The Conversation -- October 3, 2024

Presidential Race

We are here for the long haul. -- Kamala Harris, in Augusta, Georgia, Wednesday ~~~

Erica Green of the New York Times: “Vice President Kamala Harris surveyed damage from Hurricane Helene on Wednesday in Georgia, promising residents that the federal government was rushing to help with the recovery.... Standing in front of a house covered in fallen trees in the Meadowbrook neighborhood of Augusta, Ga., Ms. Harris announced that the federal government would cover 100 percent of the costs of debris removal and other emergency protective measures for three months to help the state recover. She described how much of the community did not have power, with many lacking access to water, and how she had met one woman who lost her husband. She called the damage 'extraordinary' and the loss of life 'particularly devastating.' Ms. Harris also met with local officials and received a briefing on recovery efforts, during which she praised emergency responders who were working even amid their own personal struggles....” ~~~

~~~ Chris Megerian, et al., of the AP: “Vice President Kamala Harris handed out meals, embraced a shaken family and surveyed Hurricane Helene’s 'extraordinary' path of destruction through Georgia on Wednesday as she left the campaign trail to pledge federal help and personally take in scenes of toppled trees, damaged homes and lives upended. She visited Augusta, where power lines stretched along the sidewalk and utility poles lay cracked and broken.... Harris and President Joe Biden, who visited the Carolinas on Wednesday, were seeking to demonstrate commitment and competence in helping devastated communities after Republican ... Donald Trump’s false claims about their administration’s response.... Harris also toured a Red Cross relief center and received a briefing from local officials, praising those working to 'meet the needs of people who must be seen and must be heard.'”

Shane Goldmacher & Reid Epstein of the New York Times: “Vice President Kamala Harris has cast herself as a candidate of the future, but she has been yanked back by the problems of the present as the Middle East lurches toward a wider war, a longshoremen’s strike threatens to undermine the country’s economy and Americans across the Southeast struggle to recover from a deadly hurricane.... The rare moment of turbulence for Ms. Harris interrupts what has been mostly smooth sailing in her two months as the Democratic presidential nominee. It also captures a conundrum of the vice presidency, a prestigious if mostly ceremonial posting.... The overlapping developments just as the calendar turned to October were a reminder that while Ms. Harris has framed her candidacy as a fresh start for the nation, she very much is part of the administration still in charge.”

Marin Scotten of Salon ties Trump's cancelling a traditional "60 Minutes" interview to "an especially scattered and hard to follow" press conference Trump gave in Milwaukee Tuesday. "Several of his remarks were unintelligible, including a claim that Democrats want to 'keep Black and Hispanic children trapped in family government.'"

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: “Half an hour into Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate, JD Vance lodged a whiny protest. 'Margaret,' he said to moderator Margaret Brennan of CBS News, 'the rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact-check!' It was a lie on top of another lie, supplemented by a pair of other lies, in support of an even bigger lie. There was no 'rule' against fact-checking. And Vance had just told a whopper. He had alleged that, in Springfield, Ohio, 'you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants.'... The senator said Harris 'became the appointed border czar.' She received no such appointment.... There is no 'open border.'..., and the thousands of Haitian migrants ... have legal status.... He said 'over $100 billion' of Iranian assets were unfrozen 'thanks to the Kamala Harris administration.'...  Kamala Harris isn’t the president.... On health care, he served up the howler of the night when he said that Trump 'saved' the 'collapsing' Affordable Care Act.... In reality, of course, Trump tried his best to kill Obamacare.... Vance capped the night by saying that Trump 'peacefully' surrendered power four years ago.” (Also linked yesterday.) 

JayDee, Junior Scapegoater. Rachel Siegel of the Washington Post: “Throughout Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) blamed soaring housing costs on a spike in immigration over the past few years — promising that a crackdown on illegal immigration and 'kicking out illegal immigrants who are competing for those homes' would help affordability.... That claim has been debunked by economists and housing experts, who say that other forces have played a much bigger role in driving up prices and that illegal immigration is not a top reason prices are high. Immigration may be helping to keep rents elevated in some areas, though. Foreign-born workers also make up roughly a third of the construction workforce, a crucial part of the push to build millions of new homes and fix years-long shortages. That means the strict immigration crackdown Vance and ... Donald Trump are proposing could send prices even higher.” ~~~

     ~~~ Junior Scapegoater, Ctd. Jasmine Garsd of NPR highlights some more ills that during the debate JayDee blamed on immigrants, such as claiming they lowered U.S. citizens' wages. "Most labor economists disagree with the claim that immigrants depress native-born worker wages.... He falsely claimed guns are smuggled into the U.S. over the border with Mexico (in fact, it’s the other way around).... Both candidates spoke about fentanyl as related to immigration, which remains a pervasive myth: Fentanyl is overwhelmingly brought into the U.S. by people crossing legally, through ports of entry. The street supply of fentanyl is also drying up."

Philip Bump of the Washington Post elaborates on a point both Zack Beauchamp of Vox & Will Saletan of the Bulwark made in posts linked here yesterday: that Trump & “his allies are making it clear, repeatedly, that the only outcome they will accept without hesitation is one where he is the victor.” Marie: And I am here to remind you that none of this would be an issue if we had direct election of presidents because the difference between the number of votes cast for Harris & for Trump is likely to be in the millions.

⭐ Alan Feuer & Charlie Savage of the New York Times: “In a sprawling legal brief partly unsealed on Wednesday, the special counsel, Jack Smith, laid out his case for why ... Donald J. Trump is not immune from prosecution on federal charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election. The redacted brief, made public by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington, adds new details to the already extensive public record of how Mr. Trump lost the race but attempted nonetheless to cling to power.” (Also linked yesterday.)  ~~~

     ~~~ “So What?” Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: “The much-anticipated 165-page filing from special counsel Jack Smith offers a searing portrayal of Trump just a month before the 2024 election. It describes in more extensive detail than before how many people — including Vice President Mike Pence, party and state leaders, his own campaign officials, his own campaign lawyers, and others — told Trump there was no proof the election was stolen, and how Trump nonetheless waged a campaign to overturn the result. Prosecutors reconstructed behind-the-scenes interactions, including one in which an aide rushed to the dining room to share with Trump, who had been watching the events on TV and tweeting, that action was being taken to ensure the safety of Pence, who was in the Capitol building. 'The defendant looked at him and said only,  the filing alleges.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Katelyn Polantz, et al., of CNN: “The 165-page document comes from Smith’s office and is the fullest accounting yet of evidence in the election subversion case against Trump. Throughout the document, Smith argues that the actions Trump took to overturn the election were in his private capacity – as a candidate – rather than in his official capacity, as a president.... The filing weaves together what prominent witnesses told a federal grand jury and the FBI about Trump, along with other never-before-disclosed evidence investigators gathered about the former president’s actions leading up to and on January 6, 2021.” (Also linked yesterday.)

When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office. -- Motion for Immunity Determinations, p. 3

Under the Constitution, the Executive Branch has no constitutionally assigned role in the state-electoral process. To the contrary, the constitutional framework excludes the President from that process to protect against electoral abuses. -- Motion, p. 111 ~~~

     ⭐ ~~~ The motion is here. (Via CNN.) (Also linked yesterday.) MB: I found this CBS News copy of the motion to be more easily searchable. ~~~

     ~~~ Melissa Quinn & Robert Legare of CBS News have a "key takeaways" report here. It summarizes a good deal of detail that appears in the motion. ~~~

     ~~~ “So What,” “Make Them Riot,” “It Doesn’t Matter if You Won or Lost the Election.” Aaron Blake of the Washington Post analyzes the impact of some of the evidence which the motion newly makes public. Dan Friedman of Mother Jones also has a good summary of the new evidence in the motion and its significance. ~~~

     ~~~ Rachel Maddow said on-air that even though she knew much of the detail laid out in the motion, Smith's narrative put it together for her in a way that others had not. (Without citing chapter & verse), she gave as an example of this passage on p. 81: "The defendant issued the incendiary Tweet about Pence despite knowing -- as he would later admit in an interview in 2023 -- that his supporters 'listen to [him] like no one else.' One minute later, at 2:25 p.m., the Secret Service was forced to evacuate Pence to a secure location." You don't need to be a genius to suspect cause-and-effect here. ~~~

     ~~~ “Accessories After the Fact.” Scott Lemieux in LG&$: “It’s infuriating to be reminded in such detail about the behavior that the Republicans on the Supreme Court sought to immunize, particularly since any 'opinion for the ages' horseshit notwithstanding the opinion was clearly tailored to provide the broadest possible immunity for specifically for Trump’s attempt to violently steal the election. John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett are all full in knowing accessories after the fact to the Plot Against America.” Lemieux republishes a portion of Rick Hasen's firewalled Slate essay, noting that “Hasen observes that Jack Smith’s brief is as much an indictment of John Roberts and the Dred Scott of the 21st century as it is of Trump.”

Marie: Speaking of “searing portraits” of Trump, RAS shares this one. It is not a portrait that will come as a surprise to you, but it is a second-hand account that puts meat on the bones of many an article we've linked about Trump's stiffing contractors.

Marie: Two days ago, I linked to a New York Times story that reported, “In his remarks, the former president repeatedly said that he had come bearing gifts to help the disaster response: semitrailer trucks filled with relief supplies and a tanker of gas, distributed by the evangelical Christian humanitarian aid group Samaritan’s Purse. Still, as he underlined his contributions to the storm response....” So just maybe that left you with the impression that Trump had at least dug into his campaign coffers, if not his personal piggy bank, to bring along rolls of paper towels to lob at desperate residents. In fact, Trump, his campaign and some right-wing media outfits also left that impression, if they didn't say so unequivocally. BUT NO. According to J.D. Wolf of MeidasTouch Network (a partisan liberal site), it appears that Franklin Graham's outfit Samaritan's Purse was wholly responsible for buying, packing, delivering & distributing the truckloads of relief supplies.

digby -- with help from Chris Hayes (I got a virus-warning message on the link to Hayes' article); Rick Perlstein, writing in the American Prospect, & psychologist Julie Hotard, writing on X -- examines the mindset of the "undecided voter." They are not, as journalists repeatedly tell us, dithering over whether they like Trump's healthcare plan (oops! he doesn't have one just quite yet) or Kamala Harris's reproductive rights policies. Nope, the "undecided voter" is trying to decide between falling into the lovely fascist fantasy that Trump will protect them and ... reality. ~~~

     ~~~ And Paul Campos, in LG&$, highlights this coda to Perlstein's essay: "I certainly don’t disagree that Trump is becoming more cognitively impaired and out of touch with reality. But might not these impairments render him a better fascist seducer, as his invitations to infantile regression become ever more primal, ever more basic, ever more pure?" Campos: "This is disturbingly plausible. In other words, Trump’s decompensation is allowing him, either consciously or semi-consciously or even unconsciously, to deliver the uncut version of the ideological meth he’s been selling for nine and a half years now." ~~~

      ~~~ Marie: I disagree with the original premise though I go along with the idea that Trump's own infantalism may be exceptionally appealing to the infantile undecided voters. Still, I think every voter -- including the vast majority of us "decided voters" -- is looking for a protector. Most of us are realistic, many to the point of cynacism, about just how much protection we'll actually get. But what divvies us into right and left camps is the question of just what the dangers are -- that is, what we need protection from. As JayDee amply demonstrated, people on the right seem to think they need protection from immigrants, for instance. Or from overreaching government that would take away their guns and make them wear protective gear in certain situations. Or from taxes. Those of us on the left want protection from overreaching government, too, but the difference is where the government is doing its overreach: into the doctor's office? Into our bedrooms? Onto the streets where we're peacefully protesting? Into our libraries? We also want protection from the natural & periodic vicissitudes: hunger, unaffordable shelter, illness, old age. We want protection from bad actors -- like gunslingers and crooks -- as well as from physical dangers -- and inhospitable surroundings -- like crappy bridges & roads, not to mention climate-change-induced catastrophic weather events.

Zach Montague & Jacey Fortin of the New York Times: “President Biden on Wednesday took an aerial tour of the devastation from Hurricane Helene and ordered the Pentagon to deploy up to 1,000 active-duty troops to assist with aid efforts as rescue workers continued dangerous rescue missions in remote mountain communities. Mr. Biden’s visit to the Carolinas came as the death toll from the storm rose to more than 175 people on Wednesday, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to strike the mainland United States since Katrina, which caused nearly 1,400 deaths in 2005, according to statistics from the National Hurricane Center.” (Also linked yesterday.)

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Israel/Palestine, et al.

The Washington Post's live updates of developments Thursday in Israel's wars are here: “An Israeli airstrike in Beirut’s Bachoura neighborhood killed six people and injured seven others, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said. It was the second and deadliest airstrike inside the capital since Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah began. The late-night strike hit the office of the Islamic Health Authority, a health services institution run by Hezbollah, and paramedics were among the casualties, an IHA spokesperson said. The Israel Defense Forces said it conducted a 'precise strike' in Beirut. In southern Lebanon, Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants engaged in what appeared to be their first direct ground confrontations.” ~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times' live updates for Thursday are here.

Yasmeen Abutaleb, et al., of the Washington Post: “The White House is working to limit the Israeli response to the barrage of ballistic missiles that Iran fired into the country Tuesday, as some U.S. officials worry the Middle East could be edging closer to the all-out war that President Joe Biden has sought to prevent for nearly a year.