Left Jabs

  It took a full eight years to indelibly etch the word ‘fascist’ into Trump’s forehead, but better late than never. It needs to be called what it is. Fascism is not a popular pastime, anywhere in the world. Just in the last two years, in countries where more-or-less free elections are still conducted, overwhelming numbers of voters stared into the abyss of institutional fascism, and said hell no. In Poland , a fascist regime had been in place for ten years, yet against all odds it was emphatically shown the door. In France , a dozen famously fractious parties came together to give a collective middle finger to Marine LePen and her far-right minions. In the UK, the ongoing catastrophe of Brexit finally led to the overwhelming rejection of the Conservative party — not exactly fascist, but close enough — which had been corroding the underpinnings of the nation for decades. The common denominator in all three of these electoral thumpings was massive turnout, dr...

  There are those who would have you believe that Trump has “softened” his position on abortion. This is, of course, ridiculous. It presumes that he actually has a position to soften, which would require an actual thought process, something no longer in his skill set. Trump, we can safely say, has no fixed position on anything. He’ll tell whatever lie he thinks might get him through the next news cycle, and you can practically hear the hundreds of recent lies clanking against each other in his brain. His abortion stance, if you can call it that, is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Trump cares nothing about abortion, and as long as his friends can get one, he doesn’t mind if you can’t. If he can use the issue to rally his dwindling base, his personal beliefs will be immaterial. But if you want to know how Trump is supposed to feel but doesn’t, look no further than JD Vance. Whenever you need the language bent to accommodate whatever lie the ant...

  The GOP is in the process of creating another “red wave” narrative. They’re going about it in pretty much the same way they did in the midterms of 2022. Let’s all agree to not fall for it this time. Now, as then, there are dozens of new polls coming out of the woodwork, almost all of them partisan junk, with sketchy methodologies and right-wing agendas designed to juice the flagging enthusiasm of Republicans, and to mess with the heads of Democrats. Some are overtly in the tank for the GOP, some are more subtle, and who knows how many are coming from Russia? Or China? Or Saudi Arabia? Or Elon Musk? Regardless, the aim is to scare Democrats into believing that the fix is in, that Trump has the election in the bag and there’s no point in voting. This will only intensify in the next three weeks, and it’s important that we not get sucked in. They tried the same thing in 2022, and while they got clobbered in the end, it’s arguable that the junk polls did indeed...

  Since last week’s post was all about good news for Democrats, I thought it only fair and balanced that this week’s should be about bad news for Republicans. This goes beyond mere schadenfreude , though my personal joy at their misfortune is boundless. It speaks more to a certain astonishment at the sheer ineptitude that permeates the GOP, from top to bottom. If they seem to be limping, it’s because they’ve repeatedly shot themselves in the foot. In the runup to the 2022 midterms, Mitch McConnell famously complained about the lack of “candidate quality,” a polite way of saying his party was infested with MAGA clowns who were barely toilet trained, let alone fit for office. He can’t be much happier in this election. Of course, the “candidate quality” problem starts at the top of the ticket, with perhaps the worst candidate — and one of the worst human beings — to ever walk the earth, or rather ride it in a golf cart. And Republicans, including McConnell, hav...

  I’ve been asked why I don’t think this election will be quite the nail-biter being hyped by the media. Part of my answer, of course, is that the nail-biter narrative is being hyped by the media. It’s usually a New York Times poll that triggers the nail-biting. Each poll is announced with great fanfare, in bold headlines, always with links to commentary that ripple through the rest of the media. The narrative is invariably that the race is deadlocked. Which happens to coincide with the neck-and-neck, both-sides-are-equally-bad, horserace political coverage in which they’re so deeply invested. To get some return on that investment, they bend objective reality to make Trump appear reasonable and normal, even as he descends deeper and deeper into madness. The Times has shown that it will always, always sane-wash Trump to make the race appear close, even if it isn’t. It’s not that their polls are wrong. They’re measuring something, after all. It’s just that w...