Brian Beutler: The 2024 Election Is About Real Things

It’s arguably a bit early in the current cycle to worry about how faithfully the mainstream press has conveyed the stakes of the 2024 election, and it’s arguably less important overall. Eight years later, the American right is more cocooned in a propaganda bubble than it was, and the American youth gets more of its news (or what it thinks of as news) from the TikTok algorithm.

But for at least four reasons, it’s worth applying scrutiny to election coverage much earlier this time, before narratives set in and public opinion hardens. First, we obviously waited too long last time. Second, there’s never a good reason for journalists to be complacent about widespread misperceptions overtaking the public. Third, public perception of the candidates on issues as varied as economic stewardship and basic mental fitness are already badly out of whack with empirical reality. Fourth, this time around, bleak as the polling looks at the moment, nobody in the media is under the mistaken impression that Trump can’t become president, and everyone knows that his presidency poses an existential threat to democracy and rule of law. https://www.offmessage.net/p/2024-election-stakes-biden-trump

David Weigel: Democrats Should Treat Black Americans Like Swing Voters

Democrats are fretting about President Biden’s weaker numbers with Black voters. The new messaging shop Blueprint has a solution: Keep talking about his record until these voters hear about it.

In a new batch of polling, Blueprint found that Black voters, while overwhelmingly Democratic, have priorities and issue awareness much closer to swing voters. The vast majority want the president to bring down prices and raise wages, which the White House is already messaging; between 35% and 40% of Black voters aren’t aware of Biden policies designed to drive down drug prices and end junk fees, which are overwhelmingly popular. https://www.semafor.com/article/11/21/2023/dem-polling-memo-treat-black-americans-like-swing-voters

Aaron Blake: Trump’s improved image: Is it approval — or amnesia?

Donald Trump left the presidency with the lowest average approval rating for a tenure in modern history, at 41 percent. One reputable poll showed him bottoming out at 29 percent after Jan. 6, 2021.

That same former president is now looking like a favorite to reclaim the White House just four years later, leading in virtually every recent poll (albeit often within the margin of error).

There are multiple reasons for this, and they start with President Biden’s own problems. But could they also have to do with Americans’ short political attention spans?

Some Trump critics have wagered that the recent polls could reflect a bit of amnesia when it comes to how Americans once felt about Trump — and, its proponents hope, a temporary bout of it. The idea is that Biden’s 2020 supporters can be brought back into the fold when the chaos and controversy of 2017-through-2021 years come back into focus during the 2024 campaign, as well as Trump’s criminal trials.

There is surely some wishfulness involved, but it’s not totally unreasonable. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/20/trumps-improved-image-is-it-approval-or-amnesia

E.J. Dionne Jr.: The GOP’s hollow presidential primary is allergic to ideas

“Ideas have consequences” was once a favored incantation among conservatives. Drawn from the title of a 1948 book, the phrase was a way for the right to proclaim its intellectual effervescence while casting liberals as the peddlers of a dying creed.

The GOP is now testing a radically new proposition: Are there consequences for having no ideas?

Okay, I guess that depends in part on how you define “ideas.”

Donald Trump has proposed shooting shoplifters, as NBC News noted in a report on GOP “bloodlust.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has pledged to kill drug smugglers who cross the Mexican border. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, in more organized fashion, proposed sending Special Forces into Mexico to go after drug cartels. Oh, and DeSantis said last August that he wanted to “slit the throats” of federal bureaucrats on Day 1 of his administration. But don’t be alarmed, civil servants. He explained later that he was “being colorful.”

If killing various kinds of people is a legitimate solution for various problems, then sure, the party’s presidential candidates have plenty of policies to offer. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/19/republican-party-trump-haley-desantis-ideas/
 

Joe Biden: The U.S. won’t back down from the challenge of Putin and Hamas

The Palestinian people deserve a state of their own and a future free from Hamas. I, too, am heartbroken by the images out of Gaza and the deaths of many thousands of civilians, including children. Palestinian children are crying for lost parents. Parents are writing their child’s name on their hand or leg so they can be identified if the worst happens. Palestinian nurses and doctors are trying desperately to save every precious life they possibly can, with little to no resources. Every innocent Palestinian life lost is a tragedy that rips apart families and communities.

Our goal should not be simply to stop the war for today — it should be to end the war forever, break the cycle of unceasing violence, and build something stronger in Gaza and across the Middle East so that history does not keep repeating itself.

Just weeks before Oct. 7, I met in New York with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The main subject of that conversation was a set of substantial commitments that would help both Israel and the Palestinian territories better integrate into the broader Middle East. That is also the idea behind the innovative economic corridor that will connect India to Europe through the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, which I announced together with partners at the Group of 20 summit in India in early September. Stronger integration between countries creates predictable markets and draws greater investment. Better regional connection — including physical and economic infrastructure — supports higher employment and more opportunities for young people. That’s what we have been working to realize in the Middle East. It is a future that has no place for Hamas’s violence and hate, and I believe that attempting to destroy the hope for that future is one reason that Hamas instigated this crisis.

This much is clear: A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Though right now it may seem like that future has never been further away, this crisis has made it more imperative than ever.

A two-state solution — two peoples living side by side with equal measures of freedom, opportunity and dignity — is where the road to peace must lead. Reaching it will take commitments from Israelis and Palestinians, as well as from the United States and our allies and partners. That work must start now.

In a moment of so much violence and suffering — in Ukraine, Israel, Gaza and so many other places — it can be difficult to imagine that something different is possible. But we must never forget the lesson learned time and again throughout our history: Out of great tragedy and upheaval, enormous progress can come. More hope. More freedom. Less rage. Less grievance. Less war. We must not lose our resolve to pursue those goals, because now is when clear vision, big ideas and political courage are needed most. That is the strategy that my administration will continue to lead — in the Middle East, Europe and around the globe. Every step we take toward that future is progress that makes the world safer and the United States of America more secure. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/18/joe-biden-gaza-hamas-putin/
 

 James D. Zirin: Has Trump Gone Even Crazier?

This is obviously a difficult question to raise about any person, let alone a candidate, who has demonstrated vicious, paranoid, and violent behavior. (A civil trial in a federal court found him guilty of sexual abuse, after all.) So, everything is relative. Still, all the armchair gerontologists parsing every utterance from President Joe Biden, trying to distinguish his congenital stutter from his natural aging, should look at Trump, whose behavior has gone from bad to weird to bizarre. Is he suffering from a palpable form of dementia? I leave that to the medical experts, but I’d implore you to absorb what the 45th president has been saying recently and how it’s even more worrisome than what he’s been saying and doing since he came down the escalator at Trump Towers in 2015.

While neither Trump nor Biden projects John F. Kennedy’s vigor, Trump, 77, has been even more bizarre of late—doddering and disoriented in a new way. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2023/11/17/has-trump-gone-even-crazier/
 

The Economist: Trump Poses the Biggest Danger to the World in 2024

 A shadow looms over the world. In this week’s edition we publish The World Ahead 2024, our 38th annual predictive guide to the coming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. That a Trump victory next November is a coin-toss probability is beginning to sink in.

Mr Trump dominates the Republican primary. Several polls have him ahead of President Joe Biden in swing states. In one, for the New York Times, 59% of voters trusted him on the economy, compared with just 37% for Mr Biden. In the primaries, at least, civil lawsuits and criminal prosecutions have only strengthened Mr Trump. For decades Democrats have relied on support among black and Hispanic voters, but a meaningful number are abandoning the party. In the next 12 months a stumble by either candidate could determine the race—and thus upend the world. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/11/16/donald-trump-poses-the-biggest-danger-to-the-world-in-2024

Michael Hiltzik: Elon Musk is an antisemite. What can anyone do about it

The question of how you solve a problem like Elon Musk has crossed the line from an amusing little parlor game to an issue with serious implications for anyone doing business with him, including major corporations and the U.S. government.

Little that Musk says or does escapes popular notice, but a tweet he posted Wednesday on X, the platform he owns which was formerly known as Twitter, is in a category all his own.

On Thursday, IBM announced that it was suspending its advertising on X indefinitely. The company’s action came the day after the watchdog organization Media Matters for America documented that its ads had appeared on X next to Nazi content.

Following the latest Musk tweet, a group of more than 160 Jewish community leaders called on “Disney, Apple, Amazon, and other large advertisers to stop funding X through their ad spend,” and for Apple and Google to remove X from their app stores.

“Make no mistake,” the leaders stated: “Elon Musk is not only powerful because of his own riches. It is because these companies and leaders empower him. In so doing, they are participants in mainstreaming hate that leads to murders.”

Musk’s amplification of antisemitism also poses a problem for the U.S. government and thus for American taxpayers generally. SpaceX, a private company he controls, is a major partner holding contracts from the Defense Department and NASA.

Musk’s behavior raises the question of whether any company he leads can be an appropriate government contractor.

His promotion of antisemitism risks fomenting violence that could cost innocent lives. He has made clear his thoughts and beliefs, which occupy the darkest reaches of inhumanity. It’s time to start hacking away at his influence. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-11-17/hiltzik-elon-musk-is-an-antisemite-what-can-anyone-do-about-it

John Cassidy: Trump’s Fascistic Rhetoric Only Emphasizes the Stakes in 2024

Until 2020, Trump reserved his most offensive language for undocumented immigrants. During the 2016 campaign, he referred to them as “drug dealers,” “criminals,” “rapists.” From the Oval Office, he referred to them as “animals,” and in a 2018 tweet he said that Democrats wanted them “to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13.” This dehumanizing rhetoric went down well with many of Trump’s hard-core supporters. He also made derogatory comments about prominent Black figures, calling Representative Maxine Waters “low I.Q.” and Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor, “dumb.” He referred to Baltimore, a predominantly Black city, as a “disgusting, rat- and rodent-infested mess.”

After Trump got criminally indicted earlier this year, he pivoted to his new targets. In June, hours after pleading not guilty to federal charges of mishandling classified documents and conspiring to obstruct justice, he claimed that President Biden “together with a band of his closest thugs, misfits, and Marxists, tried to destroy American democracy.” He added, “If the communists get away with this, it won’t stop with me.” Since then, Trump has routinely adopted this sort of language, occasionally adding the term “fascists” to his repertoire, perhaps as an effort to muddle the meaning of the word. At a speech in Miami earlier this month, on the eve of the off-year election, he urged the crowd to “crush the communists at the ballot box.”

Describing his political opponents as “vermin” on Veterans Day represented a further escalation, and there is no reason to believe that he was unaware of the history he was invoking. (He also posted the same language to his social-media account, and it hasn’t been taken down.) Still, Trump’s incendiary comments were part of a whole that includes him accusing the retired general Mark Milley of treason and suggesting that he should be executed; repeatedly referring to Special Counsel Jack Smith as “deranged” and a “thug”; and constantly lobbing charges of political bias at Judge Arthur F. Engoron, who is presiding over Trump’s New York civil trial, and Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the January 6th case in Washington, D.C.

Last month, Chutkan imposed a partial gag order on Trump, in which she warned him not to make public statements attacking the prosecutors, court staff, or witnesses in that trial, which is set to begin next March. During his speech in New Hampshire, Trump blatantly flouted this order. He again referred to Smith as “deranged” and a “Trump-hating prosecutor,” and he went on: “his wife and family despise me much more than he does.” It remains to be seen if Chutkan will take any additional action against Trump. But, whatever happens, Trump’s rhetoric is only further raising the stakes for the 2024 election.

All Presidential contests are important, of course. But this one is shaping up as a struggle for the future of the country—a struggle in which one of the major political parties is under the control of a would-be strongman, who, during his Veterans Day speech, also took the opportunity to praise the governing styles of Xi Jinping and Viktor Orbán. It’s a struggle in which the former President’s associates are reportedly busy preparing post-election plans to staff the Justice Department with Trump loyalists who are willing to target his opponents; to invoke the Insurrection Act and dispatch the military to political demonstrations; and to build giant camps to hold undocumented migrants. In other words, it’s a struggle to prevent the election of a President whose embrace of fascistic imagery and authoritarian governance goes well beyond what comes out of his mouth. That, unfortunately, is where we are. The reality cannot be avoided. https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-fascistic-rhetoric-only-emphasizes-the-stakes-in-2024
 

Dan Balz: Voters must take Trump seriously and literally. The stakes are that high.

Trump may be a performance artist, but with his shocking provocations, he is telling us what he would do in a second term as president. That’s why taking him seriously and literally is required.

The headline on the cover of the latest issue of the Economist magazine does not mince words: “Donald Trump poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024.” The alarm is twofold. First, that the former president could win the election next November; and second, what he might do if that happens.

Presidential elections are often about many things. In 2024, the economy will be a factor for most voters. For many, immigration will be another. Abortion, too, will continue to be a motivator. President Biden’s record certainly will be a consideration, as will the incumbent’s age and perceptions of his capacity to lead the nation for another four years, until he is 86
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But the Economist puts the focus where it needs to be, which is on the former president — what he did during his first term, including what he did to help provoke the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and, most important, how much farther out he has gone rhetorically and substantively since then to preview what a second term might portend.

The Economist summed up why a Trump victory in 2024 could be materially different from his first in 2016. “A second Trump term would be a watershed in a way the first was not,” the editors wrote. “Victory would confirm his most destructive instincts about power. His plans would encounter less resistance. And because America will have voted him in while knowing the worst, its moral authority would decline.”

Trump has spoken openly about a second term as a time of retribution, when he would weaponize the Justice Department to go after his opponents. The Washington Post recently reported that he has identified individuals he would target for investigation, including a number who served in his administration. Among those cited in the article were former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former attorney general William P. Barr and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley. He has also talked about going after Biden and his family.

Whatever his campaign advisers say in a statement, Trump himself is not running away from some of what was written about a possible second term. In an interview on Univision a few days after The Post story said Trump might use the Justice Department to go after opponents, the former president confirmed that yes, he might well do that if he gets back into office.

Trump’s rhetoric has become more extreme; it is language associated with authoritarian leaders of the past. The latest and most provocative came during a Veterans Day speech in New Hampshire, when he said this: “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections.”

Those words quickly echoed across the country and beyond, reported by news organizations and replayed again and again on cable television. Should what he said be taken neither literally nor seriously, or has a Rubicon been crossed that, with an upcoming election, requires that he be taken both literally and seriously? https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/18/trump-second-term-plans/