Left Jabs

  Before there was Fox News, before there was Rush Limbaugh, before there was the sprawling rightwing ecosystem of fake news and vicious smears we so enjoy today, there was the National Enquirer . For most of our lives, the Enquirer stared up at us from the checkout aisle of our local supermarket. Somehow, we never made the connection that its readers would one day fit the stereotype of the Trump voter — under-educated, gullible, malleable, easy targets for disinformation. The Enquirer nurtured those targets over many decades, got them to believe virtually anything, and helped lay the groundwork for the sort of know-nothing insurgency that brought Trump into all our lives. Decades ahead of its time, the Enquirer was peddling fake news long before it was fashionable. It appealed unapologetically to humanity’s baser instincts, the ones most of us try to rise above. It was always flamboyantly sleazy, and always there in plain sight, something we could depend...

  Conventional wisdom says that Trump’s base is primarily made up of pissed-off white people. We’re told that they’re pissed-off at their jobs disappearing, at their towns being hollowed out, at the drugs decimating their communities, at working three jobs to stay afloat, and at the nagging feeling that people are laughing at them. We’re told that Trump speaks for these people, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. They only think he does. Trump waves shiny objects in their faces. He makes glittering promises, and he offers up colorful scapegoats they can blame for their misery. But he’s never once offered them anything real. What Shawn Fain is offering is real: Twice the money they’re making now. Better benefits, better working conditions, better job protections, more paid time off, regular cost-of-living adjustments, and a piece of the company’s profits they can put away for retirement. As President of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), Fain...

Just last week I was pointing out the growing rift in the GOP, a rift centered on the open obstruction of aid to Ukraine by what Liz Cheney has famously called the “Putin Wing” of the party. In the last week, the rift has only gotten wider. What I didn’t elaborate on then, though it’s closely related, was the apparent influence of both Russian money and Russian propaganda on a growing number of Republicans. This is now out in the open, and more prominent Republicans are going public about it. Several powerful GOP senators, including Thom Tillis and John Cornyn, are known to be not happy about their party’s ties to the Kremlin. But it’s two GOP House committee chairs who are making the biggest waves. Michael Turner, chair of the Intelligence Committee, and Michael McCaul, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, both made the startling claim that some of their Republican colleagues were echoing Russian propaganda, right on the House floor. They stopped short of c...

  For all its faults, the Opinion page of The Washington Post is not a venue for the more extreme rightwing pundits. Even so, WaPo has, over the years, lent plenty of dubious respectability to the likes of Marc A. Thiessen and Hugh Hewitt, giving them their own regular columns, which serve to showcase the darker, fact-free side of the both-sides narrative. Thiessen, in particular, is among the more articulate of the Trump crowd, which is not a high bar. He was once a speechwriter for George W. Bush, so you know he speaks fluent bullshit. He used to hang with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bolton and the rest of the Neocons — guys in ties who never met a war they didn’t like — so he has a soft spot for Ukraine, and a loathing for Russia that goes back to the womb. In recent times, his columns have gone full-on MAGA, which means he’s generally unreadable except, perhaps, as a future historical artifact. Normally I can’t get past his first paragraph without needing a sho...

  Now, while Ronna McDaniel is still in the news, please return with me to last year — almost exactly — when she was still pretending to lead the Republican National Committee. The people of Wisconsin had just elected, by ten percentage points, a sane person to head up their Supreme Court, and Ronna was doing what she does worst: damage control.  “When you’re losing by 10 points, there is a messaging issue.” —   Ronna McDaniel , Republican Party Chair, reacting to the Wisconsin election Y'think, Ronna? You think your message might not be getting across? You think forced birth as a lifestyle isn't generating the numbers you'd hoped? You think an assault rifle in every school isn't making it as a talking point? You think voter suppression just isn't being sold right? Well, Ronna,   here's some free advice   from a marketing communications professional. Take your very worst ideas — the ones people most loathe, the ones that cast your whole party in the vilest pos...