Awful: Senate investigations into Trump's solicitation of $1 billion from Big Oil and Jared Kushner's financial dealings with Saudis will now hit a wall with GOP control, Dems tell me. We're headed for unchecked elite corruption under Trump.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/188467… For many reasons, conditions are ripe for right wing elites to loot the place from top to bottom. Remember when Trump vowed to give Big Oil execs what they want in exchange for $1 billion in campaign funds? Now we'll likely never get to the bottom of it.

newrepublic.com/article/188467…

Disturbing: A big reason Trump won was undecideds couldn't be persuaded that millions of jobs lost in 2020 and death of Roe were Trump's fault, internal Harris campaign polling showed. Biden/Ds let Trump rehab himself to disastrous effect.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/188238… Internal testing in the battlegrounds over many months showed that Dems were having a very difficult time persuading undecided voters that Trump was a bad president, per sources. They didn't hold him responsible for things they disliked about his presidency.

newrepublic.com/article/188238…

How did Harris close the gap w/Trump on the economy?

Here's how: Harris campaign and Dem groups have spent a whopping $225 million on ads about the economy, per data provided to me by AdImpact. GOP caught napping, outspent by $70 million.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/187950… Harris campaign/Dem groups spent $225 million on econ ads from 7/21, when Biden bowed out, to the present, per AdImpact data. Trump/GOP: $155 million.

This challenges idea that Ds are so obsessed w/Trump hatred that they took eye off the ball on econ.

newrepublic.com/article/187950…

Today’s NYT featured a headline above the fold that read as follows:

“Biden Misstep Delivers Grist to Harris Foes”

This gets at one of the very worst things about the way political media has functioned during the Trump era. Here's a thread on the problem. 1/

https://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/1851946535602245836

I'm not sure what Biden meant w/the "garbage" comment. But even the harshest interpretation of it can only be that he meant Trump supporters *who openly make virulently racist displays* are "garbage."

That's news, I guess. Cover it, sure.

But what made it *front page* news? 2/

People keep saying Trump's rally was originally intended as his closing argument, but devolved into a hate rally instead.

But the rally we all saw IS his closing argument. He is running explicitly on much of what we witnessed on that stage.

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/187616… Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden is best seen as an explicit, very public declaration that if he wins, well, he told you exactly what you were going to get, so you’d better bend the knee and get ready to swallow all of it.

It's a coming-out party.

newrepublic.com/article/187616…

Utterly repulsive: Trump is now attacking Haitians in a small PA town with truly vile smears.

But the town manager tells me all Trump's claims are lies:

*Haitians not taking Americans' jobs
*No 2000% population increase
*No uptick in crime

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/186331… At a rally this week, Trump claimed Charleroi PA has seen a 2000% population boost due to Haitians.

But as town manager Joe Manning told me, if this were true, its pop would have gone from 4K to nearly 100K. He literally burst out laughing at the idea.

newrepublic.com/article/186331…

It's good that GOP Gov Mike DeWine urged Trump and Vance to stop smearing Haitians. But DeWine misses something big here: Trump *wants* the Springfield debate to be as charged with hate and rage as possible. He thinks that's a winner for him. 1/

New piece
newrepublic.com/article/186224… When GOP Gov Mike DeWine called out Trump and Vance for lying about Haitians, he suggested it will alienate swing voters.

But this misses how Trump sees things. Trump thinks all the rage and hate will activate swing voters' latent MAGA tendencies. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/186224…

Big news out of Springfield: The Mayor has now confirmed that the emailed bomb threat did contain hateful language about immigrants.

Trump and Vance can no longer pretend not to know exactly what their vile demagoguery is accomplishing.

New piece from me
newrepublic.com/article/185953… Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, says the bomb threat email contained "hateful" language about immigrants and specifically "Haitian folks."

Trump/Vance valorize these places, but have no real concern for the impact their demagoguery has on them.

newrepublic.com/article/185953…

This is hair-raising stuff. I talked to numerous people who are prepping for what might happen if Trump wins. They are bracing for years of legal harassment and the deep corruption of govt info into rank propaganda.

Lots of reporting in my new essay:
newrepublic.com/article/185487… We keep hearing about scary second-term horrors like troops in cities: But in this piece, I argue for another, more insidious scenario: A slow-burn authoritarianism of grinding legal harassment of Trump critics and profound corruption of the bureaucracy.

newrepublic.com/article/185487…

It's a big deal that veteran journalist Mike Barnicle has now called out his media colleagues for failing to adequately cover Trump's visibly worsening mental state. It should spur a real discussion about how to do this, before it's too late. 1/

New piece
newrepublic.com/article/185622… “We have a damaged, delusional, old man who might get reelected to the presidency," Mike Barnicle said on @Morning_Joe. He said the media doesn't really cover Trump's daily insanity as a window into his mental fitness for the presidency. This is right. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/185622…

News --> Dems are pushing the Army to clarify why they think Trump's Arlington fiasco broke the law, and demanding a clearer account of what his campaign aides did to that woman. One source says Dems are frustrated at the lack of detail.

My new piece:
newrepublic.com/article/185517… At his Michigan rally, Trump offered a highly distorted account of the Arlington mess. He omits that his own aides recorded a campaign video there and that officials told his campaign in advance that political activity was banned.

My fact check:

newrepublic.com/article/185517…

New pod: James Carville explains in detail why he's now bullish on Kamala beating Trump.

"He knows Harris has become what he's always wanted to be—the hot item. It's driving him crazy."

Carville also says Florida and NC are in play, and much more:
newrepublic.com/article/185316… James Carville also says a hidden dynamic is educated white males backing Kamala because of the impact that Dobbs is having on their wives and daughters.

"Attitudes on a lot of things are vastly different among white males, based on education," he says:
newrepublic.com/article/185316…

I think something big is happening here: Kamala Harris appears to be running precisely the kind of inspired, aggressive campaign that combatting the forces of rising authoritarianism requires.

She's running on the promise of a post-MAGA future. 1/

Link:
newrepublic.com/article/185258… There's been lots of talk about Harris reaching out to groups beyond the core Dem coalition, including GOP and Trump voters. But note what she is *not* doing: She is not making any serious concessions to Trumpism or the MAGA worldview of any kind. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/185258…

This is an interesting exchange between @EricLevitz and @karpmj. Central Q is: Why is the progressive left that brought us the Bernie movement much less critical of the Dem establishment (and successful Ds like Harris, Whitmer et al) these days? I have a few answers to this. 1/

https://twitter.com/EricLevitz/status/1826003193949757650

One is that during the Biden years, the left (at least in Congress) genuinely was brought into the tent to negotiate over the biggest priorities, such as during the talks over Build Back Better, the biggest econ rebalancing effort proposed in decades. 2/

Biden's emotional speech was fantastic, but people aren't talking enough about what he said about Kamala in particular. Biden subtly rebutted some of Trump's sleazy, racist attacks on her in a very artful way, and that's essential to winning.

My take:
newrepublic.com/article/185070… It was a beautiful thing when Biden said he was proud he'd picked a cabinet that is diverse as America itself, and talked about Kamala Harris's role in making that history -- and what's coming next:

newrepublic.com/article/185070…

NEWS --> Over 300,000 clean-energy-related jobs are being created by projects announced since the Biden-Harris climate agenda became law, a new @ClimatePower report finds.

Many jobs are in rural/GOP areas. Wrecks Trump's lies.

Details in my new piece:
newrepublic.com/article/184855…


In this piece, I argue that Elon Musk's weird exchange with Trump about EVs, in which Trump changed the subject to nuclear weapons, was revealing. Trump has nothing to say about one of the most important transformations happening in the US right now:
newrepublic.com/article/184855…

SCOOP --> Kamala Harris leads Trump by 55-37 among Latino voters in the seven key swing states, according to the first large-sample poll of Latinos taken since she entered the race.

The poll by @SomosVotantes and @BSPresearch also shows more room to grow:
newrepublic.com/article/184533… Kamala Harris' 55-37 lead among Latinos in this poll shows big improvement on Biden's performance against Trump, and suggests she may be rebuilding the Dem coalition: Importantly, Trump's favorability is only 39%, giving her more room to expand that lead:

newrepublic.com/article/184533…

Important: Border encounters plummeted again to around 57,000 in July, lowest of the Biden years and comparable to a number of months under Trump, per sources.

This undermines Trump's attacks on Harris in unappreciated ways. My new piece unpacks it all:
newrepublic.com/article/184507… The drop in border crossings is widely attributed to Biden's asylum restrictions. But it's also because Mexico is blocking migrants from traveling to our border.

This gives Harris a good argument: This is a regional issue; she gets this; Trump doesn't.

newrepublic.com/article/184507…

One other thing about Trump's attack on Harris's blackness: It shows that the Trump/MAGA/red pilled worldview is incapable of imagining that the US mainstream will see Harris' identity/ascension in a positive light.

@NGrossman81 and I dig into this idea:
newrepublic.com/article/184462… Another point on this pod: Trump/MAGA worldview and agitprop are built on the illusion of a silent anti-woke majority out there being suppressed by elite, nefarious liberal control of our institutions. This blinds them to realities of mainstream opinion:
newrepublic.com/article/184462…

This defense of media coverage of Trump threat by @ErikWemple is uncharacteristically ill-considered. He concludes media is indeed covering “stakes” of elex. For purposes of spurring a real debate, here’s a good-faith response. 1/

washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/… Wemple’s method is to amass a huge number of media pieces that do describe Trump as a threat in one way or another. But he ignores all the critiques that *acknowledge* all the good journalism on Trump but still find big problems with the ways the coverage conveys this threat. 2/

It's absolutely critical that Kamala Harris strongly emphasized that a Dem president and Congress will codify Roe nationally in her first speech as presumptive nominee.

This has huge political benefits that are going underappreciated. 1/

New piece:
newrepublic.com/article/184147… Right now, the Trump camp plans to attack Kamala Harris by making the election a referendum on the status quo under the unpopular Biden.

But a promise to codify Roe nationally gives Harris a way to campaign against the status quo that *Trump* created. 2/

newrepublic.com/article/184147…