Thank you!!!! You put into words my feeling re tRump win in NH and the media coverage. I was seething reading NYT and WaPo this morning. I have vowed NOT to click on their headlines of election coverage. Will get it from my newsletters like yours and articles you cite.
Something you must understand is that MAGA/republicans consider t***p to be the incumbent. More than half of them do not consider Joe Biden a legitimate president. Listen to the surrogates when they talk for example Burgmun. They refer consistently to "president" t***p. To the actual president simply by his last name. This is telling and deliberate.
Do you think that part of that is at Trump's own insistence...Trump has convinced himself that he did indeed win and insists on being called President. He throw a tantrump every time Judge Chutkan or Judge Engoron refers to him as "Mr. Trump".
I am sure that is par of it is also calculated to curry favor. The point I make is MAGA sees this as absolute fact, and so do an uncomfortable share of republicans and independents.
Our rule of law democracy wasn't built to withstand the chaos and damage caused by one of our two major political parties going full out against those "damned inconvenient laws".
If we are lucky, the electorate will wake up in time. If not, we will lose democracy for at least a generation. Look at how Poland is struggling to come back.
Yes, uncharted - for the United States, but fully "charted" in other nations. Hopefully we'll have learned from observing those charts and will be prepared to counter such movements towards autocracy here in the US.
I could be wrong, but I think Nikki isn't going anywhere. She has no electoral path to the nomination, but she is the last person standing if some combo of obesity, noticeably increasing mental decline, and justice incapacitate Trump before summer. That's the bet she andher funders seem to be making, and I've seen longer shots pay out.
Re the uniqueness of Trump and this cycle: we’ve never elected anyone as monstrous and sociopathic -- literally a murderer, causing a couple of hundred thousand deaths because his ego prevented him acknowledging that the nation was hit by a global pandemic.
Speaking of which, more or less, required reading:
Fun fact re Charles Osgood: at one point he was the highest paid on air correspondent (using the term loosely) at CBS News. Obviously, this was some years ago but past/prologue and all that.
The media and journalists are a symptom and major cause of the acceptance of propaganda.
We common people worry about fascism but it appears the powerful, including the Democratic National Committee, are willing to exclude any alternative candidate from opposing Biden and Trump. We voters are hostage.
The concept that there is NO person except Biden among all our country is a lie that we are powerless address.
"In the modern era (and with rare exceptions, throughout U.S. history), presidents who lose re-election have no future political viability. The fact that Trump was able to maintain control of the GOP after his 2020 loss and has all but re-won his party’s nomination is highly unusual."
How true! The difference here seems to stem from the weakened state of US political parties. In days gone by, party leaders and donors usually assumed, with good reason, that defeated presidential candidates weren't worth another roll of the dice, especially since there were usually plenty of attractive alternatives on offer. Now, however, MAGA voters are so addicted to Trump that they've transformed the GOP, for the first time in its history, into a candidate's personal cult. IMHO, that signals the collapse or repackaging of the party sometime in the next ten years. We'll have to wait and see.....
Thank you for letting us know about Charles Osgood’s passing. I came across it yesterday on social media but I am heartened that you brought it up today. I always liked the nature scenes at the end of the show and his bow ties.
The political commentariat, nationwide newspapers, and virtually all broadcast and cable TV franchises look upon election horse races as news. What they understand but do not report is that poll results are the only current news they have. We are nine months from the election and the campaign consists of endless loop repetition of banal sound bites calculated to make the already persuaded feel good. Endlessly reporting politicians canned answers to softball questions would be coma inducing.
From now until November nobody will be able to consult her favorite news source including--God help us all-- Facebook and all its competitor news republisher web sites--without being swamped with a cascade of daily polls, meta data polls which arithmetically sum all poll results without regard to methods or reputation in order to create demographic slice an dice analysis of all the data. From the chopped and tossed data results they then declare a winner.
How often do you see reported sample size, means of contact, response rate vs initial sample size, demographic analysis of the sample compared to the demography American electorate, margin of error know as percent variance (error) of the reported final result.
Do any of the reported poll results also the poll’s success in predicting the final result over the past three or four election cycles?
Someday, Congress will regulate political polling. Some day, mainstream media will stop reporting polls with little public respect and polls commissioned by partisans. Someday editorial boards will confess their preferences long before the nominating conventions are held . They can then spend months justifying their choice by supporting their choice with solid reporting about party policy positions. If a party has no policy positions which they hope to enact, why should the electorate reward the candidate with their vote?
"On top of all of that, the criminal justice system is struggling mightily to hold Trump to account for the rule of law before the election."
Exactly, and why is the three-judge panel taking so long to render a decision on tRump's fecking "immunity claim, for god's sake? Argued on Jan9, all three judges *extremely* skeptical of tRump's claims - remember the SEALS Team 6 question? - and this should have been done and dusted by the following Monday. But no, here we are close to three weeks later, and...bupkis. Thankfully Judges Kaplan and Engorod in NYC are getting on with it, and soon some punishing judgments will drop.
Thank you!!!! You put into words my feeling re tRump win in NH and the media coverage. I was seething reading NYT and WaPo this morning. I have vowed NOT to click on their headlines of election coverage. Will get it from my newsletters like yours and articles you cite.
Something you must understand is that MAGA/republicans consider t***p to be the incumbent. More than half of them do not consider Joe Biden a legitimate president. Listen to the surrogates when they talk for example Burgmun. They refer consistently to "president" t***p. To the actual president simply by his last name. This is telling and deliberate.
Do you think that part of that is at Trump's own insistence...Trump has convinced himself that he did indeed win and insists on being called President. He throw a tantrump every time Judge Chutkan or Judge Engoron refers to him as "Mr. Trump".
I am sure that is par of it is also calculated to curry favor. The point I make is MAGA sees this as absolute fact, and so do an uncomfortable share of republicans and independents.
Thank Goodness and sanity that you are writing your newsletter and that we are here together.
Our rule of law democracy wasn't built to withstand the chaos and damage caused by one of our two major political parties going full out against those "damned inconvenient laws".
If we are lucky, the electorate will wake up in time. If not, we will lose democracy for at least a generation. Look at how Poland is struggling to come back.
"This is uncharted territory."
Yes, uncharted - for the United States, but fully "charted" in other nations. Hopefully we'll have learned from observing those charts and will be prepared to counter such movements towards autocracy here in the US.
Further proof 2024 is the most important worst year of our lives.
I could be wrong, but I think Nikki isn't going anywhere. She has no electoral path to the nomination, but she is the last person standing if some combo of obesity, noticeably increasing mental decline, and justice incapacitate Trump before summer. That's the bet she andher funders seem to be making, and I've seen longer shots pay out.
Re the uniqueness of Trump and this cycle: we’ve never elected anyone as monstrous and sociopathic -- literally a murderer, causing a couple of hundred thousand deaths because his ego prevented him acknowledging that the nation was hit by a global pandemic.
Speaking of which, more or less, required reading:
https://prospect.org/politics/2024-01-24-american-fascism-john-ganz/
Fun fact re Charles Osgood: at one point he was the highest paid on air correspondent (using the term loosely) at CBS News. Obviously, this was some years ago but past/prologue and all that.
The media and journalists are a symptom and major cause of the acceptance of propaganda.
We common people worry about fascism but it appears the powerful, including the Democratic National Committee, are willing to exclude any alternative candidate from opposing Biden and Trump. We voters are hostage.
The concept that there is NO person except Biden among all our country is a lie that we are powerless address.
That too will be acknowledged, eventually….
"In the modern era (and with rare exceptions, throughout U.S. history), presidents who lose re-election have no future political viability. The fact that Trump was able to maintain control of the GOP after his 2020 loss and has all but re-won his party’s nomination is highly unusual."
How true! The difference here seems to stem from the weakened state of US political parties. In days gone by, party leaders and donors usually assumed, with good reason, that defeated presidential candidates weren't worth another roll of the dice, especially since there were usually plenty of attractive alternatives on offer. Now, however, MAGA voters are so addicted to Trump that they've transformed the GOP, for the first time in its history, into a candidate's personal cult. IMHO, that signals the collapse or repackaging of the party sometime in the next ten years. We'll have to wait and see.....
Real time checks, the only way: https://apple.news/APhtHB1nFRWWMslsGswLBDg
Thank you for letting us know about Charles Osgood’s passing. I came across it yesterday on social media but I am heartened that you brought it up today. I always liked the nature scenes at the end of the show and his bow ties.
The political commentariat, nationwide newspapers, and virtually all broadcast and cable TV franchises look upon election horse races as news. What they understand but do not report is that poll results are the only current news they have. We are nine months from the election and the campaign consists of endless loop repetition of banal sound bites calculated to make the already persuaded feel good. Endlessly reporting politicians canned answers to softball questions would be coma inducing.
From now until November nobody will be able to consult her favorite news source including--God help us all-- Facebook and all its competitor news republisher web sites--without being swamped with a cascade of daily polls, meta data polls which arithmetically sum all poll results without regard to methods or reputation in order to create demographic slice an dice analysis of all the data. From the chopped and tossed data results they then declare a winner.
How often do you see reported sample size, means of contact, response rate vs initial sample size, demographic analysis of the sample compared to the demography American electorate, margin of error know as percent variance (error) of the reported final result.
Do any of the reported poll results also the poll’s success in predicting the final result over the past three or four election cycles?
Someday, Congress will regulate political polling. Some day, mainstream media will stop reporting polls with little public respect and polls commissioned by partisans. Someday editorial boards will confess their preferences long before the nominating conventions are held . They can then spend months justifying their choice by supporting their choice with solid reporting about party policy positions. If a party has no policy positions which they hope to enact, why should the electorate reward the candidate with their vote?
"On top of all of that, the criminal justice system is struggling mightily to hold Trump to account for the rule of law before the election."
Exactly, and why is the three-judge panel taking so long to render a decision on tRump's fecking "immunity claim, for god's sake? Argued on Jan9, all three judges *extremely* skeptical of tRump's claims - remember the SEALS Team 6 question? - and this should have been done and dusted by the following Monday. But no, here we are close to three weeks later, and...bupkis. Thankfully Judges Kaplan and Engorod in NYC are getting on with it, and soon some punishing judgments will drop.