Facebook is using The Dispatch as its fact-checker on Project 2025 and threatening restrictions if a post is left up. My understanding is The Dispatch is very right-leaning. Is that true?
You can go to their page on FB and block them. I just did. From their website: "The Dispatch is a website that covers politics, policy, world events, culture, and more from a center-right perspective. It features articles, podcasts, fact checks, and opinion pieces by journalists and commentators such as Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Isgur, and Kevin D. Williamson."
They have been having posts like those from Robert Reich on Instagram taken down for "incorrect facts." As if Instagram and FB are strictly limited to correct facts. They have a "fact check" on Project 2025 which denies it "says" things which are clearly implied. No, the Manifesto doesn't "say" Cut Social Security. It just promotes a tax policy that will fail to fund it, so they can just go "oops, no money, sorry seniors, WE didn't cut your benefits."
Robert Reich's facts are "incorrect" because they are the truth here on Earth 1. Truth tellers interfere with the lies they want people to believe, and Robert Reich is definitely a truth-teller.
I appreciated your comment on Twitter (Friday or Thursday?) about Poland's Donald Tusk and his focus on positivity, love, and community during his recent campaign. I also think that a shift toward these positive things is what a lot of US voters want. I just wonder how Biden/Harris can balance that with also informing voters about the true threat the Former Guy poses.
"outpouring of aggression toward President Joe Biden, including by liberal pundits."
That's now how I see it, at all.
1) If one looks honesty at the polling data, Biden has little to no chance of winning, and seems quite possibly headed toward a landslide loss. So well-meaning folks are essentially saying, "We desperately want to beat Trump and you, Mr. President, unfortunately, can't do that this time. Please allow an alternative candidate such as VP Harris, who will likely have a much better chance than you."
2) Like it or not, and agree with them or not, but "Eighty-five percent of Americans now say Biden is too old to serve four more years as president, according to a Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll published this week, and 56 percent of Democrats say he should end his candidacy." How does Biden win with numbers like that?
Really??? 85% of Americans in a poll? I am wondering how that poll was skewed, given the coverage by WaPo and ABC. Do you believe all the polls? And 56% of "Democrats": where were they polled? By phone, online, at what hour, etc?? The more I hear about these polls the more I question their neutrality and accuracy,.
Jay Kuo points out that these polls often include people who are not going to vote, but just want to be heard. The polls I like best are the ones taken after the election when the votes are all in, because that is what counts. No one I know would ever answer such a poll online or over the phone, so you get a different group answering these polls, who slants towards Trump. They are less concerned with preventing swindlers getting information on them to use who knows how. Until we have election day, it is up to us to do the job the press would not do is present the clearly different choices to voters who are undecided.
Yes, I agree: it must be up to US, the voters. And the polls can be so easily biased just by the way the questions are phrased, or the order of questions, etc. I've seen polls I refuse to answer because the language is tendentious.
Exactly. That is part of the reason the NYT and I parted ways. When I criticized their poll in a response post, instead of publishing it an editor wrote back to me defending it. I said, I wanted to see their questions and methods for finding their respondents, and he just told me some BS about how it had been so surprising to find that it was true of Blacks, Hispanics and Youth, ie pro Trump. One, working with youth my whole life, I have a good idea of what they think and if I don't my daughter will tell me. She told me for example that no youth are watching the debate, or reading Substacks. They are on tiktok, Instagram, Telegram, What's App, and other less innocent sites. Advertising on the porn chanel might get a lot of youth's attention. Well, looking up this editor, I would put him in the Ivy League 30 something category and decided he did not have the life experience to be an editor in this election with all of its complexity. So, yes, I was being ageist in the reverse way from the way the NYT has been against Biden. But, I. also had had a taste of his reasoning in what he wrote me, and my 19-year-old has more life experiences qualifying her for examining this election in some ways. She is at least surrounded by people with diverse experiences. The youth in my family and their friends gives me a slice of what the youth is thinking and it is not what the NYT was telling me. Not random stranger sampling, who might lie, but my own family and our friends. Same with Black and Brown people. Now, I worked with some Millennials who do not read (YouTubers), and do not vote, so that might be the youth he was talking about. Again, non-voters.
Your evidence for your criticism of the NYT poll is very strong, and I am not surprised that the young folks don't watch debates or read substacks--though I am very sorry that they get their news and understanding from reading snippets in those social media. Being able to read and understand an actual argument, not just 100 words of comment, is a useful skill for young people who are going to be voting soon. I'm a retired philosophy professor who was alarmed with my students' general inability to read, e.g., a paragraph and tell me what it said. Democracy requires an educated populace and we're not doing a good job with critical thinking or civics, which handicaps the youth in decision-making about voting, laws, etc. About that 30-something Ivy League editor: of COURSE it was a guy who was SURE he knew all about everything and you knew nothing; otherwise he'd never have been motivated to actually respond to you in writing to defend his poll. And not publishing it is the ultimate mark of a weak ego: how DARE anyone tell me I'm wrong! One thing you learn as you age is that there's always the possibility of being wrong. I have stopped subscribing to the NYT because of their editorial castigating Biden, acting as the moral arbiter of their readers' decisions and actually helping the orange turd. I'm SICK of papers owned by oligarchs who control content and use them as their own soapboxes!!
Ellen, I agree with what you say. Reading to my daughter each night until 6th grade, and enjoying books together has helped her to be the incisive reader she is, but she also has to be exposed to a much bigger world than she is. Going to school in the US, an exchange in Vienna, and now University in Germany, are helping her to have a bigger set of experiences and exposures to people, which is what is supports comprehension in reading different ideas. We are a family who enjoys books and reading, but I am concerned about the direction the NYT took in this election. The same with the Washington Post. Now it is the AP that alerted me to Trump being shot, after my friend texted me at 6 am this morning.
Ipsos does polls for clients. Do you think that's even-handed? Do you think the message for their investors indicates an overweening care to protect the price of their stock, not the accuracy of their messages?? I am dubious after checking their webpage in several ways.
FYI, "538" (which gives Biden a 51% chance, not much of a "lead") is a new (2024), untested product. It is not Nate Silver's "FiveThirtyEight". ABC News and Silver parted ways last year. ABC has now created this new model, called 538.
I don't believe VP Harris can win. Last time I checked, she and I have the same skin color, and I know what racism and sexism in America are like, and I just don't see that happening. Secondly, no one voted for these "other candidates" in the primary. I'm sorry if you voted for someone else and lost, but right now Joe Biden is the candidate that the democrats elected. There is no time to get another candidate in, and not everyone would agree on one person. They voted for Biden in the primaries. My daughter is 19, and she is not saying Biden is too old to serve, or are my nieces and nephews. I trust no media polls. They are making the news not reporting it. In fact, I don't trust their reporting either. I do not see anyone else getting the money, name recognition or support in the remaining time. It just does not seem grounded in reality. He is the candidate, I hope you will vote for him and allow him to pass the baton to Kamala if it is needed. A friend just emailed me today that there is just no one who can match his foreign policy expertise and that is true. I would not be so quick to trade in a brilliant master politician and leader for someone who is more exciting to a constituency that does not vote as consistently as those who have lots of skin in the game supporting Biden.
I hope you don't mind but your skin color comment reminded me of a great line from Killers of the Flower Moon. When Mollie (Osage) was asked by her (thick-skulled) white suitor, "What color would you call (your skin?) Her answer: "My color."
Keep fighting with whatever skills and time you have for our UnderUberDawg. Get out the vote like never before. Its in the American spirit to rise up against the odds. Hey those Red Sox did it by an amazing rally in 2004 after losing the first 3 games to the Yankees and going on a seemingly impossible streak to win the World Series. Get out the Rocky Balboa gloves and batter away at the ballot box. Lots can happen in the near future. Milwaukee is blue and will be turning out to protest the RNC fascist congregation and Trump can be doing time in the clink soon, Believe it. Join the Resistance.
I totally agree with your comments. From Heather Cox Richardson's Substack today: "Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI) said yesterday that if Trump wins reelection, the U.S. should work its way back to 1960, before “the angry feminist movement…took the purpose out of the man’s life.” Grothman said that President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty was actually a “war on marriage,” in a communist attempt to hand control of children over to the government." This is what we're up against and now that Trump has shown that you don't need to hide or diminish your misogyny (and all of the other people he hates) other Republicans are telling us who they truly are. Believe them. I also did a very quick Google search today to see when was the last time we had official information about Trump's health. It appears to have stopped in April 2020. In 2020 ABC reported that Trump had a BMI of 30.4 which means he was obese, and CNN reported that his blood pressure was 121/79 although it had been as high as 223 in 2018. In 2018, Trump had a coronary calcium CT with a score of 133 indicating he has heart disease. His score had been 34 in 2009 and 98 in 2013. In 2018 his total and "bad" cholesterol had increased significantly so they raised his medication. It was better in 2020. There was no mention of why he had a cognition test. I couldn't find any independent, detailed medical report after 2020. So what's Trump's health today? Maybe his medical records are also under audit. What's Trump hiding?
Patricia, just so you know, my doctor's office routinely gives me a cognitive test once a year as part of a routine physical for an older person (I'm 79). I have always passed those tests, and they aren't hard if you are not in dementia. I think mine are given to make sure that I'm not headed that direction.
One ponders the mess we’ve managed to get ourselves into here and seeks some way out.
I don’t use any social media, so I’m not qualified to speak on that issue, although I do have substantial experience in commenting online on the news and editorial pages of several major newspapers, and I have learned a good deal about how to phrase my ideas so that they are not blocked by whoever or whatever it is that controls content.
There is clearly no time to make any major alterations to the current presidential electoral process, even if there could be a consensus about what those changes might or even ought to be, but I cannot help thinking that an open Democratic convention would, while certainly messy, not be out of line with the idea of democracy. Given that most if not all of the polling suggests that the very least Biden is not on a victory track and at the most we might be looking at a landslide and the loss of the White House, the Senate, and the House, which would be far worse than Trump victory on its own, what have we got to lose?
Well before this current brouhaha about Biden’s age, I was half convinced that it was going to take another four years of Trump as a kind of catalyst to wake us all a far clearer idea of how fragile and vulnerable democracy is, and I’m becoming more convinced of that as we near November. We are so confused and seemingly paralyzed by what if’s and maybe’s that we seem to have lost the main idea.
Democracy is about taking the time to understand who we were designed to be and why. We go on and on about what school social studies or history curricula should consist of, but while there’s all too much talk about our history and what our kids should or should not be taught about it, I’ve seldom heard anyone say the obvious. Every American high kid should take a full course in the Constitution, perhaps with increasing depth over all four years of high school. No college is going to demand that and we cannot guarantee that anything like it will happen at home. Where else are our children likely to get anything like that? And yet democracy depends almost entirely on that understanding.
We are in a very long game, and we’ve only been at it for a relatively short time. It took four thousand years of top down government before anyone even tried democracy on any substantial scale, and another two thousand for any one to actually create a nation based on its principles. Beside that span, 248 years is only a drop in the bucket.
Whatever happens in November, we need to longer range plans than just how to elect Joe Biden or some other Democrat or even how to survive Trump 2.0 if we have to.
In addition to my suggestion about high school curricula, I have another. Presidential elections should be taken out of the hands of the states and put under a national board of elections which would have to power to compel each state to hold these in an identical fashion. The Supreme Court, in it’s ‘interesting take’ on the Colorado ballot business noted in defense of refusing to allow Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot, among other things, that to allow one state to do so while others did not would result in electoral chaos, But we’re already there. States already have all sorts of variations in the way they handle presidential elections, as if each state was electing our President on its own. But he or she is the President of the United States, not just of Florida and New Jersey or Arizona. Further, such would eliminate the very dubious effects of the Electoral College, which late-night jury rig system no longer operates as it was designed to do anyway. The system put in place in the Constitution was created in a situation and under circumstances so different from today’s in terms of communication and campaign potential as to be unrecognizable to the Founders. There’s no further need for this horse-and-buggy business.
Excellent two cents, IMO. I love the idea of a course in the Constitution. In my experience all history classes stop at the Civil War. It was not until my old age when I started reading things like The 1619 Project and Caste, that I had any real idea of our actual history. I also really like the idea of having federal elections being taken out of the hands of states. That is the only way we'd end up with fair elections and not having the voter rolls purged of legitimate voters.
Fascist cyber trolls/hackers are doubling down on trying to keep the prodemocracy message off any platform. Someone hi-jacked a link I posted of Michael Steele on the Beat with Ari Melber here on substack. We are up against formidable forces of evil. It’s going to take all of us working together as one to defeat the ugly bullies.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: First of all, I LOVE, absolutely LOVE your writing on Italian culture, even in the context of your book on Italian Fascism. I LOVE Rome. On our 40th Anniversary (now 51-years-married), we spent about 10-days in Rome. I declare, if I lived in Rome, I wouldn't miss anything else in life.
Now: Facebook has not been a good platform for me: First, We all know that the platform uses algorithms to trigger anger and bait with algorithm-generating racist rants. Second, My own Facebook account was a very good way to keep up with dear friends from whom I am geographically separated, until: (a) Facebook censured my reply to an in-law about passing the Catholic school weekly where his daughter teaches (I could only figure that an algorithm was triggered by some words that implied stalking -- WHAT AN INSULT to be triggered for THAT by Facebook!); and (b) My account was breached and some person or "bot" sent out solicitations to all my "friends" for money -- which ANYONE who knows Armando knows WILL NEVER happen.
So I quit Facebook and am DONE with that platform forever.
I typically put up a yard sign in support of candidates, but this time it seems almost quaint, and not nearly appropriate for the gravity of the situation. And then there’s not knowing whose name it should be for the Dems…….
I remain a big supporter of President Biden but understand those of us concerned with his electability. The big question for me is if Mr Biden gets replaced is it even possible that a new Dem could create a winning ticket with so little time before November. I would love to understand your thoughts and the thoughts of your readers on this topic.
Hello-- yes several of my posts to Lucid were targeted and removed.
But if I post anything on my feed regarding Project 2025 it is automatically removed by declaring it fake/false disinformation. Even the basic link for Project 2025 -- with 0 commentary by me was immediately removed & dubbed fake news.
I now have a restricted FB access & one post was deemed obscene; but I couldn't see the post because they would show which one it was-- that decision, I was able to appeal because I know I didn't post any naked pictures & I did win the appeal-- the post was put back ( it was a cartoon of Tim Scott kissing Trump's ring with the rest of the VP candidates behind him, LOL)
But I am still on restricted status because according to them I continually post "false/fake information". & I decided not to post anymore on the Lucid FB site.
Ubiquitous in movies about Nazi Germany (as in "The Sound of Music") was the mark of a Hitler supporter: an enthusiastic hand thrust with the phrase "Heil Hitler." Thus, movie goers knew immediately which characters were vehement (vs relustant) Hitler supporters. For 15 years we lived in MAGA territory avant la lettre, Montana. Six years ago we moved to Colorado. There were many places in Billings, MT, where there was a freedom to express to express your "conservative" enthusiasm, the like of which never seems to occur in the Denver area. That was true long before Trump became (or even ran for) president. The symbols that worked then, surprisingly because Montana is so far in the north, seemed always to have had an attachment to the "Lost Cause" and civil war regalia. What sense exactly does that make?
"The symbols that worked then, surprisingly because Montana is so far in the north, seemed always to have had an attachment to the "Lost Cause" and civil war regalia. What sense exactly does that make? "
This is a guess. I have read that after the Civil War, many ex-Confederate soldiers went to the American West, which was then beginning to open to European-Americans. It's possible that some of them settled in Montana. Alternatively, perhaps the rugged individualism, belief in family and church over institutions and lack of large urban centers with progressive majorities is attractive to believers in the Lost Cause.
Because the devastation in the South after the War caused an outflow of Confederate veterans to migrate to the newly opened Western territories. They brought their ideology with them and passed it down to their descendants.
Here we are being sold out yet again. Zuckerberg knows full well what Trump is and that we know too. To me he either stands for democracy or he doesn’t. Trump will seize Meta anyway. This leaves them yet again of wealthy thinking they can work with him while the rest of us are dragged and forced into submission.
What a grand relief that you are championing Biden. He is old. Yes. He often stammers. Yes. He sometimes loses his thread. Yes. I too think he's wrong to support Netanyahu so uncritically. And yet in the most important matters he shines. He has worked to fulfill his promise to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. He is solid in knowledge of world politics and social conditions. He tells the truth. He knows right from wrong. Not hyperbole!!!
"But imagine racking up so many domestic policy achievements, from the booming economy to large-scale reforms that address the insecurity and inequality that lead people to embrace authoritarians in the first place, and being treated with such a lack of consideration and respect." Joe Biden has worked and works a lot harder for this country than most of these pundits who are a fair bit younger. It really is disrespectful, mean even.
I've been voting for presidents for more than 50 years. In the good old days, before Republicans pushed legalized bribery of candidates, through conservative Supreme Courts, and corporate America starting pumping billions of dollars into subverting our elections, a candidate with Biden's positives would have shellacked a crooked candidate like Trump, in the same manner LBJ shellacked Barry Goldwater in 1964.(61% to 39%)And unlike Trump, Goldwater wasn't even a crook or treasonous, just extreme, but nothing anywhere close to as extreme as treasonous Trump.
It's not often that I feel the sort of despondency and paralysis that is this slow creep. I'm doing things to help Democrats (Swing Left, letter writing, campaign events and more). Never, did I feel that the leadership of the Democratic party would act in a way that feels like a betrayal. I wonder if this is the onslaught we've been warned about with Russian and Chinese interference, accept that we see Chuck Schumer make a statement like, "the donors" are the one's he's most worried about. I guess the rest of us are chumps. Today, Ben Meisales played audio and shared social media posts about what seems to be a sense of pervasive betrayal from some in the Democratic leadership. Then there's Clooney and others. It's dividing progressives and moderates. The one, two punch comes with my news feeds. (I'm not on FB or Twitter). YouTube is different, but there are hackers entering the feeds that I think are most persuasive. WAPO, NYT's, CNN and MSNBC are what pops up first and the flood of headlines that are damning to Biden. Let me be clear, I'm with Biden. I'm almost completely reliant on YouTube and Substack at this point. It shouldn't be that way. All of the aforementioned print and cable media have decent and thoughtful journalists, but it feels like many are caving and positioning themselves resolved that Trump will win. Allow me to vent. Thank you. BTW, as in Detroit with Motown Joes, black commentators, Lincoln Project and others are steadfast in their messaging. I continue to read and listen to a cross section of news, but the media and "off the record" Democrats have to stop and make a decision.
Facebook is using The Dispatch as its fact-checker on Project 2025 and threatening restrictions if a post is left up. My understanding is The Dispatch is very right-leaning. Is that true?
You can go to their page on FB and block them. I just did. From their website: "The Dispatch is a website that covers politics, policy, world events, culture, and more from a center-right perspective. It features articles, podcasts, fact checks, and opinion pieces by journalists and commentators such as Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Isgur, and Kevin D. Williamson."
They have been having posts like those from Robert Reich on Instagram taken down for "incorrect facts." As if Instagram and FB are strictly limited to correct facts. They have a "fact check" on Project 2025 which denies it "says" things which are clearly implied. No, the Manifesto doesn't "say" Cut Social Security. It just promotes a tax policy that will fail to fund it, so they can just go "oops, no money, sorry seniors, WE didn't cut your benefits."
Susan Linehan: Instagram takes down Robert Reich for "incorrect facts"! Oh, my, that is SO VERY wrong on a large number of levels.
When they promote the right wing.
That just takes my breath away!
Robert Reich's facts are "incorrect" because they are the truth here on Earth 1. Truth tellers interfere with the lies they want people to believe, and Robert Reich is definitely a truth-teller.
I appreciated your comment on Twitter (Friday or Thursday?) about Poland's Donald Tusk and his focus on positivity, love, and community during his recent campaign. I also think that a shift toward these positive things is what a lot of US voters want. I just wonder how Biden/Harris can balance that with also informing voters about the true threat the Former Guy poses.
I think We The People, need to also inform the people, since we see the press is doing an abysmal job of it.
"outpouring of aggression toward President Joe Biden, including by liberal pundits."
That's now how I see it, at all.
1) If one looks honesty at the polling data, Biden has little to no chance of winning, and seems quite possibly headed toward a landslide loss. So well-meaning folks are essentially saying, "We desperately want to beat Trump and you, Mr. President, unfortunately, can't do that this time. Please allow an alternative candidate such as VP Harris, who will likely have a much better chance than you."
2) Like it or not, and agree with them or not, but "Eighty-five percent of Americans now say Biden is too old to serve four more years as president, according to a Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll published this week, and 56 percent of Democrats say he should end his candidacy." How does Biden win with numbers like that?
Really??? 85% of Americans in a poll? I am wondering how that poll was skewed, given the coverage by WaPo and ABC. Do you believe all the polls? And 56% of "Democrats": where were they polled? By phone, online, at what hour, etc?? The more I hear about these polls the more I question their neutrality and accuracy,.
Jay Kuo points out that these polls often include people who are not going to vote, but just want to be heard. The polls I like best are the ones taken after the election when the votes are all in, because that is what counts. No one I know would ever answer such a poll online or over the phone, so you get a different group answering these polls, who slants towards Trump. They are less concerned with preventing swindlers getting information on them to use who knows how. Until we have election day, it is up to us to do the job the press would not do is present the clearly different choices to voters who are undecided.
Yes, I agree: it must be up to US, the voters. And the polls can be so easily biased just by the way the questions are phrased, or the order of questions, etc. I've seen polls I refuse to answer because the language is tendentious.
Exactly. That is part of the reason the NYT and I parted ways. When I criticized their poll in a response post, instead of publishing it an editor wrote back to me defending it. I said, I wanted to see their questions and methods for finding their respondents, and he just told me some BS about how it had been so surprising to find that it was true of Blacks, Hispanics and Youth, ie pro Trump. One, working with youth my whole life, I have a good idea of what they think and if I don't my daughter will tell me. She told me for example that no youth are watching the debate, or reading Substacks. They are on tiktok, Instagram, Telegram, What's App, and other less innocent sites. Advertising on the porn chanel might get a lot of youth's attention. Well, looking up this editor, I would put him in the Ivy League 30 something category and decided he did not have the life experience to be an editor in this election with all of its complexity. So, yes, I was being ageist in the reverse way from the way the NYT has been against Biden. But, I. also had had a taste of his reasoning in what he wrote me, and my 19-year-old has more life experiences qualifying her for examining this election in some ways. She is at least surrounded by people with diverse experiences. The youth in my family and their friends gives me a slice of what the youth is thinking and it is not what the NYT was telling me. Not random stranger sampling, who might lie, but my own family and our friends. Same with Black and Brown people. Now, I worked with some Millennials who do not read (YouTubers), and do not vote, so that might be the youth he was talking about. Again, non-voters.
Your evidence for your criticism of the NYT poll is very strong, and I am not surprised that the young folks don't watch debates or read substacks--though I am very sorry that they get their news and understanding from reading snippets in those social media. Being able to read and understand an actual argument, not just 100 words of comment, is a useful skill for young people who are going to be voting soon. I'm a retired philosophy professor who was alarmed with my students' general inability to read, e.g., a paragraph and tell me what it said. Democracy requires an educated populace and we're not doing a good job with critical thinking or civics, which handicaps the youth in decision-making about voting, laws, etc. About that 30-something Ivy League editor: of COURSE it was a guy who was SURE he knew all about everything and you knew nothing; otherwise he'd never have been motivated to actually respond to you in writing to defend his poll. And not publishing it is the ultimate mark of a weak ego: how DARE anyone tell me I'm wrong! One thing you learn as you age is that there's always the possibility of being wrong. I have stopped subscribing to the NYT because of their editorial castigating Biden, acting as the moral arbiter of their readers' decisions and actually helping the orange turd. I'm SICK of papers owned by oligarchs who control content and use them as their own soapboxes!!
Ellen, I agree with what you say. Reading to my daughter each night until 6th grade, and enjoying books together has helped her to be the incisive reader she is, but she also has to be exposed to a much bigger world than she is. Going to school in the US, an exchange in Vienna, and now University in Germany, are helping her to have a bigger set of experiences and exposures to people, which is what is supports comprehension in reading different ideas. We are a family who enjoys books and reading, but I am concerned about the direction the NYT took in this election. The same with the Washington Post. Now it is the AP that alerted me to Trump being shot, after my friend texted me at 6 am this morning.
Ipsos does polls for clients. Do you think that's even-handed? Do you think the message for their investors indicates an overweening care to protect the price of their stock, not the accuracy of their messages?? I am dubious after checking their webpage in several ways.
Paul, 538 now has Biden in the lead. Get a grip.
FYI, "538" (which gives Biden a 51% chance, not much of a "lead") is a new (2024), untested product. It is not Nate Silver's "FiveThirtyEight". ABC News and Silver parted ways last year. ABC has now created this new model, called 538.
I here quote from Silver's current website, now called "Silver Bulletin": "Biden’s Electoral College win probability is the lowest to date in our forecast, having slipped to about 1-in-4." Here's a link https://www.natesilver.net/p/nate-silver-2024-president-election-polls-model
polls IMO are not accurate & people mess with polls all the time.
I don't believe VP Harris can win. Last time I checked, she and I have the same skin color, and I know what racism and sexism in America are like, and I just don't see that happening. Secondly, no one voted for these "other candidates" in the primary. I'm sorry if you voted for someone else and lost, but right now Joe Biden is the candidate that the democrats elected. There is no time to get another candidate in, and not everyone would agree on one person. They voted for Biden in the primaries. My daughter is 19, and she is not saying Biden is too old to serve, or are my nieces and nephews. I trust no media polls. They are making the news not reporting it. In fact, I don't trust their reporting either. I do not see anyone else getting the money, name recognition or support in the remaining time. It just does not seem grounded in reality. He is the candidate, I hope you will vote for him and allow him to pass the baton to Kamala if it is needed. A friend just emailed me today that there is just no one who can match his foreign policy expertise and that is true. I would not be so quick to trade in a brilliant master politician and leader for someone who is more exciting to a constituency that does not vote as consistently as those who have lots of skin in the game supporting Biden.
Linda, I agree. You might want to check my substack for Five Reasons to Support President Biden.
I hope you don't mind but your skin color comment reminded me of a great line from Killers of the Flower Moon. When Mollie (Osage) was asked by her (thick-skulled) white suitor, "What color would you call (your skin?) Her answer: "My color."
Keep fighting with whatever skills and time you have for our UnderUberDawg. Get out the vote like never before. Its in the American spirit to rise up against the odds. Hey those Red Sox did it by an amazing rally in 2004 after losing the first 3 games to the Yankees and going on a seemingly impossible streak to win the World Series. Get out the Rocky Balboa gloves and batter away at the ballot box. Lots can happen in the near future. Milwaukee is blue and will be turning out to protest the RNC fascist congregation and Trump can be doing time in the clink soon, Believe it. Join the Resistance.
Yes many see it that way, good to have the exchange of opinions
Yes, the sharing of viewpoints is good. Thanks for the reply.
I totally agree with your comments. From Heather Cox Richardson's Substack today: "Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI) said yesterday that if Trump wins reelection, the U.S. should work its way back to 1960, before “the angry feminist movement…took the purpose out of the man’s life.” Grothman said that President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s War on Poverty was actually a “war on marriage,” in a communist attempt to hand control of children over to the government." This is what we're up against and now that Trump has shown that you don't need to hide or diminish your misogyny (and all of the other people he hates) other Republicans are telling us who they truly are. Believe them. I also did a very quick Google search today to see when was the last time we had official information about Trump's health. It appears to have stopped in April 2020. In 2020 ABC reported that Trump had a BMI of 30.4 which means he was obese, and CNN reported that his blood pressure was 121/79 although it had been as high as 223 in 2018. In 2018, Trump had a coronary calcium CT with a score of 133 indicating he has heart disease. His score had been 34 in 2009 and 98 in 2013. In 2018 his total and "bad" cholesterol had increased significantly so they raised his medication. It was better in 2020. There was no mention of why he had a cognition test. I couldn't find any independent, detailed medical report after 2020. So what's Trump's health today? Maybe his medical records are also under audit. What's Trump hiding?
Patricia, just so you know, my doctor's office routinely gives me a cognitive test once a year as part of a routine physical for an older person (I'm 79). I have always passed those tests, and they aren't hard if you are not in dementia. I think mine are given to make sure that I'm not headed that direction.
I'm 72 and never had one. One more thing to look forward to. Thanks for letting me know.
One ponders the mess we’ve managed to get ourselves into here and seeks some way out.
I don’t use any social media, so I’m not qualified to speak on that issue, although I do have substantial experience in commenting online on the news and editorial pages of several major newspapers, and I have learned a good deal about how to phrase my ideas so that they are not blocked by whoever or whatever it is that controls content.
There is clearly no time to make any major alterations to the current presidential electoral process, even if there could be a consensus about what those changes might or even ought to be, but I cannot help thinking that an open Democratic convention would, while certainly messy, not be out of line with the idea of democracy. Given that most if not all of the polling suggests that the very least Biden is not on a victory track and at the most we might be looking at a landslide and the loss of the White House, the Senate, and the House, which would be far worse than Trump victory on its own, what have we got to lose?
Well before this current brouhaha about Biden’s age, I was half convinced that it was going to take another four years of Trump as a kind of catalyst to wake us all a far clearer idea of how fragile and vulnerable democracy is, and I’m becoming more convinced of that as we near November. We are so confused and seemingly paralyzed by what if’s and maybe’s that we seem to have lost the main idea.
Democracy is about taking the time to understand who we were designed to be and why. We go on and on about what school social studies or history curricula should consist of, but while there’s all too much talk about our history and what our kids should or should not be taught about it, I’ve seldom heard anyone say the obvious. Every American high kid should take a full course in the Constitution, perhaps with increasing depth over all four years of high school. No college is going to demand that and we cannot guarantee that anything like it will happen at home. Where else are our children likely to get anything like that? And yet democracy depends almost entirely on that understanding.
We are in a very long game, and we’ve only been at it for a relatively short time. It took four thousand years of top down government before anyone even tried democracy on any substantial scale, and another two thousand for any one to actually create a nation based on its principles. Beside that span, 248 years is only a drop in the bucket.
Whatever happens in November, we need to longer range plans than just how to elect Joe Biden or some other Democrat or even how to survive Trump 2.0 if we have to.
In addition to my suggestion about high school curricula, I have another. Presidential elections should be taken out of the hands of the states and put under a national board of elections which would have to power to compel each state to hold these in an identical fashion. The Supreme Court, in it’s ‘interesting take’ on the Colorado ballot business noted in defense of refusing to allow Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot, among other things, that to allow one state to do so while others did not would result in electoral chaos, But we’re already there. States already have all sorts of variations in the way they handle presidential elections, as if each state was electing our President on its own. But he or she is the President of the United States, not just of Florida and New Jersey or Arizona. Further, such would eliminate the very dubious effects of the Electoral College, which late-night jury rig system no longer operates as it was designed to do anyway. The system put in place in the Constitution was created in a situation and under circumstances so different from today’s in terms of communication and campaign potential as to be unrecognizable to the Founders. There’s no further need for this horse-and-buggy business.
That is my two cents at the moment.
Excellent two cents, IMO. I love the idea of a course in the Constitution. In my experience all history classes stop at the Civil War. It was not until my old age when I started reading things like The 1619 Project and Caste, that I had any real idea of our actual history. I also really like the idea of having federal elections being taken out of the hands of states. That is the only way we'd end up with fair elections and not having the voter rolls purged of legitimate voters.
Fascist cyber trolls/hackers are doubling down on trying to keep the prodemocracy message off any platform. Someone hi-jacked a link I posted of Michael Steele on the Beat with Ari Melber here on substack. We are up against formidable forces of evil. It’s going to take all of us working together as one to defeat the ugly bullies.
Here is a well done video about how Christofascists have plans to take over the country and turn it into their idea of a theocracy.
https://youtu.be/HWLIlWKOPRA?si=QXZGYwIpVnLEUdjn
Ruth Ben-Ghiat: First of all, I LOVE, absolutely LOVE your writing on Italian culture, even in the context of your book on Italian Fascism. I LOVE Rome. On our 40th Anniversary (now 51-years-married), we spent about 10-days in Rome. I declare, if I lived in Rome, I wouldn't miss anything else in life.
Now: Facebook has not been a good platform for me: First, We all know that the platform uses algorithms to trigger anger and bait with algorithm-generating racist rants. Second, My own Facebook account was a very good way to keep up with dear friends from whom I am geographically separated, until: (a) Facebook censured my reply to an in-law about passing the Catholic school weekly where his daughter teaches (I could only figure that an algorithm was triggered by some words that implied stalking -- WHAT AN INSULT to be triggered for THAT by Facebook!); and (b) My account was breached and some person or "bot" sent out solicitations to all my "friends" for money -- which ANYONE who knows Armando knows WILL NEVER happen.
So I quit Facebook and am DONE with that platform forever.
Besides, substack is as good a platform as any.
Grazie!
I typically put up a yard sign in support of candidates, but this time it seems almost quaint, and not nearly appropriate for the gravity of the situation. And then there’s not knowing whose name it should be for the Dems…….
I remain a big supporter of President Biden but understand those of us concerned with his electability. The big question for me is if Mr Biden gets replaced is it even possible that a new Dem could create a winning ticket with so little time before November. I would love to understand your thoughts and the thoughts of your readers on this topic.
Hello-- yes several of my posts to Lucid were targeted and removed.
But if I post anything on my feed regarding Project 2025 it is automatically removed by declaring it fake/false disinformation. Even the basic link for Project 2025 -- with 0 commentary by me was immediately removed & dubbed fake news.
I now have a restricted FB access & one post was deemed obscene; but I couldn't see the post because they would show which one it was-- that decision, I was able to appeal because I know I didn't post any naked pictures & I did win the appeal-- the post was put back ( it was a cartoon of Tim Scott kissing Trump's ring with the rest of the VP candidates behind him, LOL)
But I am still on restricted status because according to them I continually post "false/fake information". & I decided not to post anymore on the Lucid FB site.
And today Elon Musk openly endorsed Trump.
Of course he did. Two despicable greedy narcissists.
Agree
Ubiquitous in movies about Nazi Germany (as in "The Sound of Music") was the mark of a Hitler supporter: an enthusiastic hand thrust with the phrase "Heil Hitler." Thus, movie goers knew immediately which characters were vehement (vs relustant) Hitler supporters. For 15 years we lived in MAGA territory avant la lettre, Montana. Six years ago we moved to Colorado. There were many places in Billings, MT, where there was a freedom to express to express your "conservative" enthusiasm, the like of which never seems to occur in the Denver area. That was true long before Trump became (or even ran for) president. The symbols that worked then, surprisingly because Montana is so far in the north, seemed always to have had an attachment to the "Lost Cause" and civil war regalia. What sense exactly does that make?
"The symbols that worked then, surprisingly because Montana is so far in the north, seemed always to have had an attachment to the "Lost Cause" and civil war regalia. What sense exactly does that make? "
This is a guess. I have read that after the Civil War, many ex-Confederate soldiers went to the American West, which was then beginning to open to European-Americans. It's possible that some of them settled in Montana. Alternatively, perhaps the rugged individualism, belief in family and church over institutions and lack of large urban centers with progressive majorities is attractive to believers in the Lost Cause.
Because the devastation in the South after the War caused an outflow of Confederate veterans to migrate to the newly opened Western territories. They brought their ideology with them and passed it down to their descendants.
Here we are being sold out yet again. Zuckerberg knows full well what Trump is and that we know too. To me he either stands for democracy or he doesn’t. Trump will seize Meta anyway. This leaves them yet again of wealthy thinking they can work with him while the rest of us are dragged and forced into submission.
What a grand relief that you are championing Biden. He is old. Yes. He often stammers. Yes. He sometimes loses his thread. Yes. I too think he's wrong to support Netanyahu so uncritically. And yet in the most important matters he shines. He has worked to fulfill his promise to build the economy from the bottom up and the middle out. He is solid in knowledge of world politics and social conditions. He tells the truth. He knows right from wrong. Not hyperbole!!!
Thank you Ruth.
"But imagine racking up so many domestic policy achievements, from the booming economy to large-scale reforms that address the insecurity and inequality that lead people to embrace authoritarians in the first place, and being treated with such a lack of consideration and respect." Joe Biden has worked and works a lot harder for this country than most of these pundits who are a fair bit younger. It really is disrespectful, mean even.
I've been voting for presidents for more than 50 years. In the good old days, before Republicans pushed legalized bribery of candidates, through conservative Supreme Courts, and corporate America starting pumping billions of dollars into subverting our elections, a candidate with Biden's positives would have shellacked a crooked candidate like Trump, in the same manner LBJ shellacked Barry Goldwater in 1964.(61% to 39%)And unlike Trump, Goldwater wasn't even a crook or treasonous, just extreme, but nothing anywhere close to as extreme as treasonous Trump.
It's not often that I feel the sort of despondency and paralysis that is this slow creep. I'm doing things to help Democrats (Swing Left, letter writing, campaign events and more). Never, did I feel that the leadership of the Democratic party would act in a way that feels like a betrayal. I wonder if this is the onslaught we've been warned about with Russian and Chinese interference, accept that we see Chuck Schumer make a statement like, "the donors" are the one's he's most worried about. I guess the rest of us are chumps. Today, Ben Meisales played audio and shared social media posts about what seems to be a sense of pervasive betrayal from some in the Democratic leadership. Then there's Clooney and others. It's dividing progressives and moderates. The one, two punch comes with my news feeds. (I'm not on FB or Twitter). YouTube is different, but there are hackers entering the feeds that I think are most persuasive. WAPO, NYT's, CNN and MSNBC are what pops up first and the flood of headlines that are damning to Biden. Let me be clear, I'm with Biden. I'm almost completely reliant on YouTube and Substack at this point. It shouldn't be that way. All of the aforementioned print and cable media have decent and thoughtful journalists, but it feels like many are caving and positioning themselves resolved that Trump will win. Allow me to vent. Thank you. BTW, as in Detroit with Motown Joes, black commentators, Lincoln Project and others are steadfast in their messaging. I continue to read and listen to a cross section of news, but the media and "off the record" Democrats have to stop and make a decision.