The incredible Gullibility of Trump Supporters/the Right

Idaho white vigilantes.

As I have noted many times, I continue to amazed - shocked might be a better term - at the willingness of Trump supporters, evangelical christians (lower case "c"), and the far right in general to believe every Trump lie and far fetched lie put out by extremist groups or just as likely Russian bots. Fact checking is seemingly an unknown concept to many of these people and they share falsehoods on social media and have near apoplexy over "news stories" that are not even true - often not even legitimate.  I truly do not comprehend a mindset so eager to believe the worse about others or believe any and ever inflammatory lie. Are they simply ignorant and too lazy to fact check, bigots or some mix of the two?  This gullibility and mindlessness was recently illustrated by events in a town in Idaho that were based on a social media myth that bore no relation to reality.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the manner in which armed white vigilantes/residents were played for fools while endangering the rest of the public.  Here are article excerpts:

Protesters had only begun assembling peacefully in Idaho when a Facebook page for retired police officers advised its followers to stay on high alert. “We will protect our neighborhoods,” it vowed.

So when early reports about potential violence surfaced a day later — claiming “ANTIFA agitators” were storming the state this week — scores of residents took to the streets. Armed with military-style assault rifles, they stood guard in places such as Coeur d’Alene, a resort town of 50,000 on a lake in northwest Idaho.

“Enough of us swung into action, and put the word out on social media and elsewhere, that we were able to deploy and meet any violent elements that might come here from out of state,” said Trevor Treller, a sommelier and one of the armed locals. Treller, 48, said he mobilized after hearing from trusted voices that “antifa types” were on the move.It would not prove to be true.

As vigils and protest actions unfolded in Idaho this week, local officials across the state confirmed that not a single participant was known to have defiled a home or storefront in the name of “antifa,” a loose label attributed to far-left activists. Many of the rumors about violent protests originated from dubious Facebook posts, often shared widely and rarely debunked, residents there said.

The raft of myths and misstatements that triggered visceral reactions throughout Idaho illustrates how long-standing grievances have fused with the vast reach of social media during protests that have swept through the country — in big cities and rural towns — after the killing of a black man in the custody of Minneapolis police last week.

As President Trump militarizes the government’s response to the roiling demonstrations, armed civilians across the country are taking matters into their own hands. They have engaged in preemptive acts of escalation, often in response to imaginary threats, raising tensions at demonstrations touched off by the death of 46-year-old George Floyd and intensified by the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic collapse, which have disproportionately affected black Americans.

Such actions are particularly visible in Idaho’s Treasure Valley, long a hotbed of the anti-government militia movement and a magnet for disaffected whites fleeing more-diverse and increasingly liberal enclaves, experts said. The mobilization of counterprotesters, these observers said, offers stark evidence that rising calls for racial justice are echoing across the country at the very moment that white resentment is also flaring.

“It’s combustible,” said Todd Shallat, a historian at Boise State University. “The local acts of vigilantism show how a rising population of discontented whites is reacting to the increasingly visible claims of minority groups.”

There’s so much implicit bias about black people’s criminality that some people assume there’s going to be violence or infiltration when we gather,” said Whitney Mestelle, a local activist in Boise who helped organize a peaceful vigil Tuesday. “They may even have good intentions, but it doesn’t make me feel more comfortable to see people open-carry.”

[D]iscussion about antifa has reverberated especially widely across Facebook, including on a page that bills itself as “North Idaho News.” The page acknowledges in fine print that it is “not affiliated with any real news company.” On Monday, though, it claimed to have “credible information that violent rioters, not just peaceful protesters, have plans to come to Coeur d’Alene.” Reached Wednesday via Facebook message, the unidentified operator of North Idaho News declined to comment.

The post quickly gained widespread attention, troubling the likes of Chris Dawson, a retired police officer from Santa Clarita, Calif., and the president of the ex-law-enforcement group on Facebook that put its members on high alert. His Facebook page shared the notice, and Dawson said he had been “given information that antifa would be coming in from Portland or Seattle.” Amplifying their fears was the destruction that marked some demonstrations in neighboring states.

Soon, armed members of local militia groups began patrolling the streets of cities including Coeur d’Alene, said David Hagar, a captain in the city’s police department who described the gatherings as peaceful. Asked whether antifa-affiliated individuals had targeted the city, Hagar said, “Not that we’ve identified.”
“I think a lot of it was fueled by social media,” Hagar said.

Similar rumors gripped Payette County, a rural expanse on Idaho’s western edge. One post shared widely on Facebook said antifa had dispatched a “plane load of people” arriving from Seattle, targeting Idaho’s rural regions. “The sheriff in Payette has already spotted some of them,” the notice continued.

Phone calls soon flooded the sheriff’s office, leaving local law enforcement perplexed.

The false notion continues to have traction with local paramilitary groups, including the far-right Three Percenters, who draw their name from the disputed claim that just 3 percent of American colonists were fighting at any one time during the revolt against the British crown. An Idaho branch said in a Facebook post Sunday that it had “credible intel” about plans for an antifa-induced riot in Boise. No such riot took place.

What is truly frightening is that people this ignorant and bigoted are walking around with military assault style weapons.  They would appear to be a bigger threat to public safety than mythical leftists.

Behind Trump’s Demand to Reopen Churches: Slipping Poll Numbers

This post is a follow up on one from yesterday but is important because it reveals that Donald Trump doesn't give a rat's ass about churches, the free exercise of religion, or the safety of congregants at church services.  Rather, it is ALL about him and alarm withing his campaign that his polling with white evangelicals and white Catholics has taken a major hit thanks to his bungling of the federal response to the Covid-19 pandemic.  His demand the church services be deemed "essential services" is a desperate attempt to restore slipping support among the falsely named Christian Right - which is neither Christian nor right on almost any issue. Trump knows that without the support of this demographic he will likely be toast in November, and hence his call to allow church services even if it means infecting congregants.  Anyone who believes Trump gives a damn about them is delusional.  With Trump, it is all about him 27/7 and nothing and no one else matters except in the context of how it helps him.  A piece Politico looks at what is really motivating Trump and it has NOTHING to do with religious freedom (A piece in Business Insider notes that church services are "super spreaders" of covid-19).  Here are article highlights:

A sudden shift in support for Donald Trump among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign, where top aides have long banked on expanding the president’s evangelical base as a key part of their strategy for victory this November.

The anxiety over Trump’s standing with the Christian right surfaced after a pair of surveys by reputable outfits earlier this month found waning confidence in the administration’s coronavirus response among key religious groups, with a staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics. Both are crucial constituencies that supported Trump by wide margins in 2016 and could sink his reelection prospects if their turnout shrinks this fall.

The polls paint a bleak picture for Trump, who has counted on broadening his religious support by at least a few percentage points to compensate for weakened appeal with women and suburban populations. . . . . Another person close to the campaign described an April survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, which showed a double-digit decline in Trump’s favorability among white evangelicals (-11), white Catholics (-12) and white mainline protestants (-18) from the previous month, as “pretty concerning.”

To safeguard his relationship with religious conservatives, Trump on Friday demanded that America‘s governors permit houses of worship to immediately reopen, and threatened to “override“ state leaders who decline to obey his directive. The announcement . . . . featured clear appeals to white evangelicals, many of whom have long supported Trump's socially conservative agenda.

Following the PRRI survey, which was conducted while Trump was a dominant presence at televised daily briefings by his administration's coronavirus task force, Pew Research Center released new data last week that showed a 7-point increase from April to May in white Catholics who disapprove of Trump’s response to the Covid-19 crisis and a 6-point decline among white evangelicals who previously gave him positive marks.

Trump campaign aides, White House officials and outside allies are responding to the threat by boosting their outreach to religious voters and promising to prioritize religious gatherings as they push to reopen the U.S. economy.

It was not immediately clear whether the president's order on Friday — that state and local officials must take immediate action to reopen religious institutions — was legally permissible, nor was it clear how administration officials planned to enforce the guidance.

Guidelines released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about reopening certain establishments — including schools, public transit systems and child care facilities — did not mention how religious institutions should go about returning to in-person worship services and ministry opportunities. One senior administration official said the guidance was omitted due to concerns that the prescriptions CDC staffers planned to provide were too restrictive.

It’s unlikely that critics of church closings alone are responsible for the decline in Trump’s favorability among critical religious demographics. According to the Pew survey, 43 percent of white evangelicals and 52 percent of white Catholics think the current restrictions on public activity in their areas are appropriate versus 42 percent and 31 percent, respectively, who think fewer restrictions would be better. Greater shares of white evangelicals and white Catholics also said they are more afraid about their state governments lifting restrictions on public activity too soon than they are about leaving the restrictions in place for too long.

Laura Gifford, a historian of politics and religion at George Fox University, said it’s likely become harder for the president’s supporters to embrace his plans for an accelerated reopening of the country. The more Trump contradicts health officials who have warned against reopening schools and nonessential businesses, she suggested, the less accepting his usual supporters might become of his overall response. . . . . “This is something where that is harder to ignore than previous controversies or crises because it has life-and-death consequences for congregations and religious populations.”

Part of the strategy Trump allies have adopted to protect his relationship with conservative Christians is to frame the novel coronavirus — and church closures in response to social distancing restrictions — as a threat to religious freedom. . . . . But the religious freedom framing might not matter if the economy remains in free fall through the November election, even after churches are permitted to reopen and conservative outside groups ramp up their outreach to religious voters.

The Morbid Ideology Behind "Reopen America" Protests

As several posts have noted, the protests to "reopen America" are supposed to give the impression that they are "grassroots" and "spontaneous" actions of patriotic Americans.  Sadly, the mainstream media - especially TV networks - gives them coverage and never looks behind the facade.  In reality, the protests trace to billionaires and money interests (with help from white supremacists) that have funded their organization and manipulated those aggrieved by  the loss of white status/privilege as they are about the economic shutdown.   The goals of the behind the scenes backers?  Actually, there are several, one being to distract from the Trump/Pence regimes utter bungling of the federal government response to the pandemic. Another is to distract attention from the GOP's agenda of A piece in New Republic looks at this malignant ideology behind the protests which in true GOP/right wing form use racism and resentment to play those who have suffered most because of GOP policies.  Here are excerpts:

Photos of the small “reopen America” protests, which have made the rounds on social media over the past week, have revealed a spectacle as cartoonish as it is macabre: a rogue’s gallery of right-wing groups coming together to share in the spirit of defiance and, presumably, tiny droplets of mucusfar right  and saliva. The protests (and their backing by deep-pocketed funders) invited many comparisons to the Tea Party movement of a decade ago. Unlike that movement, these small protests are likely to die out soon. Nevertheless, they have captured something vitally important about how the right is responding to this fraught moment in our recent history.

As jobless claims have soared past an astonishing 26 million with no end in sight, the Covid-19 pandemic may well push the United States into a profound and long-lasting economic crisis. . . . The onset of this immiseration has begun to propel bold ideas and movements from the left to demand a reorganization of the economy and a fundamental shift in political power. But the right is swiftly establishing its own morbid template for how to interpret and respond to both the pandemic and its economic effects.

Republican politicians and right-wing pundits endlessly echo a central claim: “The cure is worse than the disease.” In other words, you can either risk dying from the virus or face certain economic ruin, as if there are no other choices. Their hope is that people already conditioned by an ideology centered on the marketplace, the individual, and the nation will be more likely to believe that their lives and livelihoods are under greater threat from state-ordered economic shutdowns and coercive social measures than they are from the disease. For them, the idea that Covid-19 could ultimately be overcome–even if at great human cost–by working and shopping is more appealing, and even more imaginable, than a new politics of mutuality that might redistribute power and resources in an egalitarian way.  

Recall the Tea Party’s origins during the Great Recession. . . . . Those two animating features of the movement—anti-black racism and opposition to the Affordable Care Act—defined a movement that in essence chose investments in whiteness over the assurance of at least some semblance of health care.

This was followed in the 2016 election by a Republican candidate who surged among voters who had high levels of racial resentment, strong feelings of political powerlessness, and growing economic anxiety (regardless of income level). Donald Trump . . . . demonizing Latinos, immigrants, Muslims, black protesters, and foreign rivals. All of this set the stage for how the right would come to respond to the current pandemic.

The rhetorical oppositions of work to welfare, self-reliance to dependence, individual to state, citizen to foreigner—oppositions animated by race, gender, and class—run deep in American political culture. All are reflected in the politics of the pandemic right now, making for a grim political vision of American freedom.

The dozen or so Republicans in the House of Representatives refusing to wear masks when called to vote on the latest coronavirus relief bill performed precisely that kind of political theater for their constituents. It is meant as a tough-guy taunt, to show their own robustness and the weakness of their opponents. But it also reveals something more pathological. The risky behavior demonstrates vitality precisely because it tempts fate, suggestive of Freud’s death drive, which he described as a force “whose function is to assure that the organism shall follow its own path to death.”

There is now a well-documented relationship between whiteness, status, and morbidity. . . . . over the last few years, there have been long-term increases in “deaths of despair”—overdoses, suicides, alcohol-related fatalities—among middle-aged whites without college degrees. There is much yet to be understood about reasons for this phenomenon, but a sense of the declining status of whiteness appears tightly connected to collective self-harm.

Demands to reopen states provide great cover for the Trump administration, the Republican Party in Congress, red state governors, and the Federal Reserve, who are working to keep current wealth stratifications in place and protect the rich from economic harm—and doing so without much pushback from Democrats. As conditions become more dire, the right will do all it can to enlist the loyalty of middle- and working-class victims of the crisis. Here, the logics of race and nation will become increasingly important.

Many of the demonstrators at the recent protests, repeating Fox News talking points, focused their ire on urban America . . . and beneath it, the racial demonization of black and brown denizens of cities. It is this sentiment that gives cover to Republican resistance to federal spending when couched in language like Mitch McConnell’s opposition to “blue state bailouts.”

Within the Trump administration, the nationalist tide continues to rise. . . . . Defenders of the current political order will continue to do whatever is necessary to protect wealth and privilege. They understand that to address the enormity of the economic crisis would upend the neoliberal consensus of this second Gilded Age, which has greatly enriched a few while systematically dismantling public goods, disempowering workers, and diminishing democratic rule. Their hope is that enough Americans go along with this resistance, even if it kills them. 

Try as I might, I find it difficult to have any empathy for the participants in these protests, not the least because so many are motivated ultimately by racism.  In addition, they refuse to look at themselves as a major cause of their own plight.  Many rejected education, have embraced ignorance, and have supported right wing politicians - like Trump - who have worked against their financial interests. Because of their own bad decisions in many cases they feel their skin color is their only claim to privilege.

The "Reopen" Protests Are Anything But Spontaneous

Billionaire Robert Mercer.

As intimated in yesterday's posts, the "Reopen the Economy" protests that have sprung up in various parts of the country are intended to appear as "grass root" and spontaneous events organized by working class Americans yet the reality is something quite different.  Indeed, like the "Tea Party" movement that erupted after Barrack Obama's election, these  protests are being funded and organized by right wing organizations, many funded by billionaires with organizing efforts coming from right wing operatives, some with ties to the White House. Further coordinating the effort is Fox News, the perennial propaganda network of the far right.  Some of the names include familiar billionaires of the right wing: Koch, DeVos, Mercer - all opponents of democracy and progressive values - whose organizations are playing key roles in manipulating the Trump faithful, racists and white supremacists.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this reality.  Here are excerpts:

I frst became aware of the political influence of Charles and David Koch in 2009 when I started looking into who was behind the protests at health care town halls.

The Tea Party, formed after America elected its first black president, used a series of health care town halls to spur angry Republicans to oppose the Affordable Care Act as a socialist takeover of American medicine. Little matter that it was modeled on a plan devised by Mitt Romney, a Republican, when he was the governor of Massachusetts.

Such false claims about the act have not aged well, as millions of Americans now depend on the law for health care coverage as the coronavirus contagion sweeps across the nation. And yet a Tea Party co-founder, Mark Meckler, is using the same tactics and same phony claims to stir his followers to protest against governors seeking to mitigate the Covid-19 death toll by closing businesses and banning public gatherings.

That public anger is both real and manufactured. The same was true in 2009, when the Koch fortune fueled the Tea Party’s attacks on the Obama administration’s health care law.

As we face Tea Party 2.0, let’s not be fooled again.  The protests playing out now have the same feel as the Tea Party protests aided by Koch-financed Americans for Prosperity and others a decade ago — and with good reason: Early evidence suggests they are not organic but a brush fire being stoked by some of the same people and money that built the Tea Party.

Look no further than the first protest organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and the Michigan Freedom Fund . . . . to see that the campaign to “open” America flows from the super rich and their front groups.

Stephen Moore — a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Koch ally and a Trump adviser — admitted as much in a video I obtained comparing these new protesters to Rosa Parks, as first reported in The Times.

Mr. Moore, who is now leading an enterprise to end the virus precautions called Save Our Country, which includes the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council, boasted that he has been working behind the scenes with a conservative donor who agreed to cover bail and legal fees for demonstrators who get arrested for defying Wisconsin’s virus protective measures.

Others are providing legal assistance as well. The Times reports that a private Facebook group called Reopen NC has retained the legal services of Michael Best & Friedrich, a Wisconsin law firm whose clients include President Trump. The firm is well known for its work with dark-money groups that fought the recall of the Koch ally Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and waged war on unions.

Then there’s the Convention of States, established in 2015 with a big contribution from the conservative hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. The group recruits activists at gun shows to support a balanced-budget amendment and is promoting the protests online via “Open the States.”

[T]his week one of Mr. Meckler’s organizers told supporters via Facebook that “optics are everything” and that they should be sure to wear a mask to the protests and stand six feet apart — because it will make the crowds look bigger.

COS and a Koch-financed public relations firm, In Pursuit Of, are also purchasing domain names tied to protests to open the states, suggesting they are investing for a long battle — even as the death toll rises.

The consequences are already starting. One week after a Kentucky protest, the state experienced its largest spike in coronavirus cases. Other states may soon see similar spikes.

Those fanning these flames, including President Trump and Fox News hosts, are unlikely to get burned by infection themselves, though they may be goading their followers to risk their health by attending mass demonstrations.

America is now facing three calamities: a deadly contagion, a capricious president and a well-funded right-wing infrastructure willing to devalue human life in pursuit of its political agenda. Some very rich men and women are making this medical disaster worse through their reckless bellows, inflaming people to demand that states open now no matter how many lives that costs.

The Trump base, of course will never grasp the fact that they are being used yet again,  They are too blinded by their bigotry and hatred of others to open their eyes and realize they are being played for fools - again.

Trump's Cynical - and Racist - Re-election Strategy

A piece in the Washington Post looks at who is funding and organizing the anti-lock down protests and the reality that, while aimed at looking like a "grass roots," they are being backed by billionaires, including some of the most far right vulture capitalists.    True to form, Trump devotees are being duped into playing a role in Trump's re-election strategy which, as in 2026, has a strong racist element and is intended to mask Trump's epic failures in handling the coronavirus pandemic and the fact that he doesn't actually give a rats ass about the fools being duped into participating in the anti-lock down protests.  As a lengthy column in the New York Times lays out, it is all part of a cynical strategy to use racism (it is no coincidence that the anti-lock down protests all feature Confederate flags even in places like Michigan) and rural voter hatred of educated and culturally elite cities to boost right wing turnout in November 2020.  It's cynicism is disgusting, but then again, Trump (like his billionaire sycophants) only cares about himself.  Here are column highlights: 

President Trump has chosen his pandemic re-election strategy. He is set on unifying and reinvigorating the groups that were crucial to his 2016 victory: racially resentful whites, evangelical Christians, gun activists, anti-vaxxers and wealthy conservatives.

Tying his re-election to the growing anti-lockdown movement, Trump is encouraging a resurgence of what Ed Kilgore, in New York magazine, calls “the angry anti-government strain of right-wing political activity that broke out in the tea-party movement” — a movement now focused on ending the virus-imposed restrictions on many aspects of American life.

Jeremy Menchik, a political scientist at Boston University, . . . . makes the point that anti-quarantine protests . . . will distract the electorate. If the election is a fight between Trump vs governors who refuse to open their economies, Trump doesn’t have to defend his record on Covid-19. He’s an advocate for liberty!

Studies of the 2009-10 Tea Party movement, Menchik writes, suggest that “continued protests will boost conservative turnout in Nov 2020.”

Casting the coronavirus epidemic as a wedge issue, Trump is playing both ends against the middle, in an attempt to veil his own inconsistencies. Following up on this idea, Noah Rothman, associate editor of Commentary, asked on April 20: “Can Trump Be All Things to All People?”

The calculation underlying Trump’s “liberate” crusade was revealed in a comment on the Facebook page of Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine:

The eastern border, Philly, and the western border Pittsburgh, is what is causing the state to stay shut down. What about the rest of us??

In other words, Trump and his followers want to place the onus for the social and economic restraints that are still in effect in much of the country on cities, many of them heavily black, where the coronavirus has been most destructive.

Along similar lines, Carol Hefner, co-chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign in Oklahoma and an organizer of an anti-lockdown protest in Oklahoma City, told KOMO TV News on April 15: “We’re not New York. Their problems are not our problems.”

Trump continues on a well-trodden path as he promotes the corona-liberation movement — stigmatizing inner-city dwellers, scapegoating “foreigners” and blaming the Covid-19 pandemic on China.

The demonization of China, Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, noted in an email, . . . is central to his strategic racism. Trump uses this wedge to solidify and turn out his base and persuade white, blue collar voters. Trump believes strategic racism worked for him in 2016 so why not 2020?

On April 21, Trump resumed his assault on immigrants, issuing an order blocking new green cards and instigating a 60-day moratorium on immigration: “I will be issuing a temporary suspension of immigration into the United States,” he said during the daily White House coronavirus briefing. “By pausing, we’ll help put unemployed Americans first in line for jobs. Steve Schmidt — a former Republican consultant and prominent Never Trumper who served as a senior adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid — described the shape he saw Trump’s 2020 re-election drive taking. As the “administration continues to lie, fumble and flounder,” Schmidt wrote in an April 17 Twitter thread, . . get ready for the noxious blend of Confederate flags, semiautomatic weaponry, conspiracy theorists, political cultists, extremists and nut jobs coming to a state Capitol near you.

The 2020 incarnation of the Tea Party, Schmidt continued, will be stoked by Trump every step of the way as they help make the air fertile for his blame gaming, scapegoating, evasions of responsibility, populist fulminations and nationalist incitements. They will be on TV every night storming the battered ramparts of our politics and civics.

Thomas M. Nichols — a professor at the Naval War College who abandoned the Republican Party in 2018 — succinctly described on Twitter on April 19 how Trump’s alignment with anti-shutdown forces works: This is perfect for the Angry White Trumper: People in blue states, guided by the elites and know-it-alls they hate, stealing a march on them by being better and more civic minded citizens than they are. So now it’s ‘fighting tyranny,’ because they’ve got nothing else.

The key battleground states in the Midwest are rich soil for the tactics outlined by Lake, Schmidt and Nichols.

The racial divisions in the Midwest, Austin writes, were crucial to the outcome of the 2016 election: Racially divided regions such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Milwaukee fed the rise of Donald Trump, with his scapegoating of people of color and nostalgic appeals to white working-class voters yearning for a return to the “good old days.”

Bringing the issue back to the present election, Austin pointed out: In our state capital of Lansing, an April 15 rally ostensibly protesting social distancing measures was notable for its participants’ use of Trump and Confederate iconography.

The pandemic has, in turn, inspired a renewed Christian right critique of America’s cities. . . . . the unbelievers whom Erickson contends populate American cities are getting their comeuppance: “Those who’ve had a good life now outside the presence of God will find nothing good while those who believe will live in splendor.”

Trump is egging on lockdown protesters in order to generate enthusiasm and drive turnout on Election Day, but Ron Brownstein, writing in The Atlantic, warns that this gambit could backfire.

The Coronavirus pandemic appears destined to widen the political divide between the nation’s big cities and the smaller places beyond them. And that could narrow Donald Trump’s possible pathways to re-election.

Will Bunch, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, is more outspoken in his critique of Trump and the coronavirus liberation movement, arguing that the protesters are unknowingly fronting for the wealthiest Americans: Right-wing special interests, like the billionaire family of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, are terrified that the 22 million unemployed will demand a social welfare state.

Their goal? To “shift blame away from Trump’s multiple failures on the coronavirus and instead onto public-health-minded governors.”

“These billionaires and millionaires,” Bunch continued, “have zero moral qualms about working with some of the worst white-supremacists or neo-fascists in order to make sure a crowd turns out.”

Trump faces the cold reality of a health care crisis — and that voters may not give him as much leeway as in the past: This may be one instance in which reality and personal experience stand up to political bluster and misstatements. Undoubtedly, many Trump supporters will stick with him and regard the public health response to the Covid-19 pandemic as a costly overreaction. But there will also be political moderates and independents who regard the administration and president as increasingly incompetent in a domain in which it really matters.

More than anything, Trump is a gambler and he is taking a high risk approach to re-election. Given public wariness of his handling of the pandemic — and much else — and the recent drop in his favorability rating, he may have no other choice than to stake his political future on his ability to turn the anger and frustration of his credulous audience to his advantage one final time.

Far Right Groups, Trump and GOP Behind Social Distancing Backlash

What the far right is trying to pass of as a grassroots, organic uprising against social distancing and stay home orders is actually an orchestrated efforts with some of the organizers comprised of far right white supremacist groups.  Joining in their effort is Donald Trump who is tweeting against states with Democrat governors, including Virginia, and other Republicans who care more about "reopening" the economy than the possible death toll among their constituents.  The ultimate goal behind the actions is politically motivated: to save Trump's reelection effort, especially now that his polling numbers are dropping and some polls show a 60% disapproval rate for his handling of the pandemic.  In Michigan where some of the loudest protests - with armed protesters, of course, as The Guardian reports the organizers were anything but grassroots: 

While protesters in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and other states claim to speak for ordinary citizens, many are also supported by street-fighting rightwing groups like the Proud Boys, conservative armed militia groups, religious fundamentalists, anti-vaccination groups and other elements of the radical right.

On Wednesday in Lansing, Michigan, a protest put together by two Republican-connected not-for-profits was explicitly devised to cause gridlock in the city, and for a time blocked the entrance to a local hospital.

It was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, which Michigan state corporate filings show has also operated under the name of Michigan Trump Republicans. It was also heavily promoted by the Michigan Freedom Fund, a group linked to the Trump cabinet member Betsy DeVos.

Near the state house, local radio interviewed a man who identified himself as “Phil Odinson”.  In fact the man is Phil Robinson, the prime mover in a group called the Michigan Liberty Militia, whose Facebook page features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front.

These are NOT nice people and I have to ask my Republican "friends" if they'd invite these folks into their living rooms and private clubs.  If not, they need to distance themselves from them and the politicians who are working with such ugly groups. As for those being duped to jump on the protest bandwagon, it sad that they still can't see beyond their racism and anger to see that those who are manipulating them are the ones who are most responsible for their economic plight.  The willful ignorance of these people is stunning and sad.

As for the motivation of the organizers behind these efforts (which, no surprise include Fox News), a piece in the  Washington Post lays it all out nicely.  Here are highlights:

The social distancing backlash is here. Like many such eruptions of anger, it’s partly genuine and partly fed by political actors with their own preexisting agendas — in this case, mostly to rescue President Trump’s imperiled reelection campaign. And it will get ugly.

On Wednesday in Lansing, Mich., thousands of protesters came to the state capitol to demonstrate against the stay-at-home order issued by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). Though Michigan now has the fourth-highest total of covid-19 cases of any state, with nearly 2,000 deaths, the protesters argued that Whitmer’s order is unnecessary and overly strict.

“It wasn’t really about the stay-at-home order at all,” Whitmer said later on MSNBC. “It was essentially a political rally.” . . . . some were wearing MAGA hats and carrying Trump signs, and Confederate flags appeared in the crowd (though I’m sure that was just about Michigan’s … um … heritage?). Similar though smaller protests have occurred in North Carolina and Ohio. After the Lansing protest, Fox News swung into action, praising the protest on multiple programs.  The unmistakable message being communicated is that stay-at-home orders are a leftist plot, and conservatives should be rejecting them. It’s all over right-wing media . . . . . The natural comparison to make with these efforts is the tea party eruption, and there are some points of similarity, including conservative media fanning the flames of anger and the overblown rhetoric about liberty . . . . But the more useful comparison is to Donald Trump’s election itself.

Specifically, the way Trump’s campaign was built on the anger of working-class white voters, especially men. . . . . grievances that were exploited by powerful forces on the right for their own political and economic ends. Those grievances were then channeled into an act — voting for Trump — that was primarily expressive in nature.

Liberals are quick to attribute the white working class’s support for Trump to racism and xenophobia, and there’s no doubt they played an absolutely critical role. But it’s impossible to ignore the fact that when Trump told voters in Rust Belt towns that the “the system” was rigged against them, they had reasons to think he was right.

Trump spoke directly to that dissatisfaction — then layered on top of it a heaping portion of hate directed at immigrants, minorities and liberals. Never mind that “draining the swamp” turned out to be more tax cuts for the wealthy and making it easier for corporations to exploit workers and befoul already-struggling communities.

The pain people are now feeling is even more acute. Twenty-two million Americans have filed for unemployment, wiping out a decade of job gains in weeks. In Michigan, roughly a quarter of the workforce is now unemployed, an absolutely stunning figure. None of us have seen anything like this in our lifetimes.

If you’re not sick and you don’t know anyone who has died, it’s natural to say, “Why are we doing this? Why can’t we go back to work?” Then along comes a bunch of Fox News hosts and conservative activists who tell you, “You’re absolutely right. You’re being forced to suffer needlessly. Those snooty liberals in their coastal cities who can comfortably work from home are just trying to screw you over.”

And once again, the solution being offered will only make things worse. Voting for Trump didn’t help people who live paycheck to paycheck, and defying stay-at-home orders will only give new life to the coronavirus, prolonging the pandemic and making it harder to recover economically.

But if Republicans can convince people that the only way to understand this crisis is through a partisan lens, they can tamp down difficult questions about Trump’s performance and minimize the political damage he’ll suffer, making it possible for him to win in the fall. That’s the goal, one they’re pursuing with all their usual cynicism — even as they fight against Democratic efforts to provide more support to those being hit hardest by the recession.

Could it work? Probably not, but it just might.

Part of America Is Still Forgotten Under Trump

To win election, Donald Trump made great promises of "Making America Great" again to the part of the America's populace that is often described as "forgotten."  In addition, Trump used open racism and religious extremism to play on the prejudices and insecurities of these so-called forgotten Americans. namely working class whites without a college education.  They took Trump's promises as true and by a narrow margin in three states they voted for Trump and handed him an Electoral College victory.  Trump still panders to racists and religious extremists, but the economy that he brags about has largely left them behind and some of his policies - think his self-created trade wars - have been financially devastating, especially to Mid-West farmers. As the 2020 presidential campaign ramps up, the question of the hour is whether these voters will realize that they have been played for fools and while Trump may fly in for his rallies (where he often stiffs the localities for expenses incurred), but meanwhile the economic death spiral for many continues - even as the wealthy have reaped a bonanza in increased wealth. A column in the New York Times looks at this reality seeming lost on those Trump has forgotten outside of his Nuremberg style rallies. Here are column excerpts:

Trump declared in his State of the Union address that “our economy is the best it has ever been.”

Put aside the Trumpian hyperbole, and it’s true that the economy is strong — and that this is critical to Trump’s chances for re-election.

Yet we live in two Americas, and there’s another side of the country that Trump didn’t mention — one that helped elect him but that he has neglected since. In the other America, suicide rates are at a record high in the post-World War II era, and more Americans die every two weeks from drugs, alcohol and suicide — “deaths of despair” — than died in 18 years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
 These deaths are symptoms of a larger economic malaise for working-class Americans that predates Trump. It’s not his fault, but neither has he tried seriously to address it; in some ways, especially in health care, he has worsened it.
 Important new research finds that 20 million Americans, particularly those with low levels of education, describe all 30 of the last 30 days as “bad mental health days.”

“These men and women report in effect that every day of life is a bad day,” said David G. Blanchflower, a Dartmouth economist who conducted the research. Blanchflower noted that self-reported happiness in America has continued to fall.

One-third of Americans say that they have been in pain “often” or “very often” in the last four weeks.  Some of the pain probably results from a lack of universal health care. Millions of Americans endure constant toothaches in a way that doesn’t happen in our peer countries.

In effect, we have a bifurcated economy, marked by prosperity for millions of Americans and by a Social Great Depression for millions of others.

It’s strange to make a comparison to the Great Depression, for output is surging. But consider the effect on mortality: Even during the Great Depression, life expectancy rose strongly, while in three of the last four years it fell because of deaths of despair.

We’re used to thinking of a depression as geographic, but this one is demographic. Working-class Americans, often defined as those without a college degree, are caught in a dust bowl.

“The crisis is almost invisible for those with a college degree,” noted Anne Case, a Princeton economist who is an author, with her husband, fellow-economist Angus Deaton, of an excellent book coming out this spring about deaths of despair.

It is these working-class Americans, white and black alike, who have seen earnings collapse, family structure disintegrate and mortality climb. These Americans are earning less on average, adjusted for inflation, than their counterparts back in the 1970s.

“Our story of deaths of despair is essentially a long-run account of destruction of the working class,” Deaton said.

In the 1930s, President Franklin Roosevelt worked hard to address the Depression with the New Deal. This time, Trump in some ways has exacerbated the pain — such as by chipping away at access to health care. Some 400,000 children have lost health insurance under Trump.

It’s true that unemployment has dropped . . . But Case says that even so, almost half of Americans aged 25 and over with only a high school diploma are no longer in the labor force.

Meanwhile, the central fact of America today is not its economic vigor but its profound inequity.

I noted that private wealth has increased by $800,000 per household. It’s similarly true that whenever Jeff Bezos walks into a room, average wealth there shoots up so that each person becomes, on average, a billionaire. Interesting, but not very meaningful.

  Of that $800,000 increase in wealth, very little - if any - is found in working class or middle class households.  No, instead, it has gone to the few top percentages of income households, thereby only increasing inequality. 

Why Pete Buttigieg Isn't Going Away

Republicans have one advantage over Democrats: their base is far less diverse and is united by its racism and religious extremism - plus a dose of severe greed among a significant portion of the wealthy. Democrats in contrast have a diverse base that often agrees on little with some elements easily manipulated and played for fools by Republicans and right wing religious leaders who cherry pick bible passages to induce low information voters (especially black voters) to either (i) vote for candidates that will further the GOP's white supremacist agenda, or (ii) stay home from the polls in a funk and by default cast a vote for anti-black Republicans.  A case in point: a recent Facebook exchange where a black male said he could never vote for Buttigieg since he is gay implying he'd stay home and allow white supremacist champion Donald Trump to be re-elected if it came down to that choice.  Talk about acting against one's own best interest.  Of course, this same individual demands that gays support his civil rights. This is but one example of the divisions within the Democrat base.

Where the Democrat nomination ultimately goes remains unknown, but one thing appears clear for now: Buttigieg is not going away any time soon.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the next phase of Buttigieg's unlikely campaign.  Here are highlights:

We’ve reached an odd moment in an odd Democratic-primary race. With less than 100 days until the Iowa caucuses, former Vice President Joe Biden is struggling to hang on to his lead in the polls and is short on cash. Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts is making some people nervous that she’ll be Hillary Clinton and George McGovern rolled into one, and that nominating her means throwing the election to Donald Trump. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is recovering from a heart attack, and some observers believe that he has reached his ceiling of support. And while many voters keep saying they haven’t made up their minds yet, 14 other candidates are trying to convince voters and themselves there’s still a way to pull it off.

And then there’s Buttigieg. Several top Democratic officials who are not backing any candidate, as well as some operatives who are, have told me in the past two weeks that there’s a spot for him, but that the nominee can’t be him. They say the same things: He’s too young, too inexperienced, and unable to draw support from African American voters. They worry about the question that keeps coming up in focus groups and that reporters are beginning to ask: whether he’s struggling to win people over because he’s gay.

In Rock Hill, South Carolina, last weekend, I asked people at a Buttigieg town hall whether they thought he was ready to do the job. “Have you ever listened to him speak? He’s got brains, he’s got class, he’s got poise,” Chuck McKinney, a retired carpenter who’d driven in from Lake Lure, North Carolina, told me.

This is the point in the 2008 race when Barack Obama began an ascent that never stopped. He broke out at the Iowa Democratic Party dinner in November 2007.

Buttigieg’s campaign has leaned into the Obama comparisons for a while. On Wednesday, his team sent an email to supporters from Larry Grisolano, a consultant who worked for Obama and has been on Buttigieg’s campaign since the summer: “Pete’s campaign this year is rekindling the same excitement I felt at this time in 2007,” he wrote.

And notice how Buttigieg delivers his big finale on the stump these days: “I know hope went out of style,” Buttigieg said in Rock Hill on Saturday. He asked the crowd: “Do you have a sense of hope to bring about change for our republic?”

He’s a young veteran and a polyglot from the Midwest talking about a record of accountable local government. He is strangely fit for this political moment, but he’s also fitting himself for it constantly.

But the core brilliance of Buttigieg’s campaign is making the carefully planned seem nonchalant, like he’s ambling when in fact he’s in the middle of a plié. Every sentence is precisely arranged, the words weighted, playing off ideas like faith and security and freedom. Operatives on other campaigns grumble that he’s a construction, a “celebrity” who wows reporters looking for the hot new thing, but it’s working.

When I asked how his whopping total of 19,506 votes between two mayoral races could actually win a presidential election, he called that “an exquisitely Washington mind-set.” When asked whether he’s the epitome of white, male privilege, he turns it back with, “When it comes to identity, I am very mindful of the privileges that go with being white and being male. I also have the experience of belonging to a category of people in America that would have been assumed to be effectively ineligible for the presidency.”

[T]here’s the latest line that he appears so eager to push, he hit it twice at the October Democratic debate and has repeated it at nearly every recent public appearance: “I want you to picture what it’s going to be like, what it’s actually going to feel like in this country, the first day the sun comes up after Donald Trump has been president,” he said on the debate stage in Ohio. “It starts out feeling like a happy thought; this particular brand of chaos and corruption will be over. But really think about where we’ll be: vulnerable, even more torn apart by politics than we are right now.”

All the more reason not to go with Buttigieg, his doubters say. . . . Aha! Buttigieg says: Now is his time. Now more than ever, in fact.

“Look, they blew everything up, which means that there is a chance to build something new and better on the rubble,” Buttigieg said. “I mean, not to over-dramatize it, but I think about areas where buildings have been destroyed in the world, and then architecture of a new kind flourishes.”

He was an intelligence officer stationed in Afghanistan; he rarely ventured outside the wire, and mostly guarded transports when he did. “My vehicle, to my knowledge, was never targeted,” Buttigieg said, already preparing to turn it into the point he’s making. “So I don’t go around acting like I was out in the Korangal Valley. I’m somebody who did my part. But I think it’s an important contrast to draw with somebody who avoided doing his part when it was his turn.”

Over the past few weeks, Buttigieg has not-so-subtly presented himself as a Biden alternative. Sitting in a coffee shop in Concord, New Hampshire, in April, Buttigieg told me he didn’t think going deep on policy was a priority. He brought up an economic-development plan he wrote when first running for mayor that he said maybe a dozen people actually read. In September, he released his “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan, which has a policy paper behind it, but is basically appealing wordplay to get a message to people who will never read the whole thing, which is most people: “I’m not for eliminating private plans,” he said, “so I’m glad that we found a way in a headline to explain it.”

“He’s got workable ideas,” says Sherre Kearn, who works for the state government in Columbia, South Carolina, and had driven up to Rock Hill to hold a big Buttigieg sign last weekend. She says she voted for Sanders in the 2016 primaries because of his focus on health care, but now she’s backing Buttigieg because she thinks he’s talking about practical solutions to health care.

Buttigieg has been accused mostly by Sanders and Warren supporters of tacking to the center in the past few weeks, with accusations that he came in bold when there was nothing to lose but now wants to come across as acceptable when winning is theoretically in sight.

He had $22 million on hand at the end of September, and the money keeps coming in, but he’s still a long way from first place, and always has been. And many political veterans believe that if somehow Buttigieg does make it to a two-way race with Warren, he won’t make it further than that, given his inability to attract the African American voters that would really make him the Biden alternative, given that they have been his backstop.

Buttigieg makes this next point because it’s self-serving, but it also happens to be true: Each of the four Democratic presidents since World War II (not counting the two who took over for dead men) were young and inexperienced: John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Obama. Candidates who get called “presidential,” Republican or Democrat, tend not to become president at all.

Trump has already made an issue of Buttigieg looking young enough to get carded, and never having done much. Buttigieg welcomes that.

“He might make it about age and experience, but fundamentally, that’s an argument about judgment and wisdom,” Buttigieg said. “And I think in a judgment and wisdom contest, this president’s on pretty shaky ground.”

He has another line he uses often, about how if there aren’t the kind of big changes he says his presidency would bring about, then the American experiment could unravel.
How close to the brink does he think we are?  “Closer than we think,” he said.

LA Times: Undoing the Great Mistake of 2016

In a reasoned main editorial The Los Angeles Times makes the case of why it is absolutely essential that Donald Trump be defeated in 2020 if he manages to avoid removal from office via impeachment thanks to Senate Republicans who have sold their souls to Trump and/or are as morally depraved as he is.  In the tussle to win the Democrat nomination, too many candidates seem to forget that "Medicare for All" and other policy pitches and differences pale in comparison to the most important goal: defeating Trump and hopefully many Republicans along with him.  Here in Virginia, in 16 days Virginians can fire the opening salvo in this repudiation of Trump and everything that he and the Republican Party have come to represent: open racism, religious extremism driven by hate, not the gospels, and, of course greed and envy.  Greed on the part of the wealthy and envy on the part of those who blame others for their poor life choices (including voting for Republicans who have consistently worked against their base's economic best interests and, of course the embrace of ignorance).  In its editorial, the LA Times is too kind to Trump voters, in my view, and says they were "hoodwinked" rather than face the reality that race, religious extremism, and greed and envy were the real motivations behind their votes.   That said, here are editorial highlights:

As the 2020 election approaches, the United States is deeply and bitterly polarized, shaken by acts of random and not-so-random violence, with wages still rising too slowly, income inequality continuing to increase and the American Dream feeling more and more out of reach for too many people. Despite low unemployment and a frothy stock market, voters feel a deep anxiety about the future and a dark anger at the political system.

With just a year to go before election day, global alliances are fraying as the U.S. turns inward. The culture wars are raging on campus and off. For only the fourth time in American history, a U.S. president is being investigated by the U.S. House of Representatives with an eye toward impeachment. Immigrants are being demonized and detained . . . .

Flitting above this chaotic landscape — fomenting, provoking, preening, spewing, tweeting, blustering and bullying — is President Donald Trump, the worst, most dangerous president in modern history.

All presidential elections are uniquely consequential, but a good case can be made that the next one is the most important of our lives. The time has come to undo the great mistake of 2016 and drive Trump out of office at the ballot box. It is time to pull our country out of the illiberal abyss into which it is sinking and put it on a path toward reason and fairness and empathy and constructive engagement with the world.

Voters need to keep their eyes on the prize: defeating Trump state by state, issue by issue, vote by vote in November of next year.

But stopping him is not going to be nearly as easy as common sense says it ought to be. The country is profoundly riven: More than 60 million Americans consciously chose this [narcissistic demagogue]  president over his opponent four years ago. And many voters remain entranced — hoodwinked, in our view — by his blunt, cocky, overpromising style. He may be coddling dictators, selling off the planet to oil, gas and mining interests, cynically stirring racial resentment and animosity toward immigrants, and provoking an angry trade war with a rising China, but his base remains steadily, stubbornly supportive.

Trump is temperamentally unsuited to be president . . . . Lies, threats and empty promises are his weapons of choice; enemies are mocked and belittled while the dumbly obedient are rewarded. Ignorant and incurious, unmoved by reasoned argument, contemptuous of laws and institutions, Trump is in thrall to exactly the special interests you would expect, he is schooled at the university of Fox News, he is on a constant search for adulation and short-term advantage. He must be defeated in November 2020.

[O]n two issues, we hope the [Democrat] candidates will agree: first, that the top priority has to be defeating the incumbent, who is too irresponsible to be allowed another term; and second, that his defeat is only a first step. Even before Trump was elected, the country was divided and the old system wasn’t working. Political paralysis was already on the rise well before November 2016 . . . Anyone who is not convinced of that should just remember the name Merrick Garland.

In this series we will seek to answer some basic questions: What is our brief against President Trump and why is it so important that he be defeated? . . . We’ll begin to look at some of the policy issues arising in the race, we’ll examine the battle between progressives and moderates, and we’ll consider the importance of race and racism in the election. For Californians in particular, whose policies are especially loathed by this president and who have so often felt the brunt of his disdain, this election is supremely important.

Now is no time to watch from the sidelines. Voters must become engaged, learn the issues, choose sides, speak out. Removing Donald Trump from office in November 2020 is absolutely essential — and yet it is by no means a sure thing. So do not sit this one out. Join in, and make America America again.

Trump must be defeated and/or removed from office by any means necessary.  Hopefully, the lazy and indifferent who stayed home and failed to vote in 2016 will not repeat their mistake and will make sure they go to the polls and cast their vote against Trump and Republicans in general.