Pre-match: Can't believe it took this long for this thread, the 2024 Presidential election thread!

I'm pretty sure that for enough money, Mooch will be on team whatever you pay him to be on.

 

Anyways, I saw a "Childless Cat Dude" bumper sticker today. On a pickup truck - a Toyota, so not, you know, a coal rolling F-350 or Dodge This or something awful like that. I did a quick search and didn't see anything like that for sale so the guy went to some effort to get that bumper sticker made up. It's only been two or three weeks since Vance's comments on childless cat ladies became widely known, so props to the guy in the Toyota pickup for making that bumper sticker happen.

 

fully agree. i listened to an interview with Mooch about those times and he pretty clearly says that himself.

 

sure but i’ve agreed on this all along.

headlines are written by the editors.

 

This is why George Conway started his anti-psycho PAC - to try to get these narratives more visibility

I listened to him explain it to Miller and he talked about how the MSM has tended not to cover Trumps insanity/cognitive issues

 

This is a great explainer on the "Competitive Authoritarian" movement - AKA American fascism.

But the pretense of franchise combined with a commitment to elections actually made it possible for the postbellum south to legitimize its old and brutal racial hierarchies. In other words, the southern model consisted of a form of democracy that made authoritarianism electorally competitive.

This competitive authoritarianism is now, Vox writer, Zack Beauchamp, provocatively argues in his new book, The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World, serving as a model for autocratic, illiberal democracies such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, and Narendra Modi’s India and generating political instability.​

https://www.theunpopulist.net/p/is-the-far-right-channeling-german

 

I've written extensively on this site about systematic media failure. I just think the conversation should be factual.
I worry if we run down trust in the media we have, we help the bad guys. Of course that does not mean we should not call out the absurd behaviour of late in the NYT newsroom

The state of the BBC is a good example of this. There are still great journalists there, but it is also true the Tories have been corrupting the newsroom from the top down.

 

This is some scary shit. If we want to talk media failure, IMO one big fail is failing to articulate how catastrophic this plan for the public service will be. This is like the purges of the cultural revolution - all scientific and free thought will be stamped out.

Leaked Project 2025 training video: “If the American people elect [Donald Trump], his administration will eradicate climate change references from absolutely everywhere” pic.twitter.com/DI1hrn1z1n

— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 13, 2024

 

If you are interested in high end media criticism I recommend Assoc. Prof Littau of Lehigh University

Here he makes a great point that one of the things US media really struggles with, is that TRUMP/GOP do not respond to adverse coverage. For instance, you would think that 8 years of coverage of the Mueller investigation, the coup, the indictments, the conviction etc etc would cause GOP voters and pols to change course. But they didn't.

Would it have mattered if Maggie H wrote her articles using different words like 'lie"? IMO not.

How should the media react to such asymmetry? We might have to accept that for profit media is simply not fit for purpose.

 

More good polling for Brat girl

Latest Cook Political Report polling finds Harris surging in swing states https://t.co/z0Bs4HyAQg pic.twitter.com/NDl5OhTmdw

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) August 14, 2024

 

But mah message discipline!

He's for the billionaires. Not for you.
Donald Trump is a scab. #StandUpUAW pic.twitter.com/hj10zDPbzw

— UAW (@UAW) August 13, 2024

 

I have long held that direct or even indirect quotes from politicians should never be used as headlines.

 

Imagine how many GOP operatives are weeping over their Biden Crime Family dossiers right now

 

I can see a future NY Times headline:

"Harris says Trump will repeal elections. Trump says he will only make them better."