I don’t watch the debates. I will mentio Radley Balko’s observation that even if Biden had soiled himself, he’s not the one who’s threatening to lock up his critics and claiming a presidential right to murder people without penalty. And uses fascist rhetoric. And Trump lied throughout the debate — fact-checking him afterwards is less than useless.
Heather Cox Richardson: “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.” Her post is an antitode to the urge to doomscroll, as are some of the comments in this post (the post itself is more downbeat).
As Paul Krugman says, a lot of intelligent, informed people remain convinced Trump won’t be that bad. Guardrails. Adults in the room. We’re the United States. Etc. The same way some people are convinced Republicans will never overturn gay marriage rights. Trump will be bad. Giving up now would be bad. I will vote for the Democrat — I’m betting it will be Biden — and I’m still doing GOTV postcards and the like. Too much is at stake to do otherwise.
The media, unfortunately, have been hyping Biden Is Old all year while ignoring Trump is only slightly younger. So we get the NYT editorial board arguing that while Trump would be a nightmare if re-elected the solution is not for Republicans to renounce him — Democrats must make Biden step down. We’re the only ones with agency. I’m glad the Philadelphia Inquirer saw fit to say the truth: if anyone’s to step down it should be Trump.
Roy Edroso makes one excellent point: if voters don’t reject Trump “it won’t be because they’re ineducable, nor because Biden Is Old – it’ll be because they don’t think fascism is a hard no, and if that’s what they think there’s nothing you or our system can do about it.”
All that said, here’s some random political links
Self-proclaimed prophet Hank Kunneman has been claiming since 2023 that Biden’s been replaced by a double. He wanted Trump to rip off the face mask during the debate. Kunneman has a lot of prophetic merch to sell. Trump supporter Michael Flynn has found peddling conspiracies a lucrative gig too.
“So this is how we get a woman in an apron pretending to cook on TikTok while dropping the most notorious of racial slurs.” Like Kunneman and Flynn, “tradwife” Lilly Gaddis hopes there’s gold in being outrageous.
Bizarrely, some Republicans think Trump is a deep-state dupe who needs to be replaced with a real conservative. Which ties in to my earlier post about crank magnetism, the tendency for paranoids and crackpot theorists to get increasingly crackpot and paranoid.
Another example, right-wing podcaster and former Trump official Monica Crowley claims the commies and globalists (i.e., Jews) have been running the deep state since the 1950s.
Here’s an odd, petty moment: a Vermont Republican poured water into a Democrat’s backpack.
The Supreme Court split on party lines but the majority decision may effectively have gutted the government’s regulatory ability by requiring jury trials before levying fines.
Judge Aileen Cannon remains reliably in the tank for Trump.
During an interview with Trump, Newsmax ran a chiron stating the 2020 election was not fraudulent.
Unsurprisingly, even blatant gerrymandering (by Republicans) is A-OK with the Supreme Court.
The Libertarian Party wants a guy who ran a Dark Web drug-dealing site freed from prison. Trump, who talks about executing drug dealers, has promised to pardon him.
“After getting smacked down by the Oklahoma Supreme Court yesterday after his attempt to fund a Catholic school using tax dollars, Schools Superintendent Ryan Walter announced today that from this day forward every public school in the state will be required to have a Bible in the classroom and teach from it.” I’m guessing support for religion does not extend to anyone whose faith is different.
“He doesn’t believe atheists or Muslims are fit to hold public office—the former because they have no religion and the latter because they’re the wrong religion. He also felt perfectly at ease saying that”
One left-wing super-PAC is running ads quoting Trump’s criticisms that mail-in voting is bad, presumably in hopes fewer Republicans will use it. Right-wingers are outraged at what they claim is election interference.
The White House can still push social media companies to remove disinformation, SCOTUS says.
