Few People Believe Anything Trump Says-- Which Makes Campaigning Tougher Than It Was In 2016

 

Today the Topeka Capital-Journal, which endorsed Trump in 2016, decided to not make the same mistake again. They urge their readers to vote for Biden despite him being a Democrat: "He deserves your support anyway... In these difficult times, after four years of chaos and confusion, the United States needs a steady hand. We endorse Joe Biden as the next president."

Everyone knows that Kansas is a red state. We’ve reliably cast our votes for Republican presidential candidates for decades upon decades. But we’re also not a hopelessly partisan state. We have elected Democratic governors and U.S. representatives. We have elected many problem-solving moderate Republicans to the Statehouse.

That’s because we value the old-fashioned civic values and virtues. We value decency, the kind seen in legendary politicians like Nancy Landon Kassebaum and Bob Dole. We value watching out for our neighbors, no matter the color of their skin, their religion or their sexual orientation. We value putting in a hard day’s work. We value the opportunities this country has brought us, as we know that so many of us are immigrants.

In the person of incumbent President Donald Trump, we have someone profoundly indecent, accused of sexual assault by nearly 20 women and captured on tape bragging about it. We know he doesn’t look out for his neighbors, as he’s routinely insulted other nations who have traditionally been our strongest allies. As for putting in hard work, the president’s lengthy days watching cable news or golfing should suggest how little he’s interested in doing the traditional labors of president.

Finally, of course, Trump has been anti-immigrant. Not just in addressing illegal immigration, an issue about which reasonable people can disagree. But he has cut the numbers of refugees allowed in the United States and sought to decrease the numbers of those in the country through legal means.

This newspaper endorsed President Trump in 2016. At the time, under different ownership and in different circumstances, we understood the risks. But it seemed as though Trump’s no-nonsense persona and business record could shake up Washington, D.C., for the better.

The gamble didn’t work out.

I've pretty much stopped taking calls from a friend of mine. He's a classic nervous Nelly and just cannot accept that Trump is going to lose. Any crazy poll from Trafalgar (a GOP polling firm that accepts pay for sunny results from Republican clients) and he goes into hysterics. Any journalist looking for clicks by ginning up some far-fetched story about how Biden is going to lose because Hillary did, is aiming right at my friend. I'm too busy to talk him off his ledge any more. Maybe I should send him the level-headed piece Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey wrote for the Washington Post last night: Trump bets on a 2016 replay, but faces a changed landscape. It could calm him-- and perhaps you?-- down.

They wrote that Señor T "and his advisers are betting on a high-octane replay of the closing two weeks of his 2016 campaign, with nonstop travel for packed rallies filled with attacks on alleged Democratic corruption in a bid to reignite the outsider spirit that defied the polls once before. Despite health authorities discouraging his largely maskless outdoor events and an opponent who has maintained strong favorability ratings, Trump is urgently trying to reassemble the core elements of his 2016 upset win: news coverage of red-hatted spectacles, calls for a criminal investigation of his rival and the mischaracterization of allegedly leaked documents in the final stretch of the campaign."

That pointed out that four years ago some voters "may have been unsure what a Trump presidency would look like, and many were willing to gamble." This time, they know. Some are still buying into it but most aren't. The pandemic has exposed his incompetence and his disregard for the welfare and safety of anyone outside of some members of his immediate family. When he can get away with it, he still denies the pandemic is real. He "continues to dismiss coverage of the health crisis as a political tactic by his opponents to scare the American people. 'Turn on television, covid-19, covid-19, covid-19, covid-19, covid-19, covid-19. A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it,' Trump said at an event in Lumberton, N.C., on Saturday. 'By the way, on November 4th, you won’t hear about it anymore. It’s true.'"

And yet... On Friday-- a one-day record: 81,414 new cases, many in the heart of Trumpistan. The 15 worst hit states in the country, on a per capital basis, are all states where majorities voted for Trump in 2016 and all states where people are foolish enough to pay attention to his gaslighting about not wearing masks and not following the advice of public health experts:

• North Dakota- 49,496 cases per million residents
• South Dakota- 44,314 cases per million residents
• Mississippi- 38,670 cases per million residents
• Louisiana- 38,686 cases per million residents
• Alabama- 37,599 cases per million residents
• Iowa- 36,716 cases per million residents
• Florida- 36,253 cases per million residents
• Tennessee- 36,254 cases per million residents
• Arkansas- 35,163 cases per million residents
• Wisconsin- 34,035 cases per million residents
• Georgia- 33,052 cases per million residents
• South Carolina- 33,150 cases per million residents
• Idaho- 33,208 cases per million residents
• Nebraska- 32,980 cases per million residents
• Arizona- 32,720 cases per million residents

Yesterday, nearly as many-- 79,449, lower only because 3 states didn't report. So far 230,068 Americans have died from a disease that Trump constantly minimizes.

Trump is facing a very different kind of opponent than Clinton, who was broadly unpopular. Biden’s favorability has increased slightly since his August convention, according to multiple polls, while Trump’s lower favorability remains basically unchanged. Biden is viewed far more positively than Clinton, despite the tens of millions of dollars that have recently been spent to sully his reputation.

“In 2016, you had the unprecedented situation with both major-party nominees having a favorable rating that was significantly underwater,” said Democratic pollster Joel Benenson. “You also had an open seat. This is a referendum on Trump.”

Yet nostalgia for the last campaign remains a throughline of Trump’s stump speech. As he did with Clinton in 2016, Trump has argued that his opponent should be investigated and imprisoned. He compares the alleged laptop of Biden’s son Hunter to a laptop owned by the husband of a Clinton 2016 aide, which led to a late-campaign announcement by the FBI that some emails of the Democratic candidate had been uncovered.

“This is called the laptop from hell,” Trump said in a riff at a recent event in Arizona, discussing the device allegedly owned by Hunter, a fact that has not been confirmed by The Washington Post. “The only laptop that was almost as good, maybe worse, was the laptop of Anthony Weiner. Do you remember that? Ding, ding, ding, ding.”

Aides even sought to replicate the 2016 surprise of bringing accusers of Bill Clinton to meet the press before one of his debates with Hillary Clinton. But this time, the guest, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, did not attract as much attention, and Trump himself did not join the business partner for the appearance.

Trump's rallies are getting millions of dollars of publicity in earned (free) media in local markets, although some of it is like the national publicity: lies, COVID-spreading and more lies. The campaign operatives are frustrated that the rallies aren't generating any good national press the way they did in 2016. "Cable news networks in 2016," wrote Scherer and Dawsey, "carried Trump rallies with a certain breathlessness, sometimes showing the empty stage as the crowd awaited the candidate’s arrival. This time, they often decline to cover the spectacles live, while interviews, a key way for Trump to broadcast his message in 2016, have become far more confrontational as journalists pick through his record. Trump prematurely ended an interview this past week for CBS News’s 60 Minutes after objecting to questions from reporter Lesley Stahl. More broadly, Democratic voters in 2016 were badly divided, and many were complacent, with little doubt that Clinton would prevail. In contrast, Trump’s first term has largely unified the American left."

The overall goal [of Trump's ad campaign] is to argue to traditional Republicans who may have doubts about Trump that whatever the president’s flaws, Biden is a tax-and-spend liberal who would make life worse for many Americans.

The Biden campaign argues that Biden has been a moderate for a half-century in politics, and that voters will not buy into Trump’s portrait of him as a socialist.

“He has been forced to divest from making a case for himself and is instead resorting to even more wild-eyed, projection-based lies about Joe Biden that have failed him for months and that fact-checkers have already carved to pieces,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in response to the ads.

The Trump campaign is also in an even weaker relative position than in 2016 when it comes to money available for television ads. Over the four weeks ending Oct. 24, 2016, the Trump and Clinton campaigns were evenly matched on television, with Clinton spending about 8 percent more in total, according to Advertising Analytics.

This time, the two campaigns are much farther apart, with Biden’s campaign spending 2.3 times what Trump has spent over the past four weeks.

Trump's biggest problem is that people now know he's a compulsive liar. No one believes anything he says but his base (between 38-42% of the voters). So, no matter what he says, he isn't getting anything across. Instead... these guys (and no wonder Ivanka and Kushner-in-law want to sue them!)

A Sinking Ship-- Trump's-- Drags Down All Boats With It

 

Kansas is a very red state. In fact, the candidate Schumer recruited to run as a putative Democrat, Barbara Bollier is, in fact, a Republican. She served as a Republican in the state House from 2011 to 2017 and has been in the state Senate since 2016. At the very end of 2018, she switched parties, no doubt with Schumer promising her the U.S. Senate nomination. He forced former United States Attorney for Kansas Barry Grissom to drop out of the race and endorse her as soon as Bollier declared a few months later. A new GOP internal poll shows her beating Trump-aligned Republican Congressman Roger Marshall 45-42%.

The last time Kansas elected a Democrat to the Senate was an exceptional circumstance. Before he triggered the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover picked Kansas Senator Charlie Curtis to be his VP. After Hoover and Curtis were inaugurated, the governor, Clyde Reed, appointed ex-Gov. Henry Justin Allen as interim Senator. When Allen ran to complete the rest of Curtis' term 6 months later, the Republican Depression was in full swing and Allen was defeated (as was the GOP gubernatorial candidate). Democrat George McGill was elected and was reelected in 1932, the last time a Kansas Democrat was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Many voters in traditionally super-red areas think Trump is as bad as the Great Depression. He is losing millions of dependable Republican voters across the country-- and dragging Republicans down the toilet with him. In Kansas' case, Trump beat Hillary 671,018 (56.16%) to 427,005 (35.74%). This year, it's likely Biden will do significantly better than Hillary, though not better enough to win the state's 6 electoral votes. Bollier, an actual Republican just pretending to be a Democrat, could very well win the Senate seat. Why, you ask?

Yesterday, writing for the Washington Post, former top Republican political operative, Stuart Stevens wrote that Republicans have lied so much to constituents about Trump as he led the party to ruin that they are seen as his enablers. Many still have their heads up his ass-- although Stevens politely calls what they're doing as genuflecting. "As he turns his own covid-19 diagnosis into a reality TV show, mocking his administration’s own public health guidance, showing the Americans who have suffered that he doesn’t give a whit for their plight," wrote Stevens, "[t]hey know they’re defending the indefensible, and they know if the president were a Democrat, they wouldn’t hesitate to condemn him. With a straight face in Wednesday’s debate, Vice President Pence claimed, 'From the very first day, President Donald Trump has put the health of America first.'" Wednesday Kansas had 1,095 new cases, bringing the state total to 65,010-- 22,315 cases per million Kansans. And there were 17 more deaths reported, bringing the total to 723. Kansans who heard Pence on Wednesday night, knew he was full of shit and knew Trump had made very wrong decision that could me made during the pandemic. But, as Stevens wrote, Republican officials are "so used to this routine that co-signing Trump’s bad behavior is now habit and shooting straight is completely foreign."

Even after the party’s turn away from time-honored Republican principles, I couldn’t have imagined a party that would abandon any pretense of standing for conservative values, decency or common sense. Having spent four years defending their guy at every turn, they’re stuck. In for a penny, in for a pound: Republicans can’t tell the truth about Trump anymore. Even if they wanted to.


Many GOP candidates know they face near-impossible odds this year. Across the nation, every morning there are campaign team calls on which political professionals try to think of ways their bosses might escape impending electoral doom. I’ve been on calls like this more times than I’d care to remember, and I know they will take on an increasingly desperate tone as reality sinks in. In a week or two, it’ll be all gallows humor from here on out as they mask the pain. Even the normal conversations about where campaign staffers might go to unwind after the campaign will be abnormal: Paris? Nope. How about Serbia?

Their 2020 plans were shattered by a combination of incompetence and fate. What was intended to be an election celebrating a booming economy, waged against an opponent who could legitimately be tagged as a socialist, has turned into a defensive battle for Trump and Republicans: Trying to justify dramatic job losses and business failures against the backdrop of more than 210,000 Americans, so far, dying in a badly managed public health crisis. Instead of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), they drew former vice president Joe Biden, a man so unthreatening that even Trump, the master of nicknames, is reduced to calling him “sleepy”-- a snoozer of a put-down if there ever was one. In recent weeks, Biden’s polling lead has widened. Senate Republicans in once-safe seats are fighting to hang on. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-SC), running in a solid-red state, has been reduced to begging for money on Fox News. Five years ago, he accurately tagged Trump as a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” Now he’s Trump’s semiregular golf patsy.

Instead of covid-19 fading as an election issue, the pandemic has struck the president’s inner circle, a cluster of his family members, favorite White House staffers, his campaign manager, members of his debate prep team and the GOP chair.

...Every day Trump makes it worse: After his first debate with Biden, instead of focusing on jobs and the economy, campaigns had to scramble just to prove that their bosses weren’t fond of a group of thugs founded by the author of How to Piss in Public. After springing himself from a brief hospital stay, Trump’s tweets and videos ham-handedly and disrespectfully implied that those who have fallen to covid-19-- those who didn’t have a president’s access to experimental drugs and round-the-clock care-- are weak. He says he’s calling off coronavirus relief talks with congressional Democrats because he can’t get his way. (Art of the deal, right?) His staged White House return from Walter Reed military hospital created a gold mine for mockery, and I confess it was great fun to pan some of that gold.

Like Americans abroad who can’t speak the language, Republicans are saying the same thing they’ve been saying for at least four years, only louder. In his debate last week with challenger Jaime Harrison, Graham had the gall to babble that “the people running the Democratic Party today are nuts” at the same time that he’s trying to win reelection in a party headed by a man who suggested household disinfectant might cure covid-19.





With the exception of Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), no office-holding Republican with a national profile has even tried to establish an identity separate from Trump. With a combination of cowardice and convenience, Republicans went quietly into the night of Trump’s instability, grievances and immorality. Their occasional gestures at restraining the president-- I have very serious concerns. I wish he’d spend less time on Twitter-- are the stuff of late-night comedy. Their words have only served only to highlight their pathos. There could be no better metaphor for their fecklessness than justifying their enabling ways by touting the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. You think a Justice Barrett will save you, Republicans? You couldn’t even get through her Rose Garden ceremony without a coronavirus outbreak.

Republicans should start telling the truth. They should go in front of the cameras and say what the public knows just from living their daily lives: Trump has failed on covid-19. We need a national strategy. Give me a second chance. I was wrong to put my faith in the president. They should take some responsibility. But you can’t really say you’re quitting drinking while ordering another round at the bar.

So why won’t they? Call it the flight, flee or freeze syndrome wired into our DNA. Most politicians call themselves “fighters,” but in truth, almost all of them are starved for approval. These Republicans would cut and run, but where would they go? On the Trump battlefield, there’s no safe zone. So, they freeze, hoping something will magically save them.

The few Republican consultants who still talk to me begin most conversations with: “What a terrible year,” like farmers who’ve been hit by drought. Behind the scenes, that’s the mood. Everyone sees where we’re headed. No one dares challenge their king.

On Wednesday Greg Sargent, also for The Post, wrote that "When you step back and survey the last two years of U.S. politics, one of the biggest story lines that comes into view is this: One after another, a whole string of deeply corrupt schemes that President Trump has hatched to smooth his reelection hopes have crashed and burned. In all these cases, Trump has either blown up the schemes himself or compounded the damage they did to him when they self-destructed. In some cases he did both... When you view these things in one place, the true scale of Trump’s commitment to winning the election through corrupt means becomes a lot more striking. And, since many of them are doing great damage to the country, his sheer destructiveness also comes into much sharper relief."

And now even sports-prognosticators who think they know more about politics than they do-- and who just a few short months ago were arguing among themselves about how the GOP would probably not win enough seats to win back the House majority-- are on the cusp of admitting that the anti-Trump/anti-GOP wave is going to destroy dozens of Republicans' careers. And it's only early October. Yesterday, Cook, Sabato and Silver all seemed to wake up-- somewhat stunned-- to what's happening to the GOP as it crumbles and starts fall apart. By November 4th or 5th they will all have it-- or most of it-- right.

Mainstream Republicans Are Starting To Desert The Trump Death Cult-- At Least When It Comes To Their Psychotic War Against Mask-Wearing

Ugly Nazi/GOP propaganda in Kansas-- July, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has been no walk in the park for Kansas-- but it has been worse for all of Kansas' immediate neighbors. As of Saturday, 283 Kansans have died of COVID-19. That's 97 deaths per million residents of the state. Their four neighbors, though, fared worse:

• Colorado- 1,701 deaths-- 295 deaths per million Coloradans
• Missouri- 1,073 deaths-- 175 deaths per million Missourans
• Nebraska- 284 deaths-- 147 deaths per million Nebraskans
• Oklahoma- 398 deaths-- 101 deaths per million Oklahomans

On Saturday, Kansas had 49 new cases. Their neighbors all had more-- Colorado (254 new cases), Missouri (459 new cases), Nebraska (167 new cases), and Oklahoma (580 new cases). Kansas' governor-- despite sabotage from her state's Republican-controlled legislature-- has done a decent job of following the public health protocols for dealing with the pandemic-- the opposite of the crackpot ideologues in Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska, all of whom have dared the coronavirus to come to their states (which it did).

The governor, Laura Kelly, is a Democrat in a red state. In 2016, Kansas voted for Trump 656,009 (57.2%) to 414,788 (36.2%). Trump won 103 of Kansas' 105 counties. And one of the worst was tiny Anderson County in the east central part of the state, where Trump beat Hillary 2,386 (72.8%) to 665 (20.3%). The last Democratic candidate to carry Anderson County was Jimmy Carter in 1976. Two years later the GOP nominated neo-fascist crackpot Kris Kobach, who had Trump's enthusiastic support. Kansans rejected Kobach's racism and bigotry and elected Kelly governor, 506,509 (48%) to 453,030 (43%). Anderson County, though, was Nazi country and voted overwhelmingly for the fascist. Kobach won the county 1,596 (57.7%) to 957 (34.6%).

Anderson County doesn't have an official Nazi Party and does not publish the Völkischer Beobachter, but the Republican Party and the Anderson County Review, the newspaper owned by Dane Hicks, the chairman of the Anderson County GOP, serves the same purpose. On Friday their website published a blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon conflating Kelly's mask mandate with the Holocaust (up top). "Lockdown Laura says: Put on your mask," wrote Hicks,… "and step onto the cattle car."

News coverage has been national because Hicks and his paper and his party have been enabled by Trump's anti-mask death cult hysteria and idiocy. Extremist Republicans like Hicks are claiming that measures like social distancing and mandated masks are taking away some imagined constitutional rights-- presumably that imaginary constitutional right to spread disease and death. Kansas Democratic Party Executive Director Ben Meers: "Not only is Mr. Hicks’ graphic extremely offensive, nonsensical and out of touch with the values of hardworking Kansans, it endangers public health of our entire state during an unprecedented global health crisis. Across the country, Republican and Democratic governors have issued executive orders to encourage collective mask wearing because it is an easy and effective way to prevent our communities from contracting COVID-19."

The split inside the GOP between the more mainstream conservatives and the outright neo-fascists has taken hold in the argument about masks during the pandemic. It's ma be hard for normal people understand but it really is about the Trump Death Cult. San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Michael Smolens tried explaining it on Sunday: GOP leaders embrace masks following reports of economic, health and political benefits of wearing them. "Congressional Republicans put out a clear message last week: Face masks are OK. You should wear one. The concerted effort, reluctantly joined by President Donald Trump, should ease the partisan tension, if not end it, over face masks in the battle to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus."

Hopefully, that will do the same for the larger philosophical struggle that frames the dispute, one that has been at the center of American culture and history since the nation’s founding-- individual choice and liberty vs. collective freedom and security.

Striking a balance in that constant conflict isn’t easy, and sometimes is downright impossible. When it’s an either/or situation-- as it seems with wearing a face mask-- whose rights matter more?

Increasingly, research has shown the simple act of wearing a facial covering when coming into contact with other people saves lives and helps the economy. The pendulum has long swung in favor of wearing masks. And while polls have shown growing majorities of both Democrats and Republicans doing so, there continues to be a sizable gap between the two, with the latter less enthusiastic.

Not wearing a mask is seen as a political statement for many-- an individual symbol of opposition to perceived overbearing government edicts. That was a dominant narrative in the media when protesters were rebelling against earlier stay-at-home orders and business closures.

Sometimes it appears there’s not such deep thinking behind the choice, but more of a devil-may-care attitude, unaware of or ignoring what may be best for the greater good.

As the coronavirus spread has become worse, concern and anger among the larger populace-- notably including front-line health care workers-- have come to the fore.

Terry Taylor, patient care manager at Scripps Mercy Hospital Chula Vista’s intensive care unit, has little patience with people who say requiring them to wear face masks infringes on their personal rights.

“Wearing a mask, I think, is a minimal ask of anybody,” Taylor told Paul Sisson of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “It’s a violation of human rights to expose somebody who is not going to be able to survive this COVID.”

Perhaps this new bipartisan support behind the overwhelming consensus of health experts that wearing masks is essential will cause the pendulum to swing farther in that direction-- that, and the unfortunate fact that young people, who initially were relatively unaffected by the virus, are now becoming ill in alarming numbers.

It would be nice if the motivation driving this shift was solely concern for the public’s health and welfare, but there’s more to it than that.

While many Republicans have taken the coronavirus seriously from the start, others exhibited indifference or worse, seemingly taking comfort that it was a regional matter that didn’t affect their political territory very much. This is when Democratic strongholds such as New York City and other major cities were being hit hard by the disease.

That, of course, has changed dramatically, as Politico noted last week week:

“On the pandemic’s first peak in early April, the states that voted for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton accounted for 67 percent of new Covid-19 cases. For the newest peak, which we’re still climbing, the states that voted for President Donald Trump have an even larger share: They accounted for 73 percent of new cases on June 28.”

Then Goldman-Sachs released a study concluding that a national face mask mandate could help the United States avoid a 5 percent drop in gross domestic product “without suffering the public health consequences of a viral resurgence,” according to The Observer.

Greater use of masks would allow businesses to open more rapidly and recoup more losses from the shutdown.

Economists for the investment bank figured that a national mandate would increase the percentage of people who wear face coverings by 15 percent, The Observer reported, and reduce the daily growth rate of COVID-19 cases from the current 1.6 percent to 0.6 percent.

Trump has not suggested a national mandate is in the cards, but publicly has changed his view on facial coverings.

“I’m all for masks,” he said on Wednesday, adding that he has worn one occasionally. "... I sort of liked the way I looked. It was OK.”

The public has not yet seen the president wearing a mask, however. Republican lawmakers have urged him to do so, saying that would encourage more people to wear them as well.

Trump, whose stewardship of the economy has been central to his re-election campaign, no doubt knows what Goldman-Sachs had to say.

About two dozen states have some form of a mask mandate. On Thursday, Republican stronghold Texas instituted a mask requirement in most counties as coronavirus cases continued to spike throughout the state.

Above all of those considerations should be this: Wearing masks saves lives. Various research has shown that. As of Friday, nearly 130,000 people had died in the U.S. from COVID-19.

A coronavirus model created by the University of Washington says 33,000 lives could be saved by Oct. 1 if 95 percent of the U.S. population wore face masks in public. Current projections suggest more than 179,000 people could die from COVID-19 by then. University researchers say that would fall to 146,000 with near-universal mask-wearing.




Those are big political, economic and life-saving numbers. Even if they’re off a bit, they make it difficult to continue arguing against wearing a mask.

Increasingly, masks are being compared with automobile seat belts, which became mandatory in cars in the late 1960s, and in subsequent years all states except New Hampshire required their use. At the outset, many people adamantly resisted, contending it was an infringement on their rights.

The rate of seat-belt use now hovers at just over 90 percent, according to the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency.

“In 2017 alone, seat belts saved an estimated 14,955 lives and could have saved an additional 2,549 people if they had been wearing seat belts,” NHTSA says.

“The consequences of not wearing, or improperly wearing, a seat belt are clear.”

Some advocates for facial coverings have been making this argument: Like masks, seat belts don’t guarantee your safety, but give you much better odds of surviving an accident or avoiding more serious injury.

One big difference: Masks also help protect other people.

Writing for Psychology Today in May, Doctors Raj Persaud, and Peter Bruggen, noted that "Our brains may be biased to detect faces because the error of missing a face in the undergrowth, when it really is there, but hiding, could have cost your tribe members their lives, back in the day of routine raids in our ancestral environments. Perceptual "filling in" of the missing bits not visible, may save your life. Evolutionary pressure explains why we are programmed to lock on to faces in our environment, and to process the mental state of people around us, by analyzing their facial expressions. There is clear survival value in noticing from a frown that someone is getting angry with us, long before they throw a spear, or dump us as lovers. Our brains even make decisions about how attractive another person's face is within around 13 thousanths of a second, processing so fast that it occurs below conscious awareness. How will protective face masks worn during a pandemic impact these fundamental psychological processes of person perception? A recent study entitled, 'Face perception loves a challenge: Less information sparks more attraction,' found that hiding half the face significantly increased its attractiveness to observers."

OK, whatever it takes. I, for one, feel like a mask makes me look way sexier, right?

Kansas Anymore?

You know what would be amazing? That Trump winds up being so toxic that he even manages to lose the Kansas Senate seat for the Republicans! I know, I know... it's impossible. Actually it is-- literally-- impossible since even if the Schumer candidate, Barbara Bollier, wins, it's still a Republican in the seat. (A few months ago, she switched parties, although certainly not her ideology, but... good enough for Schumer.) Pat Roberts is retiring and the seat is open and-- that aside-- Kansas has elected Democrats in the past-- although only one after senators started being elected by popular vote rather than by state legislatures. That one time Kansas elected a Democratic freshman was in 1930 when George McGill won after Charles Curtis resigned to become Herbert Hoover's vice president.

But a newly released poll of registered voters in Kansas by Civiqs, shows the Kansas Senate contest all tied up-- quasi-Democrat Barbara Bollier beating neo-fascist Kris Kobach 42-41%, losing to establishment Republican Roger Marshall 41-42% and beating establishment Republican Bob Hamilton 41-40%. The same poll, but of Republicans only, indicates that Bollier will probably get her wish to take on Kobach:

• Kobach- 35%
• Marshall- 26%
• Hamilton- 15%

In 1960 Kansas voted for Nixon over JFK, 561,474 (60.5%) to 363,213 (39.1%). In 1968, Kansas would have given Nixon an even bigger percentage but George Wallace was running so it was Nixon 54.8% to Humphrey 34.7% and Wallace 10.2%. Four years later, you can probably imagine the Kansas landslide to reelect Nixon, right? 67.7% to 29,5% for George McGovern. "Trump," wrote David Frum yesterday, "is no Richard Nixon." That's true, even Kansans know the difference. They only gave Trump 56.2% against Hillary. But's that's not exactly what Frum had mind. "As riots and looting have disordered cities across the United States, many have speculated," he wrote, "that the troubles could help reelect President Donald Trump. The speculation is based on analogy. American cities were swept by riots in the mid-1960s, and then, in 1968, Richard Nixon campaigned on a pledge of “law and order” and won the presidency. As it was then, so it will be now-- or so the punditry goes. The riots of 2020 may or may not help Donald Trump. The analogy to 1968, however, misunderstands both the politics of that traumatic year, and the success of Richard Nixon. One thing to remember about the presidential election of 1968 is that it was a three-way race. Nixon ran not only against the Democratic nominee, Hubert Humphrey, a liberal stalwart with a long civil-rights record, but also against the outright segregationist George Wallace, governor of Alabama. Wallace would ultimately collect 8.6 percent of the popular vote and win five states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Facing those two rivals allowed Nixon to run as the candidate of the middle way, committed both to civil rights and to public order." But, yeah, Wallace did better in Kansas... of course.

Today, we know the Nixon of the secret tapes: crude, amoral, often bigoted. The public Nixon of 1968, however, behaved with the dignity and decorum Americans then expected in a president. Trump in 2020 occupies the place not of Nixon, but of Daley and George Wallace: Trump is the force of disorder that is frightening American voters into seeking a healing candidate-- not the candidate of healing who can restore a fair and just public order.





The irony, of course, is that at the same time that Trump tweets bloodthirsty threats, he has turned off the White House lights and cowered in the bunker below. He joins noisy bluster to visible weakness-- exactly the opposite of the Nixon formula in 1968. Trump will not repeat Nixon’s success in 1968, because he does not understand that success. Nixon joined his vow of order to a promise of peace at home and abroad. Trump offers only conflict, and he offers no way out of conflict, because-- unlike Nixon in 1968-- Trump is himself the cause of so much conflict.”

If Trump seeks historical parallels for his reelection campaign, here’s one that is much more apt. There was a campaign in which the party of the president presided over a deadly pandemic at the same time as a savage depression and a nationwide spasm of bloody urban racial violence. The year was 1920. The party in power through these troubles went on to suffer the worst defeat in U.S. presidential history, a loss by a margin of 26 points in the popular vote. The triumphant challenger, Warren Harding, was not some charismatic superhero of a candidate. He didn’t need to be. In 2020 as in 1920, the party of the president is running on the slogan Let us fix the mess we made. It didn’t work then. It’s unlikely to work now.

The L.A. Times published an editorial at 3AM yesterday about Trump poring oil on the flames. He's overtly calling himself "your president of law and order" and threatening to send the military into American cities. The Times labeled that another demonstration "that he has little understanding of why Americans have taken to the streets [and] reinforced the impression that he sees the current crisis as an opportunity for him to score political points in an election year with a new iteration of his 2016 claim that 'I alone can fix it.'... A different president would have been able to credibly lament that lawlessness, and call for measures to deal with it, with no one suspecting ulterior motives. Trump has forfeited any such benefit of the doubt. In his remarks on Monday, as in previous comments, he expressed sympathy for George Floyd, whose death led to a murder charge against the former Minneapolis police officer shown kneeling on Floyd’s neck in a video that went viral. But Trump consistently has failed to recognize that Floyd’s death was the latest example of a pattern of police violence against African American men that in turn is a manifestation of entrenched and pervasive racism."

Will Trump's Fascist Attorney General Prosecute Kansas Governor Laura Kelly For Taking Away Church-Goers Right To Spread The Coronavirus Yesterday?

Nancy Ohanian envisions Trump celebrating Easter Sunday

Kansas is one hella red state. The last time the state voted for a Democrats was in 1964. In 2016, Hillary won just 35.7% of the vote. The 40-member state Senate has 29 Republicans and 11 Democrats and the state House consists of 84 Republicans and 41 Dems. But in 2018, Kansans got lucky-- luckier than anyone could have imagined. Democratic state Senator Laura Kelly ran for governor and the GOP's mainstream candidate was defeated in the primary by neo-Nazi Kris Kobach. Enough Kansans had had enough Kobach to swing the election to Kelly-- 489,337 (47.8%) to 443,346 (43.3%).

A lot of Kansans were not exposed to COVID-19 yesterday because of that election. Kelly was late to institute social distancing rules to hinder the spread of the pandemic in her state but unlike so many Republican governors in states as red as hers, she finally did it and did not include an exemption for churches. The Republicans in the state legislature went insane and reversed her order, with crackpot Republican Death Cult Attorney General Derek Schmidt claiming Kelly's oder violated the state constitution. Schmidt told law enforcement not to enforce Kelly's order.

On Saturday, as the religionist arm of the Republican Death Cult prepared to lure thousands of congregants into churches-- one of the most effective ways to spread the contagion-- the state Supreme Court, at Kelly's request, struck down the Republican efforts to override her order. The Court-- meeting via video chat-- unanimously ruled that the legislative council does not have the authority to overturn the governors order and that her ban of gatherings with more than 10 people would stand.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported that one Republican Death Cult leader, "Pastor Aaron Harris, of Calvary Baptist Church in Junction City, said the high court’s decision doesn’t 'validate the governor’s order,' which carries the full force of law. 'The legislative council may not have had legal authority to revoke it, but it is still unconstitutional,' Harris said. 'We’ll be having services tomorrow. I hope and pray that our local LE will respect the constitution.'"

Needless to say, Harris isn't the only sociopath eager to spread the disease. The NY Times reported that, even with Trump urging people to celebrate Easter virtually, "a small number of renegade pastors are pressing on with in-person church services, defying stay-at-home orders and the guidance from health officials.

A pastor in Louisiana has boasted that his church would have a crowd of up to 2,000 worshipers. A pastor in Jackson, Miss., has organized an in-person service, but said he would disperse it if the police show up.

Restrictions on mass gatherings have frustrated a small number of religious conservatives, who see the rules as attempts to limit Christian practice. In Kentucky on Saturday, a federal judge blocked Mayor Greg Fischer of Louisville from restricting drive-in church services, noting that drive-in liquor stores were still open.

The Supreme Court of Kansas ruled late Saturday night to uphold Gov. Laura Kelly’s order limiting the size of church services on Easter Sunday to 10 people. Republican legislators had argued that the order restricted their constitutional freedom.

The governors of Florida and Texas have exempted religious services from stay-at-home orders. In Kentucky, mass gatherings over Easter weekend are permitted, but anyone who participates must quarantine for 14 days. To enforce this, the state will record the license plates outside large gatherings, Gov. Andy Beshear said.

The Department of Justice may take action against state and local leaders who have specifically restricted in-person gatherings. Attorney General William P. Barr is “monitoring” government regulation of religious services, a Department of Justice spokeswoman said in a tweet on Saturday night.

“While social distancing policies are appropriate during this emergency, they must be applied evenhandedlyand not single out religious orgs,” the spokeswoman, Kerri Kupec, said. “Expect action from DOJ next week.”

Crackpot Republican Asa Hutchinson Is On A Killing Spree In Arkansas

I first heard about Asa Hutchinson, now governor of Arkansas. in 1986 when he ran for the U.S. Senate against Dale Bumpers. Bumpers, a moderate Democrat, pulverized the radical right Hutchinson, winning all but 6 of Arkansas' 75 counties in a 433,122 (62.3%) to 262,313 (37.7%) rout. Ten years later, Hutchinson's brother, Tim, left his congressional seat open to run for the Senate. The two brothers both won their races. He was reelected twice-- the Democrats not running candidates against him-- and in 1998 served as an impeachment manager against Bill Clinton. He left Congress in 2001 after Bush appointed him to run the Drug Enforcement Administration and then the Border and Transportation Security Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security. When he returned to Arkansas he jumped back into electoral politics and was immediately defeated when he ran for governor in 2006 by Democrat Mike Beebe.

He ran again in 2014 and won and was reelected in 2018. He's generally been considered one of the most far right extremist of any governor in America. And this week he showed why again. Every county the state has coronavirus cases and statewide there are around 1,000 confirmed cases, the most in Pulaski, Jefferson, Cleburne, Crittenden, Faulkner and Garland counties. Hutchinson is one of the right-wing nut-jobs who has refused to impose stay-at-home orders but he decided to go further than the other right-wing nut-jobs. On Tuesday, Hutchinson told mayors of cities that did impose stay-at-home orders that they are out of bounds and have no authority to do any such thing, likely condemning thousands in Arkansas to death.

He spoke at a news conference with Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott Jr., who said he had asked the governor to impose such an order on the capital city.

"I've had discussions with a number of different mayors, and I think it points to the need to have a statewide policy," Hutchinson said when asked if other mayors had made similar requests.

"If you have a business in one community, it impacts others."

He spoke just after officials announced the deaths of two more Arkansans from the coronavirus, raising its death toll in the state to 18.

The number of identified cases rose by 70, to 997.

In the health emergency declaration that Hutchinson issued on March 11, the day the state's first case was discovered, the Republican governor barred cities and counties from issuing "quarantine regulations of commerce or travel" except "by authority of the Secretary of Health."

Another executive order Hutchinson issued Saturday clarifies that cities and counties can take "reasonable measures" to limit the virus's spread by closing parks and facilities and imposing curfews, as long as they don't prevent people from getting to work, acquiring food and other necessities, walking pets or exercising while staying at least 6 feet away from other people.

"We have given them additional discretion in terms of curfews, but we want that coordinated with my office so that we're all on the same path," Hutchinson said Tuesday.

"We have discussions on this. Sometimes there's agreement, sometimes there's disagreement, but that's what brings us success and lets us work through this together."

Scott said he speaks to Hutchinson at least once a day if not twice.

"From the city of Little Rock's perspective yes, I believe that is what's best for Little Rock," Scott said of a stay-at-home order. "But that may not be what is best for Fort Smith.

"And so as mayor of the city, that's something that we desire; however, we are working within the confines of the current laws and great partnership with the governor."

We'll watch Arkansas closely from here on and see if Governor Hutchinson's gamble with the lives of his state's citizens works or not.

UPDATE: Kansas Republicans Too

So not just crazy Hutchinson. The Republican leaders of Kansas' legislature are also excited to see how many Kansans they can kill. So far there are only 1,046 confirmed cases and 38 deaths in Kansas, most of them in Johnson, Wyandotte and Sedgewick counties. Kansans elected a Democratic governor but unfortunately leaving the right-wing crazies in charge of the state legislature so... yesterday they overturned her executive order limiting attendance at church gatherings. Do you doubt that the GOP really is a death cult?

DC Is a Fetid Cesspool Of Anti-Democracy Corruption-- Whether We're Talking About Cheri Bustos (D) or Moscow Mitch (R)... Same Garbage

real picture of two fascists

This week AP reporter John Hanna reported how McConnell is moving to deny Kansas Republicans the opportunity to pick their own Senate nominee this year, basically using the same anti-democracy tactics that Schumer uses with the DSCC and that Cheri Bustos uses in the House.

I'm no fan of Kansas racist and neo-Nazi Kris Kobach but he's the best representative of what Kansas Republicans are all about regardless of what McConnell's calculus for staying in power is all about. There are plenty of decent people in Kansas. In fact, I never met a Kansan I didn't like and respect. But the dominant wing of the Kansas Republican Party is a different species altogether. And McConnell knows it-- and is willing to take them on. Once Mike Pompeo-- a far right, Koch-owned theocrat and Trump loyalist who imagines himself as a future president-- announced last week he isn't going to run for the empty U.S. Senate seat, McConnell almost had a heart attack.

Schumer has already recruited a mainstream conservative Republican, state Senator Barbara Bollier, a recent convert to the Democratic Party, although not to anything it stands for. But there are at least a dozen Republicans seeking the seat, including, of course, Kobach, whose racism, xenophobia and fascist tendencies are very popular among Republicans but less so among normal Kansans. In 2018 Kobach won the Republican gubernatorial primary against GOP incumbent Jeff Colyer by just 343 votes-- 128,549 (40.62%) to 128,204 (40.51%). With independents and some mainstream Republicans backing her, Democrat Laura Kelly beat him in the general election 506,727 (48.0%) to 453,645 (43.0%).

Nor is that the first time an election played out that way for Kobach. In 2004, he won the Republican nomination for Congress in the 3rd district (by just 0.3%) and then went on to lose the general election to a Democrat by more than 11 points. McConnell is petrified that that's what will happen again, endangering his own job as majority leader. So he may get behind a not very well known congressman, Roger Marshall, as a replacement candidate for Pompeo.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee questioned Kobach’s ability to win a general election when he announced his candidacy last summer.

And Scott Reed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief political strategist, who ran Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, said, “We continue to think Kobach is a loser.”

Some Republicans want to winnow the field by urging candidates at the back of the field to drop out. Kelly Arnold, another former state GOP chairman, said if candidates can’t conduct effective fundraising, “it’s time for them to get out.”

Kobach said Tuesday that his independence bothers the Republican establishment-- including U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell-- and led it to woo Pompeo. His supporters argue that with Trump on the ballot in November, fears of losing the Kansas seat are misplaced.

“We’re seeing a race where conservatives are lining up behind me,” Kobach said.

Kobach also believes his background is an asset with tensions high in the Middle East. At the Justice Department, he helped develop a system that forced more than 80,000 foreign residents to register with the U.S. government so that it could know why they were there for security reasons. Widely derided by civil rights groups, it was abandoned in 2011 by President Barack Obama’s administration.

Marshall spokesman Eric Pahls said the congressman’s seven years in the Army Reserve are more crucial.

“Kansans want to know there’s someone with military experience helping to make these decisions,” he said.

But Bob Beatty, a Washburn University of Topeka political scientist, said Kobach has built a reputation among Republicans as “someone who doesn’t back down.”

“A foreign policy crisis is going to bring out more conservative voters,” Beatty said.

The leading Democratic candidate is state Sen. Barbara Bollier, a retired Kansas City-area anesthesiologist who made national headlines by switching from the GOP at the end of 2018. She has endorsements from Kelly and former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former two-term Democratic governor, and she already is pursuing moderate voters.

Bollier’s campaign announced Tuesday that she’s raised more than $1 million over the past three months-- a sizable amount in a low-cost media state like Kansas.

But Marshall began his race with a sizeable balance from his House campaign and entered the final three months of 2019 with nearly $1.9 million in cash. That was twice as much as the combined total of his main GOP rivals, Kobach, Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle and Dave Lindstrom, a Kansas City-area businessman and ex-Kansas City Chiefs professional football player.

The U.S. Chamber helped Marshall win his congressional seat in 2016 by defeating tea party firebrand Rep. Tim Huelskamp. Reed said they’re considering helping him in the Senate race and the “onus is on him” to show he can win the nomination.

Marshall launched his first television ad before Christmas, describing himself as a foe to “Trump haters and their phony impeachment.”

Yet Marshall hasn’t yet convinced some Republicans. Shallenburger sees his pro-Trump statements as “pandering” and says his ouster of Huelskamp has him perceived as a moderate, despite a conservative voting record.

Kobach is better known and, to some conservatives, just more exciting. University of Kansas political scientist Patrick Miller said Kobach excels “at the theater” of politics, while Marshall seems “vanilla.”

“If central casting called for a generic Republican congressman, that could be Roger Marshall, right?” Miller said. “Someone to just, like, be in the background of the movie shot.”

photo shop

Bloomberg News reporters Laura Litvan and Jennifer Jacobs made it clear that McConnell will make the final decision who the nominee is, not anyone in Kansas. He seems to be leaning towards Marshall. And why not? Isn't that why Congress tends to be so generic and why the establishment is so utterly repulsive? Bollier, for example, has not one single policy on her website, and says she's running to be "a voice of reason in Washington." She makes it clear she isn't partisan and when she has to spit out in her ad that she's a Democrat, she says she's a "pragmatic Democrat." She could have said, 'don't worry about me; I'm a Chuck Schumer Democrat, just like Kyrsten Sinema and I'll never vote like a progressive. Never!'

Will Kansas Be The Silver Spike Through The Heart Of Moscow Mitch?

Alabama and Kansas are very different demographically-- Alabama, for example, has a sizable African-American population (26.4%) and Kansas' African-American population is just 5.6%-- but the two states have something very much in common: both are Republican bastions. Alabama's PVI is R+14 and Kansas' is R+13. In 2016, Hillary won just 34% in Alabama and 36% in Kansas. Alabam's politics is based on racism. After the Civil War, when the Democratic Party was seen as the more racist, Alabama elected Democrats to statewide offices. For a century after 1878, Alabama elected racist Democrats to the Senate. Jeremiah Denton, elected in 1980, was the first exception, although was defeated by racist Democrat Richard Shelby after one term-- and Shelby quickly switched parties and became a Republican. Then came racist Republicans Jeff Sessions and then... a break in tradition. Doug Jones, a non-racist Democrat was elected to fill out the remainder of Jeff Sessions term. How did that happen? The GOP nominated child molester and crackpot Roy Moore. Conventional wisdom-- in both DC and Alabama-- says the only way Jones can keep his seat next year is if Moore is nominated to oppose him again, which may or may not happen.

Meanwhile, Kansas was admitted to the Union early in 1861 and has basically been a Republican state ever since. The state elected a couple of Populists in the late 1800s and 3 Democrats in its entire history of sending Kansans to the Senate. The last was George McGill who was elected to fill the term of Republican Charles Curtis after he was elected vice president on Herbert Hoover's ticket. Republican Henry Allen was appointed interim senator but by the time the election to finish Curtis' term came along, the 1929 crash had occurred and the state decided to try a Democrat. He was the last one.

The state's senior senator, Pat Roberts (83 years old), has been noticeably senile for a some time and he finally announced he's retiring next year.) The Republican Party's first choice was to replace him with former Congressman Mike Pompeo, currently Trump's Secretary of State. He's passed, more or less. There are 5 Republicans competing for the nomination, former football player Dave Lindstrom, Congressman Roger Marshall, state Senate president Susan Wagle, Bryan Pruitt (a random sociopath from Wichita) and... former reviled Secretary of State and general all around racist and Trumpist, Kris Kobach, who lost the governorship to a Democrat last year. No, really:

There are 4 Democrats competing for their party's nomination-- GOP-lite former Congresswoman Nancy Boyda, former U.S. Attorney for Kansas Barry Grissom, Manhattan mayor pro tem Usha Reddi and frequent failed candidate for various things Robert Tillman.

Last night, wealthy far right extremists from around the country gathered at the New York City Park Avenue apartment of lunatic-fringe billionaire Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal. A big time Trump financier for a fundraiser Thiel-- and Ann Colter-- hosted the event for Kobach. Minimum ticket price was $1,000. Kobach is well-known nationally in far right circles as a regular guest pushing racism and xenophobia on Fox and in his hateful column for Breitbart.

3 neo-fascists on Park Avenue last night

Earlier yesterday Lindsay Wise reported for the Wall Street Journal that the Democrats have a shot at winning: Kobach. An NRSC poll, examined by The Journal for authenticity, shows Grisson beating Kobach by ten points.

The previously unpublished findings reveal why some Republicans are deeply concerned that a Kobach candidacy could cost the party a Senate seat in Kansas-- and why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been pushing so hard for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a former congressman from Wichita, to challenge Mr. Kobach for the GOP nomination.

...No Democrat has won a Senate race in Kansas since 1932. But in a statewide Senate race between Mr. Kobach and Mr. Grissom, a former U.S. attorney, Mr. Grissom led Mr. Kobach, 52% to 42%, the poll shows. Every single other Republican tested in a general election scenario led the Democrat by at least eight points.

The poll reviewed by The Journal was conducted June 9-11 for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP's campaign arm. It surveyed 600 likely voters in Kansas, including an oversample of 150 likely Republican primary voters. The margin of error was plus or minus four percentage points.

The poll found Mr. Kobach's image rating underwater across the state, at 32% favorable vs. 50% unfavorable. And there was a strong intensity to voters' negative reactions to his image, with 39% strongly unfavorable toward Mr. Kobach vs. 15% strongly favorable. Among independent voters, his image rating was a net 24 percentage points weaker than President Trump’s.

The poll also showed a generic Republican beating a generic Democrat for Senate in Kansas, 44% to 36%-- suggesting that Mr. Kobach underperformed the generic ballot.

...An outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, Mr. Kobach drew controversy during his two terms as Kansas' top election official for pursuing contentious measures to curb supposed voter fraud.

He announced a Senate run in July, a year after losing the Kansas governorship to Democrat Laura Kelly by 5 percentage points.

The polling reinforces the fears of some Republicans in Kansas and Washington that Mr. Kobach could put their party's Senate majority at risk should he win the GOP nomination. There now are 53 Republicans in the Senate. If Democrats win the White House, they'd have to pick up three seats from Republicans to take control of the 100-member chamber. If Mr. Trump wins re-election, Democrats would need to net four seats, since Vice President Mike Pence would hold the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.

With a handful of GOP-held Senate seats already considered competitive in states such as Colorado, Arizona and North Carolina, Republicans don't want to have to spend money and resources defending the Kansas seat as well.

Should Grisson or another Democrat win the seat, the media will likely call it part of a Blue Wave, when it is obviously part of an anti-Red/anti-Trump wave. Imagine though, Kansas voters-- plus Coulter and Thiel-- making Schumer Senate majority leader!

Congressional Terrorist by Nancy Ohanian