Body Language

By Hubie and Bertie

The consensus is that Vice President Harris handled her interview with Bret Baier on Fox "News" brilliantly yesterday. Actually, Wednesday was a pretty super-terrific all-around day for us Democrats. Not only did Harris do well on Fox (we knew she would), but Benedict Donald had two, um, very unsuccessful events, both of which sowed more doubt about his mental state.

The first was a Fox "News" town hall with women, all hand-picked, all Trump supporters (which Fox neglected to come clean about up front). But even with that uber-friendly audience, Donald managed to the master of goofs and gaffes. "I'm the father of IVF." WHUT?

The second was a town hall hosted by the Spanish-language station Univision, which went so badly for Trump that it's hard to believe his team ever allowed it in the first place. The attendees asked him better questions than journalists do (shame on you, Fourth Estate), and to each one, Trump responded with an unintelligible word salad.

The star of the show may have been a Cuban-American construction worker from Tampa (above), who challenged Trump to "win back my vote" and asked about January 6. "That was a day of love from the standpoint of the millions, it's like hundreds of thousands, it could have been the largest group I've ever spoken before," Donald said after rambling unintelligibly for a few minutes. "They asked me to speak, I went, and I spoke. And I used the term peacefully and patriotically."

This Tampa dude has gone viral, as you'd expect. His "WTF" expression as Trump replied reminded us of the looks Harris gave Donald many times at the September 10 debate (also above).

Team Trump cannot be happy about his Univision performance or the audience's reaction — or, for that matter, his equally incoherent interview at the Economic Club of Chicago this week. Because news came today that they're canceling two of Benedict Donald's planned appearances with NBC and, incredibly, the NRA. Could you find a more Trump-supportive audience than a bunch of cat-torturing gun nuts?

Something is very wrong in Trump World. Perhaps it's time for us to run against JD Vance instead — because if the Heritage Foundation picks a second Trump Cabinet in the same way it masterminded Project 2025, implementing the 25th Amendment would be a very real possibility. "President Vance"? The nation would not survive. We cats HISS.

Stick To Ave Maria, Donald

By Miss Kubelik

So, yes — Benedict Donald appeared to have a strange meltdown at what was supposed to be a Trump town hall in Pennsylvania Monday night. Ninety-nine percent of us who watched the tape know what we saw. But our good friends in the Fourth Estate can't decide whether he had a 40-minute cognitive glitch (punctuated by bobbing and swaying), or if he simply transformed the event into a "concert."

Let's face it: The media will never figure out how to cover Trump, even with his obvious mental decline. It's depressing. But at least the estate of Leonard Cohen has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Trump for including "Hallelujah" on his oddball playlist.

On Monday, it was Rufus Wainwright's cover of the classic Cohen song that played for the bewildered crowd, and the singer rushed out a statement expressing his horror.

"'Hallelujah' has become an anthem dedicated to peace, love and acceptance of the truth," he said. "Witnessing Trump and his supporters commune with this music last night was the height of blasphemy. Of course, I in no way condone this...And needless to say, I am all in for Kamala." We cats PURR.

(IMAGE: The Leonard Cohen mural in Montreal, as seen from the Museum of Fine Arts.)

Happy First Day Of Early Voting, Georgia

Dear President Carter, you've made it! Congratulations on voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and please stick around for a lot more elections. You're an inspiration. We cats PURR.

(IMAGE: Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

UPDATE, Oct. 15: Georgia voters have toppled the previous record for number of early ballots cast on the first day. Election officials report that as of 2:30 PM, voters cast 204,793 ballots in person.

UPDATE #2, Oct. 15: More than 300,000 Georgians voted early today, per Gabriel Sterling, COO of the office of Secretary of State. This number is 123 percent higher than the previous record. We cats PURR.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: Three Weeks To Go Edition

By Zamboni

Tomorrow marks three weeks until Election Day! Do you have a plan to vote? We do, which is why we have time to peruse what's making the news across the nation. Here are some of the stories that caught our eye.

Now that Vice President Harris has agreed to an interview on Fox "News," it's worth remembering that just over a year ago, Benedict Donald was furious at Fox anchor Bret Baier for conducting a "nasty" interview with him. "Everything was like unfriendly. No smiling, no let’s have fun, let’s Make America Great Again," Trump whined. We don't know what questions Baier will ask Harris on Wednesday, but you can be sure that every one of her answers will be designed to get under Donald's thin skin.

It's a great move by Team Harris, because she's been blanketing the airwaves with interviews while Trump chickened out of a second debate and the traditional appearance on 60 Minutes. It's clear that Donald's handlers have decided he's mentally incapable of doing the kinds of interviews Harris is — in fact, Trump's even confirmed it through his usual breathtaking projection, calling for her to take a cognitive test. He knows he's slipping. At some point, he probably will cease to know.

Which is why he needs to release his medical records as Harris has. A group of 238 healthcare providers agrees. They've signed a letter calling for more transparency (that is, beyond the idiotically, glowing reports from Ronny Jackson). "As we all age, we lose sharpness and revert to base instincts," the physicians said. "We are seeing that from Trump, as he uses his rallies and appearances to ramble, meander, and crudely lash out at his many perceived grievances."

(We're seeing rumors that Trump may have had a bit of a cognitive episode at a "town hall" event in Pennsylvania tonight. More details when we get them.)

On another subject, we're still waiting for Elise "Elsie" Stefanik to object to Trump's alleged plan to change military bases' names back to honor Confederate generals. Doesn't she know that her state, New York, lost 38,000 sons in the Civil War? Doesn't she care?

Finally, Halloween is just a few weeks off, which may be why Last Week Tonight was scaring us about the many ways Benedict Donald will try to sow doubt about the election. One of the most important actions you can take is to check — and re-check — your voter registration. You can do that here. And vote early, so that if you run into any problems, you can get them fixed before November 5. We cats PURR.

Be An Early Bird

By Baxter

Well, everybody, we're three weeks out from Election Day. But early voting is already underway in several states. (In Georgia, it starts this Tuesday, which means that Jimmy Carter will at last be able to vote for Kamala Harris for President.)

According to TargetSmart's calculations, more than 1.2 million people have already early voted — 721,037 Democrats (58.3 percent), 361,051 Republicans (29.2 percent), and 155,177 Unaffiliated (12.5 percent). This is what we want to see. If we can bank our votes on Day One, our Democratic campaigns can focus on other, lower-propensity voters and get them to turn out.

Yes, we know — we've said this many times before. But we urge you to check the early voting calendar at the link above, and tell your friends and family to get to the polls as soon as they can.

Personally, we cats are looking forward to Election Day. We're tired of the endless fundraising texts and emails, and sick of the lazy media narratives that are fed by Republican-weighted and even downright sloppy polls. Cable news talking heads drool over those because a close horse race gets them more eyeballs, page views, clicks, and likes. Ugh.

The good news is that the GOP would not be flooding the zone with bogus polls if they thought they were winning. But still and all, we've pretty much had it. Every time someone tries to raise alarms about such-and-such a poll, we just turn off the TV and write a few more postcards to voters in key states. It's the only way to stay sane.

Just remember, though, that Election Day isn't going to be the end, or even close to the end. The forces behind Trumpism aren't going to go away with a defeat — in fact, they'll be even more riled up. We're probably going to have to work to save America for the rest of our nine lives. But that's okay — the country is worth it. We cats PURR.

White Alert

By Sniffles

This Mike Luckovich cartoon is terrific in and of itself, but also notable because he chose to draw his 2024 voter as a white woman. And a white woman of a certain age — like in her forties or fifties?

It got our attention because a recent Pew poll has shown Benedict Donald leading Vice President Kamala Harris among white women by five points. In the wake of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, it seemed inconceivable. As Black Twitter often asks, would white women rather be white than free? Will Black women really have to save America again? (In Black Twitter's opinion, the answers are overwhelmingly yes.)

This was wildly depressing, so we decided to look at some of Pew's Presidential preference detailed tables. The numbers might not be as simple as they appear on the surface.

Yes, cross-referencing race and gender puts Trump ahead with white women. But when you set aside race and look at the numbers for women overall, age becomes a significant factor. Harris leads Trump either hugely or comfortably in the overall female age brackets until you get to 50-64, where she starts losing by three. Then she swings back into a modest lead among female respondents age 65-plus. 

With Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters overall, Harris leads Trump by double digits.

The obvious answer is that Harris-Walz needs to turn out young women and women of color, big-time. They know this. The campaign is covering a lot of bases — Tim Walz and Bill Clinton are courting the male and Southern vote, while Barack Obama is talking to Black men — but they are focused like a laser on turning out the massive influx of newly energized young and female voters who rushed to register after Harris became the nominee. (After all, reproductive freedom is the most important election issue for women under 30.) Happily, trends have shown that 80 percent of recent registrants tend to show up to vote.

Back in 2008, Obama got a solid 43 percent of the overall white vote, which contributed to his decisive victory over John McCain. According to Pew, Harris is nearly there, at 41 percent. Let's work to get that number higher. White women (and men), talk to your white friends and family. Tell them what's at stake. Make sure we all check the "Big House" for Benedict Donald in November. We cats PURR.

(IMAGE: Mike Luckovich, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

Then And Now

By Hubie and Bertie

In February 1939, a crowd of 20,000 fascist sympathizers gathered in Madison Square Garden for a rally hosted by the German American Bund. It seems incredible now, because as we all know, less than three years later, the United States would be at war. The attack on Pearl Harbor effectively silenced the "America First" movement as the country joined the fight against Japan and Nazi Germany.

But that was 80-plus years ago, and maybe in 2024, the idea of the American Bund is not so incredible after all.

That's because since the rise of Donald Trump, home-grown Nazis, Proud Boys and other miscreants have gathered and marched again in America. Trump has emboldened them to come crawling out from under their rocks and broadcast their hate. On January 6, 2021, at his urging, they attacked the Capitol and tried to overturn the 2020 election.

Now, Trump has announced that he, too, will hold a rally in Madison Square Garden on October 27. (Prices in New York City can be pretty high, so we agree that it would be a good move to get the Trump campaign's rental payment in advance.)

At the American Bund event, 100,000 people protested outside. Since it seems foolhardy for Benedict Donald to spend the last few weeks of his campaign in a reliably blue state, you can only imagine that a big, violent counter-demonstration is what he's hoping for. Back in 1939, then-Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia dispatched nearly 2,000 uniformed and undercover police officers to keep things calm. What will Mayor Eric Adams do this year? We cats hate to even ask, and we HISS.

The Lincoln Project Delivers

This new ad from The Lincoln Project will soon be airing in Pennsylvania. It's called "Daisy." We hope it hits as hard as that other famous Daisy ad from 1964. Good work, gentlemen. We cats PURR.

Tidbits And Cat Treats: A Day In Asshole-ery Edition

By Miss Kubelik

It's been a day of true stupidity, so much so that we cats have had to bundle all the examples we could find into one blog post. Here goes.

With a category 5 hurricane bearing down on his state, Ron DeSantis decided that he would not take a call today from the Vice President of the United States offering aid. Incredible. This pettiness all started back when defeated Republicans decided not to call their victorious Democratic opponents and graciously concede, and it's just gotten worse from there. In the meantime, whatever Democrat runs for Florida Governor in two years ought to make DeSantis's behavior a huge indictment on the Republican mindset — and lay it on the Republican nominee.

Some in the media continue to whine that Kamala Harris isn't giving interviews. Correction: She isn't giving them interviews. In the real world, Harris has sat down with 60 Minutes, The View, The Howard Stern Show, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, MSNBC with Stephanie Ruhle, Univision, and — most recently and very smartly — Call Her Daddy, a podcast with 5.5 million young women listeners. We're tired of over-the-hill legacy media figures carping about this, but we understand why: They know they're irrelevant.

On the subject of journalists and pundits, will any of them mention that Benedict Donald once predicted that he would carry Virginia in November? Just wondering, since a recent poll by Wason Center-Christopher Newport University puts Harris up by 11 points.

It looks like Corey Lewandowski has been sent home to New Hampshire after losing a power struggle with Trump campaign pooh-bahs Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles. By the way, have LaCivita and Wiles ever produced the video evidence that the campaign promised would exonerate their team in the Arlington National Cemetery dust-up back in August? Have journalists stopped asking for it?

Finally, on the reproductive rights news front, brace yourselves for these: The Supreme Court refused to take up the Texas emergency abortion case (women will die). JD Vance says he's in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood (women won't get basic reproductive healthcare). The Georgia Supreme Court reinstated the state's six-week abortion ban (again, women will die). But all three stories will definitely drive women to the polls. Looking for silver linings, we cats PURR.

The Times, They Are Enraging

By Zamboni

When we cats were kittens, The New York Times was the all-around epitome of great journalism. They defined excellence and set the standard for the entire profession. Now, however, as the Greatest Generation would say, they've gone completely to pot.

Yes, we know we've said this before: Their political coverage is terrible. The Times perpetuates lazy narratives, promotes its publishers' pet peeves, and diminishes stuff that should be in screaming headlines. And they always, always cut Benedict Donald a break. After putting Hillary's emails on page one above the fold day after day, they buried Trump's recent call for unbridled police violence deep in the A section. Clearly they think that they'll be okay in the event of a fascist takeover of the United States. (They won't be.)

And they do all of it with a sniffy air of entitlement, as is their wont.

Today, they're a source of fresh annoyance with a big story on Benedict Donald's cognitive decline. At last, we thought. And then we read this in the second paragraph: Trump seeming "confused, forgetful, incoherent or disconnected from reality...happens so often these days that it no longer even generates much attention."

"No longer"? When did it ever? Because the Times and other political publications have never covered it! (Do remember, however, that they ran dozens and dozens of stories about President Biden's age for the three agonizing weeks between June 27 and July 21.)

Okay, 30 days out from Election Day, at least they're writing about it now. But they'll never make up for their treatment of Biden and the Democrats versus Trump and the GOP. They are the supreme example of how the Republican myth of the "liberal media" has had journalists cowering for 50 years. It drives us cats crazy, and we HISS.