DL Open Thread Monday, July 8, 2024
The “Fascism on the Worldwide March” storyline took a major hit the past few days. First voters in England rejected the Tories. Now France’s far-right party, Marine LePen’s National Rally, which seemed poised to take over the premiership, got its ass mightily kicked in the country’s second round of elections. Not only did they not win, they finished third, behind both Emmanuel Macron’s centrists and a new coalition of leftist parties, which actually finished first. This still leaves the country in uncharted territory – unlike most countries under parliamentary systems, France has no experience with coalition governments. OTOH, it was cooperation between the centrists and leftists that led to the right’s decisive defeat. Big picture, these results undermine the idea that countries everywhere have gone nativist and conservative. I think it shows that people want change, and they don’t much care which direction. Which, IMHO, is a point in favor of replacing Biden.
Biden, for his part, shows every sign of failing to go gentle into a stormy night, and his strategy apparently is to shore up his support among Blacks and unions. Whether or not it ends up working is immaterial to the click-hungry media masses, so expect the drama to continue for as long as they can prop it up.
Interesting story in ProPublica about the federal cyber safety board’s failure to investigate a security breach involving a known security flaw in Microsoft software that the company failed to address. Greed kills.
Your Day in Stupid: Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted out an Independence Day factoid notable for its lack of factual information.
The average age of the signers of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 was 44 years old, but more than a dozen were 35 or younger: Thomas Jefferson: 33 John Hancock: 39 James Madison: 25 Alexander Hamilton: 21 James Monroe: 18 Aaron Burr: 20 Paul Revere: 41 George Washington: 44
Two of that octet – for you MAGAts, that means a group of eight – actually signed the document, so give her a score of 25 on her self-administered history quiz. That’s probably better than Trump would do.
The floor’s yours.
If you happen to be in NYC, the current Broadway production of Cabaret is incredible. I was prepared to hate it, but the show is an amazing and fully realized work of art.
Obviously really hits home how most people were in denial about the rise of Nazis. But the performances are amazing, and rather than a self-involved, postmodern train wreck I was expecting, this production cares as much about advancing the plot as it does in being visually stunning. Seriously, it’s a must-see. We got Sunday matinee tickets at the TKts booth which were great and dead cheap. (That Gayle Rankin didn’t win a Tony for her portrayal of Sally Bowles is a travesty)
When comedian Peter Cook founded comedy club The Establishment in 1961, he said the model was “those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War.”
Sarcasm, right?
That was its entire raison d’etre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Establishment_(club)
Is this the one where you enter via an alley with trash cans?
I’ve always considered Cabaret to be a great show. Kander and Ebb (words and music) deserve more recognition. ‘Zorba’, ‘Chicago’, ‘Kiss Of The Spider Woman’, to name but a few shows. They also wrote ‘New York, New York’.
Great reporting from Cris Barrish once again puts the lie to something BHL and her minions have claimed:
https://whyy.org/articles/delaware-opioid-settlement-code-purple-kent-county-bethany-hall-long/
Gonna write a piece about this once I run some errands…
If Biden were a Clintonesque corporate Democrat, I would agree with you. But on several key issues, Biden has moved the country forward. One example is Biden’s reconnecting with labor unions, a big shift from the Clintons, who dropped union support in favor of Wall Street. And had Biden not been saddled first with the filibuster, Joe Manchin, and now the looney house, his record would have been even more impressive. Biden has made progress reversing Reaganomics, a huge accomplishment. I’ll not do a definitive list of gains here, but paired with his accomplishments and the folly of changing horses in this raging political river, keep the advantages of incumbency and win with Biden in November.
Two additional facts to consider:
– the election is going to be decided by 80,000 low information voters in Georgia, PA and Michigan who know very little (if anything) about Biden’s many progressive accomplishments.
– Biden approval is at 37%.
But hey – I’ve worked with old guys like Biden who have this “Only I can do it..” attitude. It sucks.
He isn’t dropping and I doubt he has what it is going to take to win over that cohort of 80k swing state voters who know only one thing about Biden – he is old.
LBJ dropped out. Nixon won.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-approval-rating/
37.2 % approval. Only Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden think they can overcome this level of unpopularity.
His approval has been there since he withdrew from Afghanistan. You just now noticed?
Well, HE hasn’t…
He’s done lots of things we wanted, some of which we never expected him to get done, so it’s not as if he got those numbers by going against our wishes (and before anyone brings up Gaza, his numbers haven’t moved either way because of it).
So he did what we wanted and people don’t like him for it. Are we blameless?
I think they did a shitty job of touting his accomplishments, and I think most people thought he was too old–at least to run again.
And, at least among Democrats, I think people resented his stubbornness in insisting on running again.
Now, I think they’re really pissed off with him becoming a stubborn old coot.
At least I am. Admittedly, not an empirical analysis…
I’ve noticed that no matter who the Democrat is, touting their accomplishments never works. I’ve come to realize that given voters’ perpetual state of being pissed off, they seem to reward politicians more for their promises than their accomplishments. They don’t want to hear about your accomplishments, their life remains crappy.
Dems had a chance to unseat him during the primaries. They did not.
“…shore up his support among Blacks and unions…”
I think it is very telling that the congressional black caucus would rather stand behind Joe than push for Vice President Harris to take the helm.
Really? What’s it tell you, and why does it mean that, and not something else?
It tells me that the CBC is pragmatic. They know Harris has even less of a shot. They will forgo the historic candidacy of a black woman for a shot to keep Dem control of the White House. This also suggest that fears of a “bad look” of passing over a black woman are overblown.
The only viable path forward is with an administration outsider like Whittmer or Newsome to invigorate and galvanize the dem electrorate
The Democratic electorate will vote for anyone against Trump. I think their enthusiasm is immaterial to the election, but their whining about their lack of enthusiasm is not at all helpful.