[saddling up the Tauntaun to escape]
I’m had to cross-post this from the current cluster thread.
Remember when the felon complained about Democrats not standing in support? He lied about who did the killing. (The bolding is mine.)
Krugman used that song as the Musical Coda in today’s Substack (scroll to the bottom):
In general, I was pleased by the awfulness of the speech. It was clearly aimed at shoring up support among the 30%. However, those aren’t the voters he needs to win over. The smart move would have been to take a more conciliatory tone and try to appeal more to the folks that voted for him in 2024 (independents, Latinx, etc.) but have fallen off by droves if the polls are to be believed.
One could argue ‘yeah, but Trump isn’t running for office’. This, however, ignores how midterm elections are almost always a referendum on the Executive’s policies. Trump may have no desire to act conciliatory, but the GOP certainly does.
Yeah… I think that ship has sailed.
He wasn’t planning on winning over a single voter from the middle. He’s planning on rigging the election so Republicans can’t lose.
Yup. He wants to prevent blue areas from voting. Well or seriously discourage it.
Perfect segue to something in Heather Cox Richardson’s Substack re Texas Primaries yesterday.
…
But the Texas election also revealed Republicans’ attempts to suppress Democratic voting. Jen Rice of Democracy Docket explains that Texas voters used to be able to vote at any polling place in their county, but in Dallas and Williamson counties, the Republican Party chairs abandoned that system, making it harder for people to vote. Williamson County Republican Party chair Michelle Evans told KUT News in Austin that she could explain why they had made the change, “but at the end of the day, it’s because we can. It’s legal. It’s something we’re entitled to do, and it’s something that our party would like us to do.”The Texas secretary of state’s office didn’t provide voters in those counties with accurate information of where they should vote, creating chaos. Democratic Party chair Kardal Coleman in Dallas County and the Texas Civil Rights Project in Williamson County filed emergency petitions to give people more time to vote. A district court judge in Dallas ordered Democratic primary polls to stay open two additional hours, saying that “there has been mass confusion as to where…voters were entitled to cast their ballots on election day, and voter confusion was so severe that the Dallas County Election Department website crashed.” A Williamson County judge ordered two polling places to stay open until 10:00 PM.
Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, a Republican who is himself running for the same Senate seat Talarico is, challenged the order, and the Republican-dominated Texas Supreme Court blocked the lower court’s orders. It allowed people who were not in line by 7:00 PM—the original time for the polls to close—to cast ballots, but those ballots were separated from the rest and it is not clear they will be counted.
…
There will be plenty more of that stuff ahead.