I think President Biden has today switched into full-on campaign mode, and what a brilliant way and time to do it. If you missed his speech today in Pennsylvania, you must take a half hour and watch it. It is sublime.
LIVE: Biden speaks at Valley Forge ahead of Jan. 6 anniversary | NBC News
I've been watching Liz Cheney's MSNBC book tour of late. She's been on Rachel Maddow, she's sat down with Ari Melber, FFS Nicolle Wallace came back from maternity leave for a day to interview her. In case you live under a boulder, Cheney has written a book called "I Was Completely Wrong to Vote With Preznit Carnage 98 Percent of the Time and To Vote For Him when I did, Sorry About That, America: A Memoir."
Sorry, I misspelled that. The actual title of the book is "Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning." And, the fact is, many liberals/progressives/LGBTQ allies/regular Americans like myself are watching Liz Cheney's (my personal stylebook has to call her that on second and subsequent references because her father, DICK, was once vice president and a loutish war criminal) are kind of pumping our fist, I think, but not without some internal conflict. I mean, Rachel Maddow spent 30 minutes with a powerful and wisely-delivered disclaimer before her interview with Liz Cheney detailing how polar are her and Liz Cheney's views, and she somehow did so without mentioning that she, Rachel Maddow, is an out gay person, and that Liz Cheney has in the past opposed equality for gay people. Her point, though, was that this is where we're at. Liz Cheney is sitting at my table rather than sequestering herself at Fox "News" because they won't have her anymore, so Liz Cheney is promoting her book at the House that Keith Olbermann built.
I have to admit, I had qualms about reading Liz Cheney's new book, but there it is on my Kindle nonetheless, awaiting my eyes. I think her book is that important. I think her voice is that important, despite her 100 percent rating by the National "Right To Life" Committee, despite her endorsements from the NRA, despite her support for repealing the Affordable Care Act, despite her state support for building a wall at our southern border, despite everything she thinks and everything she does aside from standing up for our constitutionally limited representative democratic republic. I personally think that to save the country, the Republican Party needs to be saved and that the person who can do that and should do that is Dick Cheney's daughter, who happens to be chatting it up this week on your favorite cable news network that only covers the same two stories an hour.
But. She'll write a book. She'll go on TV. And she says she'll do anything, anything at all to stop Preznit Carnage from becoming Preznit again, anything anything at all. Anything but the only thing that might actually affect that outcome.
She won't endorse Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. for President.
On the subject of where she stands concretely, Liz Cheney kind of stuffs her bare foot into the slush. She won't rule out running third party (which would only strip votes from President Biden). She won't endorse, saying that she doesn't want to hurt any of those losers who debated on News News Mouse or whatever it's called tonight. And, in her interview with Ari Melber tonight, she was taking about how, in order to evade this pending catastrophe, all American citizens need to work across the aisle, put our differences aside for now, and lead.
How about you, dear?
You wrote a book. You're on television, dummy. Now's the time, here's the reality. Leap in with your glasses on and endorse Biden/Harris. Go on the campaign trail as every liberal's favorite Republican and speak against every fascist evil you espouse against in your book and on MSNBC's signature television programs. Let Thom Hartmann interview you and, why not, go on Howard Stern. You don't have to change your registration. But you are currently an American who is in a position to reach across the aisle with the biggest bang.
Get on Team Biden/Harris. Now. Stop dicking around.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber has this spiffy little graphic that shows different aspects of the plot to overturn the 2020 election, with arrows in black and red to indicate over time when many of these activities went from being legal, such as court challenges, for example, to illegal, such as overturning the votes in Congress. It is a useful graphic, though it does not measure what I think might be yet another useful quantity: Stupidity.
The rap-lyric quoting anchor was again tonight referencing his graphic on-air, and one of the plot points jumped out at me like David Lee Roth: “Military Seize Voting Machines.”
It has never struck me until that moment how incredibly stupid that one is. I mean, what were they going to do with them? Did they think they’d find some hot-shot Linux coder to bust into them and change the votes? Then what? Then the “military” would return the machines to their original spots so their “corrected” votes would be counted? Then they pull the mask off of the guy and it turns out the Black Knight is actually the museum curator?
Well, yes, actually. It’s something like that.
A severely under-reported news story (surprise, surprise) from last month was charges against a Michigan attorney, Matthew DePerno, failed candidate for attorney general despite (?) a Trump endorsement, and and former GOP state Rep. Daire Rendon. Charges were in connection with accessing and tampering with voting machines in Michigan.
Via ABC News: “Investigators there say five vote tabulators were illegally taken from three counties and brought to a hotel room, according to documents released last year by Nessel’s office. The tabulators were then broken into and ‘tests’ were performed on the equipment.”
So yes. It’s actually that stupid.
I say Ari Melber needs to add another set of arrows to his graphic.
This is a poll so dramatic that MSNBC had Steve Kornacki at the "big board" breaking out its results. But I rather think the X'er (hey, Elon, this re-branding of yours is stupid) known as Mueller, She Wrote, has a better angle on it:
THREAD: Can we STOP using this WSJ “poll”, please? First, it’s a poll of 600 primary republican voters. But if you LOOK CLOSELY, it was conducted by TONY FABRIZIO and his firm. 1/ pic.twitter.com/friinVMaAM
— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) September 4, 2023
Polls at this juncture are ridiculous. Yet, the cable news networks insist on reporting on them breathlessly. Voters, cover your ears and make up your own minds, and, while you're doing that, let's remember how bloody awful the Trump years were (with a little help from Digby).
