Disagree strongly. Hard to get folk to look past food and housing prices. And the feeling that THEIR wages have not kept up with inflation.
Well over 20 years now that I’ve been unable to understand why blue collar folk believe Repubs have their interests at heart, or believe Dems are big spenders.
I think “criminal liar Trump” who wants to take away womens’ rights and wants to be a dictator weaponizing the Presidency is the best strategy.
Ha! Judge Cannon is a very inexperienced judge who also lacks relevant trial litigation experience in general, from her practitioner days. She was not really qualified when she was appointed, especially considering that she is one of only 2 judges in her judicial district.
She has issued multiple bizarre rulings in the case, and throwing the case out based on how Jack Smith was appointed also is an extreme outlier decision, at odds with other courts’ decisions on that issue. Then again, she was given a roadmap for it by Justice Thomas in the Trump immunity case, in which the appointment of the special prosecutor was not even at issue, but Thomas decided to write separately to explain a theory of how the appointment was unconstitutional.
The judge can also still, thankfully, be reversed. The special counsel is going to appeal. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has consistently, I think, sent her bizarre rulings back. But with Thomas’s concurrence being out there, I expect Trump will try to get the Supreme Court to take it if that happens. If nothing else, it will push the result out until after the election, most likely.
You think that (as do I), and hypothetically this should make Trump completely ineligible to even get nominated for any public office higher than dogcatcher but the reality is that there are clearly a thundering herd of people who either don’t believe or don’t care that Trump is corrupt, incompetent, and self-serving, nor that he has violated multiple federal laws which have sent a number of his close supplicants to prison and yet he still remains unencumbered by manacles and bars. At this point, it is clear that many American voters are openly embracing authoritarianism and would be delighted to vote a would-be dictator into office with no hint of irony in evidence.
Yeah, Cannon has made some pretty bizarre rulings. It is difficult to tell which are due to bias versus complete ineptitude but regardless she’s out of her depth. Kavanaugh (and of course Thomas) are just brazenly corrupt. Kavanaugh openly lied in his confirmation hearing, and Thomas’ perfidy has been well documented at this point.
Stranger
Exactly.
It’s a matter of degree (Trump walking off with more stuff, resisting its return and making a big stink about the investigation), but it’s hard to make documents klepto a big campaign issue. Too many voters would fall for “Yuh, Biden done it too”.
The fact that “find” is in scare quoted is confusing here. Do you mean, make it up? I hope not but I’m not sure how else to read them.
I don’t disagree that Trump is, at least in colloquial terms, a traitor. As such, it would be satisfying to see him indicted and tried for
that. But it’s a tough thing to do politically. We don’t know how to bring the unhinged Right back to reality, and the rhetoric they are hearing is the exact mirror image of what we are hearing.
So they believe Biden is trying to destroy democracy, that he’s the head of a crime family, that he’s evil and must be stopped by Trump, the true champion of democracy, etc. The difference from our point of view, of course, is that we have facts and evidence on our side, and they have neither–just rampant conspiracy theories and motivated reasoning. But they absolutely will see it as our side doing exactly what we know Trump wants to do, and what the Right is saying Biden or the Left wants to do. Trump should be treated like any other criminal and grifter out there, but it also plays directly into the Trump narrative in ways that could have really grave consequences.
Just to finish the thought, in case it wasn’t clear: What Thomas did is another thing that very seriously puts his independence in extreme doubt. It is not done for a judge to write separately to give an advisory opinion on something not at issue in the case, but will be useful to one of the parties in other cases. It’s really blatant bias. And of course the other justices will ignore it.
Why can’t it be both? I mean, if she wasn’t completely inept, she might have found less bizarre ways to throw the case.
No. I mean take a known piece of evidence and exploit the most damning possible conclusion about it.
Can’t be done, but this has nothing to do with them. Let them howl at the moon.
Any other criminal or grifter would already be in an orange jumpsuit.
I’m not worried about them howling at the moon. I’m legitimately worried about a civil war.
When you’re trapped in a room with an armed crazy person who thinks you’re a crazy person out to get them, you can’t just dismiss the crazy person’s perceptions of reality as wrong and ignore how they might see your actions or hear your words. Not if you want to make it out alive, anyway.
IMO, here’s the thing. Anyone who cares about whether Trump had classified documents that he shouldn’t have had, was negligent in how he stored them, lied about having them, and potentially shared the information with others, not only already knows these things, but is almost undoubtedly going to already be voting Democratic.
What I think is more important, and leverage-able, is this:
Harris (assuming it’s Harris) needs to hit hard on (a) acknowledging that, while the overall economy has actually been doing well, a lot of middle-class people don’t feel that way, for valid reasons, and (b) that she has a solid, specific plan on how to address it.
We may not like – even as we come to understand – what (apparently, illegitimately appointed) Special Counsel, Robert Hur, said about Biden’s potential ‘appearance of competency’ in a trial, but it’s worth noting what else Hur said in his Report:
“It is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump’s case and Mr. Biden’s are clear. Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, proven, would clearly establish not only Mr. Trump’s willfulness but also serious aggravating facts.”
"Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite According to the indictment, he not only refused to return documents for months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden alerted authorities, turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice in 2022 and 2023, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, permitted the seizure and review of handwritten notebooks he believed to be his personal property, and in numerous other ways cooperated with the investigation."
It’s the kind of nuance that’ll never land with the actual red-hats, but – as I often say – they aren’t the audience. Legitimately persuadable ‘undecideds’ are.
Also worth reminding that cohort …
One of the things about all of these conspiracy theories (eg, “Deep State,” corrupt DOJ/FBI) is how intricate and complex they are, and how many people would have to play difficult roles extremely well.
Ridiculously unlikely.
Occam’s Razor says, in effect, that “the simplest of competing theories [should] be preferred to the more complex …”
The simplest answer is that Trump is a criminal. That requires FAR less mental gymnastics, ignorance of facts, internal contradictions, and hypocrisy than any other theory.
The same audience can likely get their minds around that.
Yeah - but if folk are THAT ignorant, good luck schooling them on economics! I don’t think THOSE are the folk Harris ought to be trying to reach. (So long as she doesn’t call them deplorables!). 
As smarter folk than I have observed, if she were just (or in part) inept, where are the inept rulings against Trump’s interests?
Off Topic, Ignore
I don’t think the documents need to be a political issue per se (beyond Trump’s ability to claim anything and everything is political interference) but what I would like to know is where the US counter-intelligence community has been since 2016. Trump is openly, obviously someone on Russia’s “useful idiot” board and one would suppose that it shouldn’t take this long to isolate whoever is running him. Even if Trump successfully purged everyone at the CIA who had any information right up to Jan 20, 2021, the CIA still exists today and should have been able to build some of those sources back up. Alternately, they could have shared information with allied agencies like the Five Eyes to make sure that if Trump came through with the flamethrower, he wouldn’t get everything. So where are they? They should know what he stole and who he showed it to. They should know who slipped into Mar-a-Lago without being properly vetted. They should know where he has money he can’t explain is hidden away. Are they even trying?
Keep the battle lines simple (in no particular order)
There are so many side threads that should be disqualifying, but win the election by not throwing the kitchen sink at it. There is so much mud to throw, so keep it focused for the low information voters. High information voters already have picked their horse.
We already have this and again, no one made a big deal out of it. Trump met with Putin in an unrecorded meeting, 3 days later he requested a list of our spies around the world, and then a few weeks later those spies started dying at a suspiciously high rate. There’s a good chance you don’t even remember what I’m talking about because the republicans were so prolific in their evil, our media is so irresponsible, and the democrats so incompetent that what would’ve and should’ve been the greatest presidential scandal in history anytime prior to 2016, far bigger than watergate, what should have gotten the death penalty, was forgotten a week later.
I suspect you are right. I haven’t tried to decide whether your suggestions are the BEST message(s), but I agree that the Dems should make it simple, and just keep hammering that message in the locations where we need the votes. In the past, I have been frustrated by the Dems’ ineffective attempts to be reasonable and to “cover all of the bases.” Only to be defeated by troglodytes chanting, “but the emails” or some such.
This is exactly what I’m talking about (and yes, I remember it). It’s time to make a big deal out of it. There’s ample evidence that Trump is literally a traitor. The DOJ should move on it now because in a few months it will be too late.
I knew about the meeting. And that he made his translator destroy his notes.
Not heard a THING about the spy list. Thought it would not surprise me one bit.
Do you have any type of cite for this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/us/politics/cia-informants-killed-captured.html
Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants
Counterintelligence officials said in a top secret cable to all stations and bases around the world that too many of the people it recruits from other countries to spy for the U.S. are being lost.
Is there a site for Trump requesting a list of operatives?