DL Open Thread Thursday, August 12, 2021

Legal experts are saying the evidence piling up against the Previous Guy makes an indictment of the pretend president inevitable. This means it has less than a 50-50 chance of coming to pass.

You know how they say alcoholics are never “cured,” they’re just in recovery? I have to assume the same applies to crackheads like Mike Lindell, whose cypersecurity summit belly-flopped the same night the courts said Dominion could proceed in its $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him. So I would appreciate it if the media would call a spade a spade and refer to him not as the MyPillow guy but as “crack addict Mike Lindell.” It would better explain everything the comes after.

Jennifer Rubin, WaPo’s never-Trump Republican columnist, has a new gig — defending Joe Biden from the lazy mainstream political press. It’s behind the paywall, but here’s the gist of it:

Too many reporters, despite Biden’s success in delivering hundreds of millions of vaccines to Americans and passing a $2 trillion rescue plan, have maintained a default setting in their reporting in which Biden struggles to make good on his plans or underestimates his abilities to enact them. The administration, in this telling, is forever in some sort of “crisis,” and negotiations are always on the verge of failure. Whether this “Perils of Pauline” narrative is a deliberate effort to build drama into news or whether journalists fail to comprehend the complexity and dynamics of legislative negotiations, the result is coverage that leaves readers and viewers nearly certain Biden will fail.

Progressives are doing a lot of soul-searching about Nina Turner’s loss in an Ohio special election to a more moderate, mainstream Democrat. Someone at The Nation has a post-mortem, and it shows that progressives went old school on campaign spending, blowing most of it on advertising instead of putting together a get-out-the-vote ground game. My take: the author skated over Turner’s biggest problem, calling her “controversial.” When your own supporters call you “controversial,” the term everyone else would use is “asshole.”

Speaking of assholes, the TV quiz show “Jeopardy!” just destroyed months of buildup over who its new host would be by giving the gig to a camera-hungry white dude who was a freshly minted executive producer of the show. He even rigged his own guest-hosting appearance. When word leaked and fans exploded in anger, producers quickly gave actress/neurobiologist a consolation prize hosting prime-time versions, but nobody is foold. I’m excited by the news because finally, finally I can boycott something I didn’t already ignore.

The floor’s yours.