Why Trump's Rallies Probably Aren't Working

Republican Debate Commission Chairman Unloads On Trump For Lying About Debate

Tech Donors Unleash $100 Million In Ads Against Trump

South Dakota Speaker Battles the Coronavirus

2 More Funny Feelings About 2020

Biden Keeps Raising Money

The Good Son

Older article, but scary.

The Good Son
Polished, soft-spoken, and a self-styled moderate, Jared Kushner has become his father-in-law’s most dangerous enabler.
Story by Franklin Foer
August 13, 2020


Jared Kushner, the second-most-powerful man in the White House, is quite a bit smarter than the most powerful man, his father-in-law, the president. Donald Trump possesses a genius for the jugular, but he evinces few other signs of intelligence. He certainly displays no capacity, or predisposition, to learn. His son-in-law, by contrast, appears to have sufficient analytic acumen to comprehend that the country has been brought to its knees by the coronavirus pandemic. Kushner might not be the brightest public servant in American history—he is a Harvard graduate who is also a leading symbol of college-admissions corruption, and a businessman with a substantial record of failure—but he has shown flashes of effectiveness in his time at the White House. Because he projects a facsimile of capability and because he shows, at irregular intervals, a seemingly genuine interest in governing, he is also an exasperating mystery.

Like many Americans, I’ve been watching Kushner for four years now, and I’ve asked myself this question: Why does he enable his father-in-law’s worst impulses? The answer, I believe, is embedded in the core of his biography. I’ve spent months studying Kushner’s personal history. This story is built on more than two dozen interviews, with current and former White House officials who have worked intimately with Kushner, as well as outside advisers whose wisdom he has sought, business associates, and old family friends. (Kushner himself declined to comment.)

In the marriage of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Kushner is arguably the one with the more domineering father. From an early age, Jared learned how to accumulate influence by faithfully serving the interests of powerful, mercurial men. He grew adept at managing their outbursts, or rather, he learned how to avoid becoming their target. For all the power Kushner has amassed, his ascent required the submission of self and the stifling of principle.

more...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/08/how-jared-kushner-became-trumps-most-dangerous-enabler/615169/

Trump campaign demands change to final debate topics

Natch.


Trump campaign demands change to final debate topics
By Morgan Chalfant - 10/19/20 04:33 PM EDT



The Trump campaign is demanding that the Commission on Presidential Debates adjust the topics for the final presidential debate so that the meeting focuses on foreign policy.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien penned a letter to the commission Monday raising objections with the topics announced by moderator and NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker last week, saying the commission should observe “long-standing custom” by making foreign policy the central focus of Thursday’s debate. Stepien also claimed the campaigns had agreed to the third debate being focused on foreign policy.

'Our house is on fire': Suburban women lead charge vs. Trump

'Our house is on fire': Suburban women lead charge vs. Trump
By CLAIRE GALOFARO



TROY, Mich. (AP) — She walks with the determination of a person who believes the very fate of democracy might depend on the next door she knocks on, head down, shoulders forward. She wears nothing fussy, the battle fatigues of her troupe: yoga pants and sneakers. She left her Lincoln Aviator idling in the driveway, the driver door open -- if this house wasn’t the one to save the nation, she can move quickly to the next.

For most of her life, until 2016, Lori Goldman had been politically apathetic. Had you offered her $1 million, she says, she could not have described the branches of government in any depth. She voted, sometimes.

Now every moment she spends not trying to rid America of President Donald Trump feels like wasted time.

“We take nothing for granted,” she tells her canvassing partner. “They say Joe Biden is ahead. Nope. We work like Biden is behind 20 points in every state.”


Lori Goldman, talks with a voter while canvassing in Troy, Mich. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

Goldman spends every day door knocking for Democrats in Oakland County, Michigan, an affluent Detroit suburb. She feels responsible for the country’s future: Trump won Michigan in 2016 by 10,700 votes and that helped usher him into the White House. Goldman believes people like her -- suburban white women -- could deliver the country from another four years of chaos.

For many of those women, the past four years have meant frustration, anger and activism — a political awakening that powered women’s marches, the #MeToo movement and the victories of record numbers of female candidates in 2018. That energy has helped create the widest gender gap — the political divide between men and women — in recent history. And it has started to show up in early voting as women are casting their ballots earlier than men. In Michigan, women have cast nearly 56% of the early vote so far, and 68% of those were Democrats, according to the voting data firm L2.

more...

https://apnews.com/article/suburban-women-trump-biden-michigan-6e0e7217e86929c46f729c4127341340

Eric Boehlert: Both Sides -- the press keeps screwing up Covid relief bill coverage

Both Sides — the press keeps screwing up Covid relief bill coverage
GOP in disarray
Eric Boehlert

snip//

Leaning into a "gridlock" and "dysfunction" narrative, the Beltway media have botched the story for most of this year. Last summer, journalists claimed "Congress" was to blame for weekly $600 relief checks being cut off. Wrong — the payments ended because Republicans forced them to end. That kind of Both Side coverage has given Americans a skewed understanding of why the federal government under Trump isn't functioning properly in a time of national crisis.

Background: Democrats in the House are currently offering a $2.2 trillion relief bill, which has already been drastically scaled back from the original $3.5 trillion proposal they passed in May. (Republicans ignored the May bill, in part, because White House aides were telling GOP leaders the pandemic would be over by September.) The $2.2 trillion bill includes $600 in weekly enhanced unemployment benefits, and checks of $1,200 to qualifying adults (or $2,400 for couples).

The White House says it supports a $1.8 trillion bill. So why don't both sides negotiate, meet in the middle, and sign a deal to help millions of Americans who need assistance, as the economy remains broken? That's the narrative the Beltway press locked in on — Congress is dysfunctional, and the Covid relief bill proves it! That preferred storyline is simple to understand and it blames Both Sides for the lack of Congressional action.

Instead of unpacking the two relief bills and highlighting what's so radically different about them — funding for unemployment benefits, child care, state and local governments, and the GOP's obsession with liability protections for corporations, nationwide testing — the press pays attention to the price tag. That leaves news consumers (and Wolf Blitzer) with the false impression that both bills are similar, it's just that the Republican one is slightly smaller.

The media malpractice is worse because there actually is no Republican Covid relief bill. Pelosi and Democrats are getting beat up in the press for not hammering out a deal with Republicans, but Republicans aren't offering a deal. Yes, the press generated headlines about a $1.8 trillion bill that Trump's White House recently floated. But as soon as the White House proposal was sent to the Hill, Republican senators eviscerated it as too costly.