Trump is getting more walls, but not the kind he wants

When Trump decided to send in his secret police to cities to confront demonstrators, it was clear that he thought there was political advantage for him to provoke conflicts between them and the protestors, that it would amplify his ‘law and order’ message, and that the sight of street clashes would result in people flocking to him. It is not clear that this is working and there are ominous indications for him that this may be a miscalculation.

As a candidate, Trump can appear to be cornered. Polling indicates that Americans think Trump is wrong about the street protests, they disapprove of his performance as president overall by more than 55% on average, and they disapprove of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic specifically by a whopping 60%.

But Trump has been cornered in the past, as when he was supposed to lose in 2016. Then as now, Trump lashed out on race.

Talking about crime in big cities “can be dog whistles for racial divisions” to Trump supporters, especially in the midwest, who as a group are older, more white and more rural than the average US voter, Azari said.

But emphasizing chaos in the streets is a questionable strategy for an incumbent president, she said. “For most swing voters, the question comes down to, ‘Are things good, are things not good?’ And I don’t see this story as being a really compelling way to reframe the situation as like, things are good’.”

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Female athletes take the lead in fight for social justice

In the fight for greater justice and against systemic racism, female athletes in the fields of soccer and basketball have gone further than their male counterparts in support of people like Colin Kaepernick, who was punished by the NFL for kneeling during the national anthem. The recent protests have emboldened more male football and baseball players to take a stand but some are trying to not offend Trump. In the opening game of the baseball season, players from both teams knelt before the game and made other gestures of support of the Black Lives Matter protests but then stood for the national anthem.
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Fighting the new forms of the poll tax

The history of suppressing the vote in the US is a long one. Initially these measures were aimed at preventing poor people from voting (since slaves could not vote anyway) but after emancipation, the Civil War, and the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 that said simply “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude”, the ruling class tried to find other ways to prevent poor people and now blacks from voting. Women were of course barred from voting in the US until 1920.
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Advice for Yoho and other boors like him: Don’t mess with AOC

I wrote before about Republican congressperson Ted Yoho’s appalling behavior towards Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and his pusillanimous non-apology on the floor of the House of Representatives. But you should really listen to all of AOC’s short speech because the excerpts or even the full transcript do not really do it justice. She shows how you can rebuke someone with grace and power and without resorting to foul language.

The most powerful moment for me was when she pointed out that when Yoho used that language towards her, he was giving permission to men to use that language against his own wife and daughter. So true.

You can read the responses to her speech in her Twitter feed.

Trump’s manifest insecurity about his cognitive abilities

Most people do not even think about whether they are cognitively impaired or not. It is only those who fear that there is a problem who may obsess about it. Seth Meyers looks at the way that Trump keeps boasting about the results of his ‘cognitive test’, a test that is not used to test how smart you are, as Trump seems to think, but to see if you are showing signs of dementia. (Note that he took this test back in 2018 and it was administered by his then White House personal physician Ronny Jackson who subsequently resigned amid allegations of misconduct and is now running for a Texas congressional seat on an ardently pro-Trump platform.)

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Trump bats 0 for 3 on Thursday

Yesterday was not a good day for Trump, which means it is a good day for the rest of us.

Trump finally caved to reality and canceled the big event in Jacksonville, Florida where hoped to receive the Republican party’s nomination before a huge adoring crowd. He had first, in a fit of pique, moved it from Charlotte, North Carolina when that city’s governor refused to lift restrictions on crowd sizes and insisted on safety precautions. Florida, with its Trump fanboy governor Ron DeSantis seemed to promise the kind of looseness he wanted.

But soon after, coronavirus cases in Florida started spiking and officials there started getting nervous. Even the Republican National Committee placed restrictions on the crowd size that would make the event look like the Tulsa, Oklahoma debacle with all the empty seats. Trump’s poll numbers in Florida are also sinking, with Biden opening up a huge lead in that state. So Trump’s decision to cancel was no surprise, though it must stick in his craw to back down.
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How and why the Mississippi flag got removed

Every state in the US has its own flag. The flag of Mississippi, adopted in 1894, was the only one that incorporated the confederate battle flag within it, in the top left. This has been a source of contention with many attempts to remove it, all meeting with failure. Mississippi is a deeply conservative Republican state. That party currently has supermajorities in both its house of representatives and the senate plus the governor is a Republican, all of whom strongly opposed any attempt to remove the confederate symbol. The people of Mississippi voted in a referendum 2001 to keep the flag as it was and the current governor Tate Reeves said that the only way to change it would be through another referendum. So proud were they of their confederate association that in just April of this year, the governor Tate Reeves proclaimed it as Confederate Heritage Month.
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Samantha Bee talks to Masha Gessen

Gessen, who came to the US from Russia and thus knows something about what an autocracy looks like, has long been very pessimistic about what is happening in the US. But they sees recent events such as the widespread protests as offering some signs of hope because many needed changes that would take ages in a time of stability have now become fast-tracked. Like me in my recent post, Gessen thinks that it is not enough that Trump loses in November but that he must lose bigly.

AOC does not let Yoho off the hook

Ted Yoho is a Republican member in the US House of Representatives and was known as a nasty piece of work even before the most recent incident where he used a slur against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

According to a reporter from The Hill, who overheard the initial remarks, Yoho came up to Ocasio-Cortez outside the House steps on Monday and sparked a conversation about her position on unemployment and crime in New York City. Yoho said she was “disgusting” and told her she is out of her mind, according to The Hill. Ocasio-Cortez said he was being rude, and Yoho said “f**king bitch” as he walked away.

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