Tuesday Open Thread

4 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Daily Kos Morning Digest shares

   The NRCC on Monday announced the first 26 members of its Young Guns program, …

   • CO-03: Jeff Hurd
   • CO-08: Gabe Evans

   Not certain whether exclusion shows a substantial confidence in Jeff Crank, distaste for his campaign, or lingering loyalty to Dave Williams … 

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2. I think the magats recent criticizing Kamala Harris for giggling in the past is just as desperate as the criticism Obama received for wearing a tan suit. They are windmilling, and just have nothing to go on right now. 

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3. Weird. H/T Josh Marshall at TPM

   David Frum

   “Weird” is code for “expresses obsessive hostility to women, including the women in his own personal life” – and because MAGA Republicans don’t get the code, they don’t understand why they are losing the argument.

   …

   We’ve talked a lot recently about presidential politics as a series of performances of power. When I coined the phrase “bitch-slap politics” (later revised to “dominance politics”) in 2004, it was in reference to the “swift boat” campaign George W. Bush mobilized against John Kerry. In charge of the campaign was Donald Trump’s current co-campaign head, Chris LaCivita. The truth of those attacks weren’t the point. They were demonstrations of power. Bush was powerful because he could hit Kerry in a demeaning and vicious way and he would not or could not defend himself. This was an element of American political culture which Trump, a decade later, placed at the center of American political culture.

   It was in this context that I saw the news, first reported by the Post, that JD Vance, at a private fundraiser, referred to the candidate switch as a “sucker punch.”

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   1. More Weird Trombones. Josh Marshall.

      I don’t think this is the entirety of what’s being captured by weird. I think it’s also the weird brawny superman imagery of Trump, the cultish devotion, the weird mix of stunted emotional (and often sexual-emotional) development, of the kind that made Ron DeSantis’s ads land with such a thud, and the kind of creepiness that is right next to menace. But David describes at least half of it and likely more. And those other things I mention are at least adjacent to what he describes. He gets to the essence of it when he notes that they’ve struggled to respond because they don’t really get why the barb is resonating. Their main response is to hit back with “We’re not weird. YOU’RE weird” and include a bevy of photos with this or that Democrat with a trans person. In other words, while anti-trans politics unquestionably has some traction in U.S. campaigns, their punch back is basically more evidence of the original charge.

      The reason this cuts so hard is that MAGA types are usually perfectly happy to lodge hostile attacks on female power and autonomy and get reactions that launch into discussions of female autonomy. MAGA Republicans are happy to make racist dog whistles and get into arguments about implicit or systemic racism. This usage of “weird” captures the whole story, without any need for explanation and with a broad swath of the population. Everybody gets it. And rather than perversely pumping them up, it cuts them down: exposes them as small and pathetic. It’s difficult to respond to it effectively because to a broad swath of the population it’s so obviously true. Maybe you think that getting married and having kids is the proper default life path. But why are they so obsessed with it? Why are they so angry about it? Again, how do they defend themselves against that when they clearly are obsessed and are angry?

      Since I’ve now devoted two posts to “weird” in as many days, I suspect some of you are asking, is this really going to be the whole campaign theme? Is there going to be a big “weird” in thirty foot tall letters at the DNC? I certainly hope not. I hope it is merely the first example of going on the attack in a way that understands the role of performances of power in presidential campaigns. You have JD Vance, low energy and with his own orchestra of sad trombones in tow, telling donors, “They bitch slapped us really hard and if anyone has some idea of what we can do about it please tell me because at the moment we’re feeling pretty sad.”

      That’s good. You may not like the phrase. We say “dominance politics” now. But he’s just being disarmingly honest about what they’re dealing with right now.

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