ~~~

     ~~~ Lee Moran of the Huffington Post: “The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman on Thursday explained why she believes ... Donald Trump trashed Detroit during an address in the city.... Haberman [told CNN's Anderson Cooper], 'I think he was appealing to the people in that room who were a group of largely white businessmen, as I understand it. You could hear there was applause when he said the line.' But Haberman acknowledged 'this is going to appear in local news outside of that room and insulting the city that you are in.... It’s certainly not something that I think his advisers would have liked that he said. I think calling it a developing nation was something that you will see again used by opponents.'” ~~~

     ~~~ Some leaders and other commentators were not amused. Bradley Moss doesn't say, but he does seem to suspect what it is Trump doesn't like about Detroit. ~~~

~~~ “Man of the Year.” Peter Baker of the New York Times: “... Donald J. Trump expressed irritation on Thursday that anyone would challenge his claim that he had been declared 'man of the year' in Michigan many years ago. During a speech in Detroit, he triumphantly pulled out a news story to prove that he was right. The only problem: The news outlet that published the story corrected it online shortly after he cited it. The revised version of the story that he held up as evidence that his account was correct now reports that his account was wrong. At issue is a claim that Mr. Trump has been making since at least 2016 and that he repeated on the campaign trail just last month.... The article that he held up was not about some honor 18 or 20 years ago, long before he ran for president, as he had just told the audience. Instead, it was about a party dinner where he was to speak in June 2023....”

Patrick Svitek & Amy Wang of the Washington Post: “... Donald Trump said Thursday that CBS News should lose a broadcasting license over how it edited a '60 Minutes' interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, even though the federal government does not issue licenses for such television networks.... The agency licenses individual broadcast stations, not networks in their entirety.... It was the latest example of Trump calling for media outlets that have angered him to lose their rights to broadcast — a push that evokes government control of media, which is a hallmark of authoritarianism. Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel denounced Trump’s latest call targeting CBS, flatly rejecting an idea the agency has ruled out under both the Biden and Trump administrations. 'While repeated attacks against broadcast stations by the former President may now be familiar, these threats against free speech are serious and should not be ignored,' Rosenworcel said in a statement. 'As I’ve said before, the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.'... Trump has been fixated for days on Harris’s interview with '60 Minutes,' which came after he backed out of sitting for his own interview with the show, according to the network.” Emphasis added.

Bob Woodward finds & resurrects an interview of Donald Trump he and Carl Bernstein did in February 1989 -- oh, at Trump's invitation. (WashPo link.)

Noah Berlatsky on why Trump lies about natural disasters: "... Trump sees natural disasters entirely through the lens of his own narrow self-interest. when the worst happens, he immediately tries to figure out how he can leverage that worst to harm his (perceived) partisan enemies, or how he can avoid blame." Thanks to RAS for the link.

Melanie confessed in her "memoir"/picture book that she once tried to market a make-up that included caviar among its ingredients. Her venture failed (through no fault of her own! -- just ask her), but her husband's is bound to succeed:

Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine tells the media how they have failed us: "You have refused to recognize fascism at the door. You insist on covering authoritarianism as just another side in still-symmetrical American politics. You do not read history.... You let yourselves be exploited by these malign forces to spread their bigotry and bile, cushioned with your white-gloved euphemisms and sane-washing.... You hide behind your impotent fact-checking, never seeing  —  though frequently warned  —  that in the ways you debunk their lies, you spread them, and by pedantically nitpicking the other side in your misguided search for balance you create false equivalence. This is how they exploit you." With examples. Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Here's a "thing" about the media's GOP-whitewashing project is that some of us have learned to translate it, but probably most have not. When I read a report that Trump or some other Republican has made a claim "without evidence" or "unsubstantiated" or "baseless," of course my mind reads "lied." But a low-information reader, who might engage sporadically or only in the few weeks before an election, is not going to see it that way. Obviously, in our everyday conversations, we speak "without evidence" almost all of the time. Nobody walks around with documentation to support water-cooler chitchat. So politicians' remarks delivered "without evidence" seem, well, normal. The typical reader doesn't "get" that "without evidence" means it's a lie, perhaps made up out of whole cloth.

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: “The federal judge [Tanya Chutkan] overseeing the 2020 election case against ... Donald J. Trump on Thursday approved a limited release of a compilation of evidence against him, but stayed her order for a week in case Mr. Trump’s legal team wants to challenge the disclosure.”

Douglas Martin of the New York Times: “Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Senator Robert F. Kennedy and a popular and vital force in the Kennedy political dynasty, died on Thursday. She was 96.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Ethel Kennedy's life in pictures (link is to a NYT story).

Perry Stein of the Washington Post: “TD Bank pleaded guilty to federal money laundering charges Thursday, agreeing to pay more than $3 billion in fines for enabling drug traffickers and other criminals to open accounts and transfer money through the bank. Federal prosecutors said the bank violated the law when it did not properly monitor trillions of dollars in transactions that stretched back over a decade. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the agreement and said the Canadian bank — the 10th-largest in the United States — is the first in American history to plead guilty to conspiring to laundering money. TD Bank also pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires banks to report suspicious activity and maintain effective anti-money-laundering programs.”

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Israel/Palestine, et al. The Washington Post's live updates of developments Friday in Israel's wars is here: “An Israeli attack in central Beirut on Thursday night killed at least 22 people and injured 117, making it the deadliest strike on the city since Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah launched its first rocket attacks on northern Israel. Israeli forces also fired on three positions held by U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, injuring two peacekeepers, the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon said. The Israeli security cabinet, meanwhile, gathered to vote on how to respond to Iran’s Oct. 1 missile attack, according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.”

U.K. William Booth of the Washington Post: “Boris Johnson has published his political memoir. The book is like the former prime minister: Funny. Frustrating. And not entirely believable. At least, that’s the early take.... There are some spicy reveals.... The revelations have made minor news and sparked rounds of chat on TV and social media here. But British readers seem to be viewing the memoir more as entertainment than definitive history.... The Daily Mail, which has been running excerpts, proclaimed it 'the political memoir of the century.' The London Times called it 'childishly amusing.' The Guardian went with 'memoirs of a clown.'”