Today, Benedict Donald rode around in a Trump-labeled garbage truck. Next, he's doing campaign events in Virginia and New Mexico. Does his staff really, truly hate him, or what?
Trump is not going to win either of those states. And the garbage truck stunt just keeps Tony Hinchcliffe's Puerto Rico insult in the news. (Plus, goodness gracious, Donald nearly fell over trying to get back into the passenger seat. Will the press jump on it the way they jumped on Hillary leaving the 9/11 ceremony in 2016? Don't hold your breath.)
We cats can think of one possible reason for going to Virginia and New Mexico: When Trump visits battleground states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania, he hurts himself and down-ballot Republican candidates. No doubt GOP state parties have begged Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles to keep Donald away. So they're sending him places where the harm can be kept to a minimum.
The other, overarching reason for these silly decisions is that Team Trump is more focused on providing some kind of perception that they're winning, rather than doing the actual work to win. Thus the performance art at McDonald's, the faux outrage over something Joe Biden didn't say, and now, today's embarrassing garbage stunt.
The Trump campaign is made up of extremists, like their candidate. They're not making choices based on solid data and strong logistics — they're operating from impulse, like Donald does. That's why they do stupid things and look ridiculous. Our job is to not let their craziness define our reality. Just keep working, everyone. We cats PURR.
"And I say to you maybe, just maybe, that that's the way it should be. A test of our courage, of our compassion. Our faith in ourselves, and our faith in our country."
The wonderful film The Candidate hasn't aged very much, even after 50 years. Robert Redford's character Bill McKay, running for the Senate in California, decries his Republican opponent's tactic of pitting Americans against each other. Sound familiar? We cats PURR.
Newsweek has published this very instructive map of Puerto Rican populations by state (outside of Puerto Rico, of course). For the interactive version, click here.
Republicans don't seem to realize that Puerto Ricans are Americans. But just a little more than a week from Election Day, this is going to present a problem for them — maybe even 5.8 million problems, spread across crucial battleground states. The insults lobbed at Puerto Rico at Donald Trump's Madison Square Garden hatefest last night have broken through to folks who don't even think about politics very much — including 140,000 Puerto Ricans in Ohio, and 214,000 in Texas.
But the state with the highest number of Puerto Ricans is Florida, with 1,171,637. A whole 100,000 more than New York State! That explains why Rick Scott, locked in a tight Senate race against Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, was in a state of sheer panic last night. Sorry, Rick — and all the other Republican are desperately trying to distance themselves from this — but you've had nine years to repudiate Donald Trump's racism. You don't get to course-correct now just because you're nine days out.
Will the Puerto Rican demographic help Democrats hold the Senate? Is the Bund rally the October Surprise that pushes all the swing states in one direction? The fact that we're even asking these questions means big trouble for the GOP. We cats couldn't be happier, and we PURR.
To counter the venom and malevolence spewed at last night's Trump Hatefest at Madison Square Garden, we cats are choosing to focus on something positive: Dark Brandon voted in Delaware today!
Not only did he vote, he stood in line and waited like everyone else. Is America great or what? Is there a greater contrast between what Joe Biden just did and the threats that Benedict Donald is making about "the enemy within" and exacting vengeance and deporting millions of people? We know which country we want to live in, and it's not Trump's.
As for Trump-Vance's Sunday night Bund rally, goodness gracious. We couldn't decide if it was supposed to be a "Fluff Donald" orgy (with Elise "Elsie" Stefanik as one of the chief fluffers) or a call for violence from Trump's most ardent supporters. Why not both? After all, some of the Trump-inspired mayhem has already begun — early this morning, two ballot boxes in the Pacific Northwest were set on fire via explosive devices. If you happen to have friends or family who are voting in Oregon or Washington State, please alert them to these details:
Box #1 — Fisher's Landing Drop Box, 3510 SE 164th Avenue, Vancouver (if you dropped a ballot after 11 AM on Saturday, it could have burned)
Box #2 — Multnomah County Drop Box, 1000 block of SE Morrison Street, Portland (not clear when the last ballot pickup took place)
Vancouver voters can check their ballot status here. Oregon voters, check your status here.
We may not have 45 million followers on Instagram like Bad Bunny does, but we're doing our part to protect democracy! We cats PURR.
—Michelle Obama, Kalamazoo, Michigan, October 26, 2024
The groundswell against the clueless boys who currently run The Washington Post has been overwhelming. Why did they think spiking the editorial board's endorsement of Kamala Harris was a good idea? It would just make the Post look bad, and redound to Harris's benefit. What a clusterfuck for all the fine journalists who work there. Still and all, we've canceled our subscription.
The fearless Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee must be spinning in their graves. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.
That loud noise you heard a while ago was The Washington Post imploding — on top, of course, of the loud noise you heard the other day when The Los Angeles Times imploded first.
Neither paper will make an endorsement in the 2024 Presidential race, and both papers' editorial boards and newsrooms are in an uproar. Outraged readers are canceling their subscriptions left and right. Are Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee spinning in their graves? Has the world as we know it just turned upside-down?
It seemed that way when we came across a tweet from Bill Kristol, who offered to publish the already drafted WaPo editorial endorsing Harris, which Jeff Bezos apparently personally canceled, on his conservative site The Bulwark. The sad reality is that both the Post and the LA Times were bought — and, initially, saved — by extremely rich men who are now apparently willing to destroy them to cull favor with a fascist who probably will not be elected President next month.
We have a digital subscription to the Post and are deciding what to do. We're also waiting to see how other papers react to the meltdowns that are happening right now in DC and LA. Meanwhile, subscriptions to The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe are distinct possibilities. Both have endorsed Vice President Harris, saying they won't take their marching orders from oligarchs. We cats PURR.
UPDATE: We cats have canceled our Washington Post subscription. Interestingly, the Post's comments were turned off. Also interestingly, our local paper, the Albany Times-Union, endorsed Vice President Harris today. Pretty fearless for a paper that was bought by William Randolph Hearst in 1924, and which railed for years against the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. We cats PURR.
Are you upping and downing and backing and forthing on the election? Feeling buoyed when Vice President Harris turns in a great town hall performance, and then frustrated when so-called journalists repeat Republican talking points? And then get excited all over again, when you hear that Harris will appear tomorrow in Houston with... Beyoncé? (HOLY MOLY! And Chuck Schumer just threw $5 million at Colin Allred's campaign to boot.)
We cats are totally with you — 2024 has been a real roller-coaster. And it's okay to get a little emotional about that from time to time. Like the early voters we've seen who have posted videos on social media. They're either near tears, or in tears, because 1) voting for Harris is a dream come true, 2) they brought along their young adult kids to cast a ballot for the first time, or 3) there were lines out the door and around the block, even in heavily gerrymandered states where interest is traditionally low. It's all wonderful.
Too wonderful for the media, it seems. They're continuing to push their ridiculously negative narratives to keep their ratings ginned up. Here's reality: Harris has more paths to 270 than Trump. She has more money, made even better by the fact that she's not hoarding it for legal bills. She has a far superior ground game — one that's probably even outstripping Obama 2008. On top of all that, she has people's passion on her side. You can see it in the early vote numbers.
More than 26 million Americans have cast their ballots already. That's good for us. Yes, more Republicans are voting early than before. But don't assume that all of them are voting for Trump. We're still in a post-Dobbs world, whether TV pundits and lazy journalists choose to notice. And we'd bet our next case of tuna that the majority of late-deciders — folks who just aren't into politics and who don't focus until the last couple of weeks — are breaking for Harris. We cats PURR.
(IMAGE: Barry Blitt for The New Yorker)
"E. coli food poisoning linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers has sickened at least 49 people in 10 states, including one person who died and 10 who were hospitalized," the AP reports. "The death was reported in an older person in Colorado, and one child has been hospitalized with severe kidney complications."
*Everything Trump Touches Dies
With exactly two weeks to go to Election Day, this was another good day. Let's count the ways.
Vice President Harris hit it out of the park in another interview, this time with Hallie Jackson of NBC. Gosh, the media get so worked up that Harris refuses to, as they put it, "lean into" her gender, don't they? "The point that people really care about is, 'Can you do the job?'" she told Jackson. Got that right, ma'am.
Bill Gates has given $50 million to a PAC supporting Harris, and Tim Walz, speaking in Wisconsin today, called Elon Musk a "dipshit." Whee! It's like that shocking but thrilling moment when you learn your favorite teacher says bad words. (It was also great that Walz mocked Trump's bad makeup. We've never understood why this isn't a bigger topic of conversation beyond social media. Don't reporters have eyes?)
Harris will campaign in Houston, Texas, on Friday. Yes, you read that right. MAGAts tried taking a page from our book and asked why she was wasting time in a state she wouldn't carry. Nice try, guys. The answer is that we've got a Democratic Senator to elect (which just might happen). Also, it messes with the Trumpsters' minds.
On that note, is JD Vance colluding with the Heritage dudes and those other shadowy fascists to dump Donald ASAP? Let's all please spread this rumor among the Donald Faithful. (Also, it's probably true.)
The press is reporting that more Republicans are voting early this time around. But who says they're voting for Trump? Especially after today's breaking news? Former chief of staff John Kelly has told The New York Times on tape that Donald is, duh, a fascist. And Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic published a piece describing even more alarming statements about the military that Trump has made behind closed doors. "I need the kind of generals that Hitler had," he said. Good God. Don't assume that every GOP vote is for Donald.
Finally, as delicious punishment for defaming them, Rudy Giuliani now has one week to hand over his Manhattan condo keys to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Sounds like a great place for an Election Night party! Of course, they'll have to fumigate it first. We cats PURR.
Vice President Harris and former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney hit three battleground states today in a joint "Country Over Party" series of town halls. If you're feeling stressed that we're two weeks out and you don't think you can take another weird poll or pinging text asking for money, take some time to listen to Harris's response to people who are feeling anxious about the election.
"We cannot despair," she said. "The nature of a democracy is such that there is duality. On one hand, there is incredible strength when our democracy is intact. [But] it is very fragile. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. So that is the moment we are in.
"We rise to a moment, and we stand on the broad shoulders of people who fought this fight before for our country. That baton is now in our hands...That is what we have the power to do."
Also, and this isn't the most important point, but we really want Liz Cheney's purple boots. We cats PURR.
Perhaps a microphone going silent for almost 20 minutes is preferable to... um, whatever Benedict Donald said about Arnold Palmer yesterday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. (On the other hand, it gave the Harris-Walz campaign another opportunity to be clever. And Stormy Daniels, as you'd imagine, was simply not to be outdone.)
We'll say no more, except to note that Palmer, like most professional golfers, was a big-time Republican.
Things just kept rolling today for Donald, who, still in Pennsylvania, toddled into a McDonald's and "worked" the fry station. "Worked" is in quotation marks because the restaurant was actually closed to the public for the duration of Trump's silly stunt. What's worse, his fry-cook apron did absolutely nothing for his figure (this will drive him crazy once he realizes it). Did his team not tell him he was going to have to wear that thing? The 1988 Michael Dukakis photo op that tanked immediately sprang to mind.
However, Trump is not the first Republican to try to fake his way through normalcy in an apron. Remember when Paul Ryan visited an Ohio soup kitchen in 2012? His advance team did such a lousy job that the meal was already over and the staff had tidied up. So Ryan was left washing clean pots in a spotless kitchen, and was rightly ridiculed for it.
At least the apron didn't make him look fat. Poor Donald! How simply frightful! How humiliating! How delightful! We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.
The strange incidents with Donald Trump and his ever-more-shaky campaign keep piling up. At a rally yesterday in Detroit, he was giving a speech when his microphone cut out. Which left him pacing the stage silently for almost 20 minutes before it was fixed.
Correction: It didn't "leave him" doing that. He chose to pace. As Tim Walz would say, how weird.
Walz and Vice President Harris would have headed down to the crowd and worked the rope line for a while. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would have done some quick Q&A with the front row. And can you picture Michelle Obama tossing out free swag to folks?
Long story short, our nominees and surrogates wouldn't waste a moment to get up close and personal with voters during an A-V snafu. But Trump has never been one to mix and mingle much. He's supposedly a germophobe, but he's also painfully awkward — especially these days. Small talk? Forget it. His cognitive decline is so evident that even the corporate media have no choice but to cover it now.
Or, here's an additional explanation. A tweep we follow said that Kamala Harris has quite literally driven Donald Trump insane. "Do you all not see this?" Seems plausible. We cats PURR.
With everything that's going on in the US heading into Election Day, you might be forgiven for not noticing what's up in Canada. But this week has been a tumultuous one.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testified to a Parliamentary hearing this week that a significant number of Canadian MPs and other pooh-bahs — mostly Conservatives — have been compromised by foreign influence. He knows this because he is, well, Prime Minister. He did not name the names. But he could have.
Of course, the Conservatives, who are led by the highly unappealing "Maple MAGA" douchebag Pierre Poilievre, went into umbrage overdrive. Please note, dear reader, that Poilievre would know what the names on the list are, if only he would consent to obtain a security clearance. (He has not, presumably because he suffers from Jared Kushner disease and could not pass the test.)
What's most interesting about Trudeau's testimony to Americans is that he singled out Tucker Carlson as an American media figure completely compromised by the Russians.
"We've recently seen that RT is currently funding bloggers and other YouTube personalities of the right, such as Jordan Peterson," Trudeau said. "Other names that are well known, Tucker Carlson as well, in order to amplify messages that are destabilizing democracies."
America, do you need any further proof that Carlson is a Russian stooge? Trudeau testified to this evidence under oath. Yes, we know that US journalists frequently do not pay much attention to our Neighbors to the North. But in this case, it might be worthwhile. We cats HISS.
(IMAGE: Justin Trudeau testifies at Wednesday's public inquiry. Yes, he's politically embattled these days. But to us, he will always be Prime Minister Disney Prince. We cats PURR.)
All righty, then, team! We're two and a half weeks out from Election Day, and things are on a roll. Our nominee Kamala Harris has had a very successful week — and spanking Fox "News" anchor Bret Baier was no small part of it. But not only that, Benedict Donald has just notched another terrible one.
He started out Monday night by short-circuiting a campaign event so he could spend 40 minutes swaying onstage to music instead. He made things worse by calling January 6 a "day of love" at a Univision town hall. He capped it off with an obscene speech at last night's Al Smith dinner — how smart Harris was to skip that event — and a morning appearance today on Fox & Friends, during which he appeared to be sitting on a puppy pad. (Hey, it was a white couch.)
Now, POLITICO — not a friendly website to Democrats — reports that Trump is backing out of interviews left and right because he's "exhausted." (Harris, smartly, has seized on this, and is asking whether Donald is up to being President if he can't even continue to campaign.) It's become a thing. So, does Trump see the writing on the wall? Is he giving up on his 2024 bid?
The Palmer Report thinks so. "This is about as close to a forfeit as you can get down the stretch in a Presidential election," Bill Palmer says. "It's one thing to disappear down the stretch if you’re ahead, because you're trying to play it safe. But Trump is disappearing while behind, because he's now displaying such severe dementia symptoms that he costs himself votes every time he appears in public."
We cats agree that this is possible. And although we Democrats should not take this as license to sit back and relax — we need to be all gas, no brakes, right into Election Day — it's worth noting the effect that Benedict Donald coming to terms with being behind could have on Republicans up and down the ballot.
While early voters in key states are turning out in droves — something we can't believe bodes ill for Democrats — a Trump campaign hobbled by its leader crying uncle could decimate the GOP.
Trump surely will hoard all his money and resources and put them toward his massive legal bills (including, probably, money for lawyers who will challenge a Harris win). There will be precious few dollars left for Republican candidates for Senate, House, and the various governorships in the final days before the election. (Their ground game, apparently nonexistent, is already giving Republicans fits.) We're not seeing a lot of reporting on this yet, but GOP candidates and pooh-bahs must be livid — Mitch McConnell most of all.
We Democrats, working hard to turn out our vote, should be happy and inspired by all this. (Or, if you just want a shot in the arm, keep watching this clip of Harris humiliating anti-choice hecklers at an event in Wisconsin this week.) This is exactly where a winning campaign would want to be two weeks out. But as we've said, let's keep our foot — or paw — on the gas! Take nothing for granted. We cats PURR.
(IMAGE: Street art seen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.)
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 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.
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.
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.)
(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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
The Mesa County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office released the booking photo for former County Clerk Tina Peters after she was sentenced to jail for nine years for tampering with voting machines. Looking at this, you have to think that the enormity of what's happened to her hadn't sunk in yet. Maybe now that she's had her first night of not-sleeping on her special "magnetic" mattress, she knows better. Nine years!
This woman was the epitome of MAGA entitlement and privilege, and the judge who sentenced her yesterday made that crystal clear. Check out — and savor — his withering 12-minute statement to her, after which she was unceremoniously handcuffed and hauled off to the hoosegow instead of staying free on appeal. Clearly, the judge considered her an unrepentant danger to the community. Which, with a national election just around the corner, she is.
P.S. In case you're wondering, no, Donald Trump can't pardon her if he's elected in November. (He won't be, of course, but that's not the point.) Tina Peters was charged and convicted by the state of Colorado. She's outta luck. We cats PURR.
Because they are horrible people who never shy away from exploiting others' suffering for political gain, MAGA Republicans are trying to spread the lie that the Biden-Harris Administration is falling down on the job when it comes to Hurricane Helene recovery. (Are they still feeling stung about criticisms of George W. Bush's screw-ups — and that infamous photo — after Hurricane Katrina in 2005? Nah. They're just frantically trying everything they can to stop Kamala Harris.)
All this lie-mongering has made humanitarians like Chef José Andrés, who is actually doing something to help victims of Helene, push back strongly on social media. And even a Republican with Presidential ambitions like Governor Glenn Youngkin of Virginia has refused to toe the MAGA line. "I'm incredibly appreciative of the rapid response and cooperation by the federal team," he said.
If you have friends in Western North Carolina like we do, you may be wondering how you can help them while they dig themselves out of the muck and the mud. We cats have avoided giving to the Red Cross for years — they've turned very crooked. So we have two suggestions: Give Chef José and his team at World Central Kitchen some dollars and love by clicking here. And if you're worried about how Helene may affect the election in North Carolina, you can click here to support the organizing efforts of the state Democratic Party. We cats PURR.
Football fans famously say that when the chips are down, you can win in the last few minutes of the fourth quarter. Or, at least... we think so. We cats aren't into that particular game, mostly because we just don't understand downs. But we get the concept of pulling out a last-second victory as the clock ticks down.
Earlier today, folks were saying that Coach Walz won last night's debate in the final minutes, when he shamed JD Vance over January 6. You have to wonder if "That's a damning non-answer" is the harshest response a Minnesota nice guy can give. Whether it is or not, what Walz said was absolutely correct. Vance was smarmy and unbelievable.
And we were pleasantly surprised, because all the talking heads had assured us that Team Harris was not going to focus on the 2021 insurrection the way Team Biden wanted to. But here was Walz, directly addressing Vance and asking him if Trump lost in 2020 or not. (What an indictment of today's journalists, by the way.)
Turns out, Walz's timing was perfect, because today's unsealing of Jack Smith's filing against Benedict Donald in the January 6 case shows just how contemptuous of democracy Team Trump was. Lots of new information revealed in 165 pages, including Donald's "so what" response to an aide's concern for Mike Pence's safety. If that doesn't give JD Vance pause, we don't know what will.
The bottom line is that with a mere month to go, January 6 has once again become — and will remain — part of the 2024 election conversation. Sorry, JD. We cats PURR.
Let's discuss the elusive quality of likability. In politics, it's the natural gift of being appealing to and connecting with other people. But pundits and historians question it. Does it really matter? After all, if it did, Richard Nixon wouldn't have won a single election in his lifetime.
We cats think it matters. Last night's VP debate was the latest example.
Yes, there were key moments on the issues when JD Vance disqualified himself from public office. Tim Walz brutally cornered him on January 6 (it's already a Harris campaign ad). And then there's "The rules were you guys weren't going to fact-check" about Haitian immigrants. (Like his boss, what a whiner.) But overall, there was his constant attitude of smug contempt. (We won't get into the fuschia tie, which he may have worn as some weird gesture to women, or the eyeliner, which he obviously uses because his peepers are so deep-set.)
While the elite media focused on Vance's smooth ability to lie, it was surely Walz's authenticity that won the night. For example, a CNN poll handed Walz a plus-37 net-favorable advantage after the debate. Although Vice Presidential match-ups almost never matter in the end, perhaps voters have decided they just don't want to see Vance in their living rooms for the next four years, let alone be a 78-year-old, junk-food-eating heartbeat away from the Presidency.
Speaking of Benedict Donald, he may very well have ruined an unlikable candidate's ability to win — at least, for some time. His awful performance against Kamala Harris reminded tens of millions of viewers of all the reasons they despise him. (And he knows he screwed up, because he's still obsessing over it three weeks later.) GOP "bad candidates" are struggling in races across the country — folks like Mark Robinson, Kari Lake, Bernie Moreno and Tim Sheehy just plain turn people off. You could even apply this to Canada, where a very Vancey leader of the Conservative opposition can't seem to cobble together a vote of no confidence against Justin Trudeau's nine-year government.
Voters make decisions based on their guts. And the more they see of Harris and Walz, the more they like them. Also, and most important, Tim Walz likes cats. This makes us PURR.
Steve Bannon still has another month to go in his prison sentence, but the tactic he helped unleash — to "flood the zone with sh*t" — is, unfortunately, alive and well this Presidential election. It's known among us Democrats as "red-wave polling," and what it does it make polling averages skewed and unreliable.
Republicans did this back in the 2022 midterms, and they successfully suckered pundits and analysts who should have known better into predicting a GOP wipeout. As you know, that didn't happen. The House of Representatives flipped from our control, but by a very tight margin, and the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision clearly played a big role. So all those lazy journos and talking heads ended up with egg-covered faces. A word of caution, however:
"This problem is still with us in 2024, and it may be about to become a serious problem," says Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg. He has a list of nearly 20 right-wing or GOP-leaning polls that are trying mightily to shift the poll averages to Benedict Donald, including Fox News, McLaughlin, Public Opinion Strategies, and Trafalgar, just to name a few. Unsurprisingly, they're especially active in trying to skew perceptions of the race in North Carolina, a make-or-break state for Trump.
"This close to an election, spending money on anything other than things that help you win is an extravagance," Rosenberg says. "Thus, the right must view spending so much money on these polls as something that helps them win, which makes them a new form of partisan political activity — not 'polling' as we understand it."
It would be nice if the media would start recognizing and acknowledging this phenomenon, especially after the embarrassment they suffered two years ago. But holding out hope for any kind of intelligent political analysis from today's so-called journalists is probably a waste of time.
In the meantime, then, while we're not the types to say "Ignore all the polls," at least keep red-wave polling in mind when you see cable news performers tout the tightness of the race or an alleged shift to Republicans. It's in their interest because they want eyeballs, likes, and clicks. And obviously it's in the Trumpsters' interest because they're anxious to suppress an enthusiastic early vote for Harris-Walz.
What can we do about all this? "Support our candidates, outhustle the Republicans, run up the score in the early vote, and go win this election, together," Rosenberg says. We cats PURR.
Well, he made it! Today is Jimmy Carter's 100th birthday, and he's here with all of us to celebrate it. According to Jason Carter, his grandfather Jimmy is excited about voting for Kamala Harris for President, and intends to stick around in order to do so. It's good to have goals. (And good for Dark Brandon for giving him this one.)
Meanwhile, the tributes are all over the interwebs, and no doubt pouring into The Carter Center. He's earned them — including, we can't help thinking, some famous words of his old 1980 Democratic nemesis, Ted Kennedy. He's a "good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." We cats PURR.
