Month: July 2024

Joe Biden is falling and a lot of folks think he can’t get back up

benfell

Illiberalism

Gilead

Donald Trump
Hush money


Fig. 1. Cartoon by Jesse Duquette, undated, via “Minneapple23” [pseud.] on Imgur, April 1, 2023, fair use.

Shayna Jacobs and Devlin Barrett, “Trump’s sentencing in N.Y. hush money case postponed until September,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/trump-sentencing-delay-supreme-court-ruling/

Coup attempt

2024

Fig. 2. Donald Trump still has his fans. Photograph along Washington Road in Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania, by author, April 28, 2024.

John Fritze, “Supreme Court rules Trump has limited immunity in January 6 case, jeopardizing trial before election,” Cable News Network, July 1, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/supreme-court-donald-trump-immunity

Ankush Khardori, “The Supreme Court’s Stunning Gift to Trump,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/02/jan-6-trump-supreme-court-00166130

Joseph De Avila, “Rudy Giuliani Disbarred by New York Court,” Wall Street Journal, July 2, 2024, https://apple.news/AIMW0KAidSv6Y21ZUNZ21Fg

Neoliberalism

Democratic (neoliberal) Party

Joe Biden


Fig. 3. Joe Biden and Pope Francis, unknown photographer, April 29, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The story I’m getting today (July 2) largely confirms what John Heilemann said yesterday (July 1):[1]

[Lloyd] Doggett, 77, is the first Democratic member of Congress to call for [Joe] Biden to withdraw from the ticket since his debate. U.S. Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minnesota, ran a challenge against Biden in the Democratic primaries but has stayed muted since the debate.

Shortly after his statement, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro joined Doggett in calling for Biden to withdraw. Castro ran against Biden in the 2020 Democratic primaries and was quick to criticize his debate performance last week.[2]

Some other Democrats, however, are still falling back on “the other guy is worse.”[3] But:

Privately, many Democratic lawmakers have raised questions about Biden’s viability as a candidate, and have expressed anger at Biden’s campaign. These Democratic lawmakers and donors say that campaign aides are dismissing legitimate concerns about Biden’s fitness and are furious that the campaign is trying to spin the debate as an unfortunate one-off, multiple members and aides said. The lawmakers worry about Democrats’ ability to retain control of the Senate and potentially capture the House in an election with Donald Trump at the top of the GOP ballot and pre-debate polling showing a tight race.[4]

Democrats feared [Joe] Manchin — a moderate West Virginia senator who recently registered as an independent but caucuses with Democrats — would call for [Joe] Biden to step aside. If he did, the senator would then become the first prominent elected official allied with the party to call for Biden to exit the presidential race.

But he didn’t. Senior Democrats heard of Manchin’s plans and started making calls to the independent-minded senator, who once used a Sunday show appearance to announce his opposition to Biden’s top agenda item and effectively kill it. The “full-court press” was quickly assembled to help dissuade Manchin from appearing on the show, according to two people familiar with the response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. . . .

Manchin’s reversal illustrates Democrats’ rapid tamping down of internal dissent over the 81-year-old Biden remaining their presumptive nominee as the campaign and party leaders argue that only the president and his family can decide his political future. Urging drastic action before examining post-debate polling is unwise, party leaders have argued, and Democrats are aware that being the first prominent Democratic official to do so could come with a political cost.

“Nobody wants to be the first one to knife Julius Caesar,” one Democratic Party official said.[5]

The point about polling (a research method I most definitely do not trust) was one that Heilemann made, suggesting that that, rather than any number of senior Democrats telling him he’s got to go, may be what alters the decision.[6]

That dam may soon break, however, if polls show a steep decline in Biden’s standing or he does not ramp up his public appearances to show that he can do the job. Democrats in the House, which Republican control, now consider their chances of regaining the majority in November as the only firewall to a possible Trump administration, but also worry that Biden will drag down their chances to flip the chamber if he remains atop the ticket. And Democratic senators running in a gantlet of red and purple states must all hold onto their seats to keep that chamber in Democratic hands.[7]

And guess what?

A confidential polling memo circulating among anxious Democrats is confirming some of their worst fears: President Joe Biden’s support has started to tumble in key electoral battlegrounds in the wake of his disastrous debate performance in Atlanta, and Biden’s diminished standing is now putting previously noncompetitive states like New Hampshire, Virginia, and New Mexico in play for Donald Trump. What’s more, Biden has taken such a reputational hit that he is polling behind other alternative Democratic candidates—including Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer—in hypothetical one-on-one matchups against Trump. . . .

The [OpenLabs] poll—conducted online in the 72 hours after the debate and emailed to interested parties on Sunday—found that 40 percent of the Biden voters in 2020 that were surveyed now believe the president should end his campaign. That represents a significant shift from their last survey in May, which showed that only a quarter of Biden 2020 voters said he should drop out. Biden is also taking a major hit among swing voters: By a 2-to-1 margin, they believe Biden should exit the race.

This is, of course, only a single poll, conducted during the initial aftershocks of the debate. It will take a few weeks to determine if Biden’s slippage in the polls is a trend and not a blip. But given their reputation inside the party and connections to Future Forward [the preferred super political action committee for Biden’s reelection campaign], OpenLabs is a firm that Democratic campaigns take seriously. . . .

While the debate may have barely registered in national data, in their surveys of key Electoral College states where voters are paying closer attention to the campaign, Biden is doing noticeably worse. In a poll including third-party candidates, such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president has fallen by around 2 points in every single core battleground—and also in states that were not even on the 2024 map last week. In the tipping-point state of Pennsylvania, Biden now trails by 7 points, compared to 5 points before the debate. He has also dropped in Michigan, where he now trails Trump by 7. OpenLabs also found that he is now losing by roughly 10 points in Georgia and Arizona, and by almost 9 points in Nevada.

The most worrisome angle to all this is that Trump is now within striking distance in a variety of states that weren’t considered campaign battlegrounds last week. Biden is now only winning by a fraction of a point in Virginia, Maine, Minnesota, and New Mexico—and he’s now only winning Colorado by around 2 points. [8]

I’m not a quantitative researcher. Given underlying doubts about polling as a methodology[9] (this is a step beyond what I remember from the statistics and methodology classes I had as an undergraduate and in my Master’s program), I can’t tell you how valid this longitudinal approach is. But if there is any validity to it at all, you would expect Democratic politicians to start laying rhetorical groundwork for change.

And so they are:

[I]n the past 24 hours, at least a half-dozen current or former Democratic members of Congress have bucked the trend, openly acknowledging their skepticism that his campaign is taking the right steps to restore voters’ confidence. Of those, two have called on [Joe] Biden to step aside.[10]

Top Democrats have begun forcefully and aggressively criticizing President Joe Biden’s debate performance and pushing back against what they call an unconvincing response from his campaign to worries that he’s no longer up for the job — delivering a dire warning to the party.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.), called on Biden to drop out of the race. Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), a key ally of the president, told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that he will back Vice President Kamala Harris if Biden steps aside. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it’s completely legitimate to question whether Biden’s debate performance was “an episode or is this a condition?”

Democratic governors are also planning to meet with Biden, possibly as soon as Wednesday, after more than two dozen gathered on a call this week to vent about the president.[11]

Do not—I say again, do not—take this to the bank, but it sure looks to me like Biden is through—now. He will surely be done after the election—that you can take to the bank—but at this point, I’ll be quite surprised if he lasts that long.

Eugene Daniels, Rachael Bade, and Ryan Lizza, “Team Biden tries to quell Dem panic,” Politico, June 30, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/06/30/team-biden-tries-to-quell-dem-panic-00165945

Tyler Pager, “Biden aides plotted debate strategy for months. Then it all collapsed,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/how-biden-debate-prep-led-to-damaging-event/

Maeve Reston, “Black men helped power Biden’s 2020 Georgia win. Some are wavering,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/black-voters-georgia-election-biden-trump/

Alex Thompson, “Top aides shielded Biden from staff, but couldn’t hide the debate,” Axios, June 30, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/06/30/top-aides-shielded-biden-white-house-debate

John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/

Matthew Choi, “Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett calls on Biden to withdraw from presidential race,” Texas Tribune, July 2, 2024, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/lloyd-doggett-joe-biden-withdraw-election/

Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/

Peter Hamby, “Biden Plunges in Swing States in Leaked Post-Debate Poll,” Puck, July 2, 2024, https://puck.news/biden-plunges-in-swing-states-in-leaked-post-debate-poll/

Jared Mitovich, “Democrats begin attacking Biden’s performance and campaign,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/democrats-biden-debate-fallout-00166208

Eli Stokols et al., “‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/biden-campaign-debate-inner-circle-00166160

Imperialism

Israel

Palestine
2024

Imran Mulla, “War on Gaza: UK accused of obstructing ICC prosecution of Netanyahu,” Middle East Eye, July 2, 2024, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-accused-obstructing-prosecution-netanyahu

  1. [1]John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/↩
  2. [2]Matthew Choi, “Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett calls on Biden to withdraw from presidential race,” Texas Tribune, July 2, 2024, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/lloyd-doggett-joe-biden-withdraw-election/↩
  3. [3]Matthew Choi, “Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett calls on Biden to withdraw from presidential race,” Texas Tribune, July 2, 2024, https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/02/lloyd-doggett-joe-biden-withdraw-election/↩
  4. [4]Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/↩
  5. [5]Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/↩
  6. [6]John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/↩
  7. [7]Liz Goodwin et al., “Manchin threatened to break with Biden before senior Democrats intervened,” Washington Post, July 2, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/07/02/joe-manchin-biden-debate-democrats-drop-out/↩
  8. [8]Peter Hamby, “Biden Plunges in Swing States in Leaked Post-Debate Poll,” Puck, July 2, 2024, https://puck.news/biden-plunges-in-swing-states-in-leaked-post-debate-poll/↩
  9. [9]David Benfell, “Human Science · Inquiry · Quantitative · Surveys,” Irregular Bullshit, n.d., https://disunitedstates.com/human-science/human-science-inquiry/human-science-inquiry-quantitative/report-phone-polls-arent-dead-yet/↩
  10. [10]Jared Mitovich, “Democrats begin attacking Biden’s performance and campaign,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/democrats-biden-debate-fallout-00166208↩
  11. [11]Jared Mitovich, “Democrats begin attacking Biden’s performance and campaign,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/democrats-biden-debate-fallout-00166208↩

As the right rises, Joe Biden’s campaign still wonders if he’ll (do the right thing and) quit the race

benfell

Neoliberalism

Democratic (neoliberal) Party

Joe Biden


Fig. 1. Joe Biden and Pope Francis, unknown photographer, April 29, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The picture, as summarized by John Heilemann, is that “Bidenworld” has orchestrated a narrative of family and senior Democratic Party politicians all insisting that Joe Biden must remain in the race and that any challenges to this narrative will be sidelined. If you’re getting from that that Heilemann might be just a tad skeptical of that narrative, well, um, yeah:[1]

Team Biden has been pumping out a steady stream of data that suggests the debate has had no appreciable effect on the race. But the first trickle of surveys from independent sources has been ominous: a CBS News-YouGov survey found that the percentage of registered voters who believe that Biden does not have “the mental and cognitive health to serve as president” rose from 65 to 72 percent after the debate, and that 45 percent of registered Democrats don’t want him to be their nominee; a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll out today revealed that the percentage of voters who think Biden is too old to be president or have doubts about his mental fitness rose 11 and l2 points, respectively, after the debate; and a Saint Anselm College poll showed Biden trailing Trump by 2 points in New Hampshire, a state he won by 7 points in 2020.

Which brings us to the second reason why Biden may find the next 10 days to two weeks more challenging than even the past 72 hours. As the digits stream in, the people likely to consume them most avidly—Democratic elected officials and fundraisers—also happen to be the forces most likely to exert real pressure on Biden to withdraw. And, generally speaking, they are, at least at this moment, deeply and strikingly inclined not to give the president or his team the slightest margin for error or benefit of the doubt. To say they have lost faith would be putting it far too mildly. . . .

[U]nlike the many and predictable past episodes of Democratic bed-wetting I’ve covered in my career, this one is laced with anger, resentment, and a sense of betrayal, fueled by the newly minted view that Biden, his family, his White House, and his campaign concealed the reality of his decline so vividly on display onstage in ATL. “They lied to us—systematically, over years,” one megadonor told me. “Given the stakes, it’s unforgivable. Unconscionable.”

These are not people, in other words, who are hoping and praying that Biden’s polling holds up, allowing him to soldier on. Quite the contrary. “Everyone wants numbers,” said another big donor, who believes that Biden should step aside. “Just telling him that we want him to leave won’t do it. So we need real numbers to come in that allow everyone to hide behind them. ‘Mr. President, these numbers are tough to get past.’ Then no one has to own the brutal truth, which is he’s not up to this. No one wants to say that.”[2]

I have not seen Heilemann’s name before—at least that I remember—but this is one helluva a debut to my consciousness. He goes on to note that under ordinary circumstances, you’d have the candidate out on television—do we still really call it that these days?—doing interviews, demonstrating an ability at give-and-take in conversation, and that this didn’t happen, strongly suggesting that indeed, no, Biden is indeed absolutely not up to it.

Leave it to the Democrats, who having spectacularly failed to lose to COVID-19 in 2020, to put up somebody with these kinds of problems. I’m not interested in their excuses here either—it’s always excuses with them, always, always, always.

Eugene Daniels, Rachael Bade, and Ryan Lizza, “Team Biden tries to quell Dem panic,” Politico, June 30, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/06/30/team-biden-tries-to-quell-dem-panic-00165945

Tyler Pager, “Biden aides plotted debate strategy for months. Then it all collapsed,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/how-biden-debate-prep-led-to-damaging-event/

Maeve Reston, “Black men helped power Biden’s 2020 Georgia win. Some are wavering,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/black-voters-georgia-election-biden-trump/

Alex Thompson, “Top aides shielded Biden from staff, but couldn’t hide the debate,” Axios, June 30, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/06/30/top-aides-shielded-biden-white-house-debate

John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/

Eli Stokols et al., “‘We’ve all enabled the situation’: Dems turn on Biden’s inner sanctum post debate,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/biden-campaign-debate-inner-circle-00166160

Illiberalism

Gilead

Donald Trump
Coup attempt

2024

Fig. 2. Donald Trump still has his fans. Photograph along Washington Road in Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania, by author, April 28, 2024.

John Fritze, “Supreme Court rules Trump has limited immunity in January 6 case, jeopardizing trial before election,” Cable News Network, July 1, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/supreme-court-donald-trump-immunity

Ankush Khardori, “The Supreme Court’s Stunning Gift to Trump,” Politico, July 2, 2024, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/02/jan-6-trump-supreme-court-00166130

  1. [1]John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/↩
  2. [2]John Heilemann, “Bidenworld’s Darkest Hour,” Puck, July 1, 2024, https://puck.news/should-biden-stay-or-should-he-go/↩

Dear #VoteBlueNoMatterWho,

benfell

Neoliberalism

Democratic (neoliberal) Party


Fig. 1. “Well, for once they can’t blame me.” Photomechanical print, art by John S. Pughe, 1907, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

I think the question for #VoteBlueNoMatterWho folks right now, today, is, what have Democrats actually done to stop the calamity that is now all but certain to unfold in November? I’m not interested in their excuses. I’m not interested in their attempts. I’m not even interested in their “watered down” non-successes. I want to hear about what they have actually accomplished. In the last 50 years.

The obvious answer is nothing. Because we’re facing that calamity.

That list of failures, yet again:

Joe Biden cannot win

benfell

Neoliberalism

Democratic (neoliberal) Party

Joe Biden


Fig. 1. Joe Biden and Pope Francis, unknown photographer, April 29, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

For a full week, the president sequestered himself at Camp David with more than a dozen aides to prepare for Thursday’s presidential debate with former president Donald Trump. He rehearsed answers, met with policy aides and participated in mock debates, with his personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, playing the part of Trump.
Every topic he was asked about Thursday, he had practiced answers for — including the final one about his age.

So aides were bewildered by his performance. Many felt they had never seen him collapse so dramatically. After all, Biden was a veteran of numerous debates — as a senator, vice-presidential nominee and presidential candidate. And they did not understand why he gave an entirely different answer on the age question than the one they spent more than a week perfecting.

The president did not just stumble over words. He appeared to lose his focus and often was unable to finish sentences. His voice was raspy and thin, and when the debate concluded, first lady Jill Biden appeared to help her husband down the stairs.[1]

The raspy voice, by the way, was gone the next day.[2]

It turns out that Joe Biden’s problems at the debate[3] are absolutely nothing new. His aides have been shielding him so no one could know the extent of his deterioration.[4] But that’s not all:

The openness of some Black men to voting for [Donald] Trump — despite his history of racist and offensive comments — is often rooted in the belief that the Biden administration has not done enough to ease their economic struggles. A defection by a significant number of them could be disastrous for [Joe] Biden’s campaign. . . .

Andra Gillespie, a political scientist at Emory University in Atlanta, said there is no evidence yet that a significant realignment of Black voters is taking place, calling polling data “noisy” with “lots of fluctuations.” But she said she will not be surprised if more Black men vote Republican this cycle, in part because of the masculine tone of Trump’s messaging, as he portrays himself as strong and powerful and mocks Biden as weak. In Gillespie’s own work, she has traced a gender gap between Black men and Black women — showing Black men to be less Democratic in their voting patterns — going back to 1972. The one year that was the exception: 2008, when Barack Obama ran to become the first Black president.[5]

There’s just way too much going entirely the other way. If the war criminal (Biden) really stays in the race—it’s getting harder and harder for me to imagine he will—the fascist (Donald Trump) will win and if you have the opportunity to leave the country, you should. Because this will be at least as bad as so many fear.

Eugene Daniels, Rachael Bade, and Ryan Lizza, “Team Biden tries to quell Dem panic,” Politico, June 30, 2024, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2024/06/30/team-biden-tries-to-quell-dem-panic-00165945

Tyler Pager, “Biden aides plotted debate strategy for months. Then it all collapsed,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/how-biden-debate-prep-led-to-damaging-event/

Maeve Reston, “Black men helped power Biden’s 2020 Georgia win. Some are wavering,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/black-voters-georgia-election-biden-trump/

Alex Thompson, “Top aides shielded Biden from staff, but couldn’t hide the debate,” Axios, June 30, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/06/30/top-aides-shielded-biden-white-house-debate

Illiberalism


Fig. 2. Photograph by Joachim F. Thurn, August 1991, Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F089030-0003, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.

[Emmanuel Macron] called the snap vote, after a disastrous defeat at the hands of the far right in June’s European election, with one aim in mind: to halt France’s lurch to the extremes in its tracks. He achieved the opposite.[6]

Not so long ago, I wrote of the “mandate of heaven” that

When a ruler loses that mandate, they’re doomed. Nothing can put it to right and the question is only how long before someone else takes over. The language refers to Heaven, but I interpret the mandate as somewhat more terrestrial, indeed human—and the loss of that mandate looks a lot like what’s happened to the Tories: They’ve gotten too accustomed to the levers of power. They have lost perspective. They have lost touch with their electorate. They make stupid mistakes because their groupthink is toxic. They trip over themselves trying even to think straight.[7]

We’re seeing it in France and, somewhat similarly, in the United States—with the entire political system—as well.

Even if the Democrats replace Joe Biden as their candidate, I very much fear the battle is lost. An incredibly hateful right-wing tide still rises; it cannot be resisted.

It’s always, always, always the same, every single goddamned time: It happens as neoliberals across North America and Europe consistently usurp progressivism, leaving progressives no choice but to vote for neoliberals, who consistently reject any move to ameliorate poverty and many other forms of inequality, supposedly to avoid antagonizing the right and absolutely refusing to address the fact that economic anxiety and insecurity lies behind much of the right’s rise. Neoliberals evince progressive values even as they enact right-wing policies. Progressives keep falling for it. Which means that the only prospect for change is with the right. And so the right keeps winning.

This is corruption of a form. It is a corruption that destroys social orders. Or, at least, it has in the past. It might not expressly be the civil war that Emmanuel Macron warns of, but it appears in increasing polarization, which leads to increasing ungovernability that we see at least in France,[8] Britain, and the United States.

Clea Caulcutt, “Macron is already over. Can anyone stop Le Pen?” Politico, July 1, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/france-legislative-election-emmanuel-macron-marine-le-pen-europe-national-rally/

Angelique Chrisafis, “Far-right National Rally in reach of being dominant French party after election first round,” Guardian, July 1, 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/30/far-right-national-rally-in-reach-of-being-dominant-french-party-after-election-first-round

Gilead

Donald Trump
Coup attempt

2024

Fig. 3. Donald Trump still has his fans. Photograph along Washington Road in Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania, by author, April 28, 2024.

The Supreme Court bounced the immunity case back to the district court, saying it must determine which of Donald Trump’s acts can be considered “official” and which cannot. Trump enjoys “absolute” immunity for official acts—yes, this would seem to include war crimes and genocide, let alone murdering political rivals—and no immunity for unofficial acts.[9] It’s the worst case for the prosecution: The district court’s findings can, of course, be appealed, surely delaying a conclusion to the case well past the election, after which it now appears likely Donald Trump will be able to have the Department of Justice drop all federal charges.

John Fritze, “Supreme Court rules Trump has limited immunity in January 6 case, jeopardizing trial before election,” Cable News Network, July 1, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/supreme-court-donald-trump-immunity

My mother and I were talking about California Indians and casinos not so long ago and, while I don’t think I’d frame the issue quite this way, I hope she enjoys it:

Fig. 4. Comic by Dan Piraro, 2015, fair use.

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh


Fig. 5. The confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, with the “Golden Triangle” and downtown Pittsburgh. Photograph by author, October 15, 2023.

It’s name and shame time because I am so far beyond fed up with Pittsburgh assholes. You see how far out this jackass is from the pump (figure 6)? You couldn’t even get to the pump on the right because you’d be driving within inches of his car. (That’s my rental car on the right; I should get my own car back today—and I can’t wait.)


Fig. 6. Photograph by author, June 30, 2024.

It’s just an asshole thing to do. And this is so typical of Pittsburgh toxic masculinity.

  1. [1]Tyler Pager, “Biden aides plotted debate strategy for months. Then it all collapsed,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/how-biden-debate-prep-led-to-damaging-event/↩
  2. [2]Tyler Pager, “Biden aides plotted debate strategy for months. Then it all collapsed,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/how-biden-debate-prep-led-to-damaging-event/↩
  3. [3]Aaron Blake, “5 takeaways from the first Trump-Biden 2024 debate,” Washington Post, June 27, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/27/presidential-debate-takeaways/; Tyler Pager, “Biden aides plotted debate strategy for months. Then it all collapsed,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/how-biden-debate-prep-led-to-damaging-event/↩
  4. [4]Alex Thompson, “Top aides shielded Biden from staff, but couldn’t hide the debate,” Axios, June 30, 2024, https://www.axios.com/2024/06/30/top-aides-shielded-biden-white-house-debate↩
  5. [5]Maeve Reston, “Black men helped power Biden’s 2020 Georgia win. Some are wavering,” Washington Post, June 30, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/06/30/black-voters-georgia-election-biden-trump/↩
  6. [6]Clea Caulcutt, “Macron is already over. Can anyone stop Le Pen?” Politico, July 1, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/france-legislative-election-emmanuel-macron-marine-le-pen-europe-national-rally/↩
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