Professor Allan Lichtman, who predicted Trump’s victory over Clinton, even though she won all three debates, calls media on the carpet for its complicity in Trump’s success:
Media should be ashamed of their lopsided attacks on Biden when Trump lied his way through the debate, at a clip of one serious lie every 1.333 minutes. Trump attacked democracy and threatened retribution, but media finds a selling narrative and recklessly focuses almost exclusively on that.
Lichtman also has harsh words for the major parties:
Great quote:
Republicans have no principles, Democrats have no spine.
Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by panicking about Joe.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
I am not a big fan of Lawrence O’Donnell. I find him a bit too smug for my taste, but he has some real wisdom about the debate. There is no call for people to run around screaming that the sky is falling. As Lichtman pointed out above, the real potential damage is the media’s profit-driven narrative that makes too much out of the significance of the debate.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot by panicking about Joe.
He was the first source I went to afterwards to get the "fundamentals" based perspective. I think based on his work, it would be a huge risk to switch out at this point. There is nothing in his "keys" that is swayed by poor debate performance that I recall. As far as functioning as a president, I think we've forgotten that a president isn't supposed to be a king, and as a strong institutionalist, if he has a strong support network he just needs to be able to stand and say "carry on folks".
While there is no comparison between the information quality of the NYT and Fox or Breitbart, it's a reminder that a good newspaper can't just be a good newspaper anymore.
Social distancing has likely already begun to flatten the curve...Continue to research good antivirals and vaccine candidates. Make everyone wear masks. -- J.D. Vance
He was the first source I went to afterwards to get the "fundamentals" based perspective. I think based on his work, it would be a huge risk to switch out at this point. There is nothing in his "keys" that is swayed by poor debate performance that I recall. As far as functioning as a president, I think we've forgotten that a president isn't supposed to be a king, and as a strong institutionalist, if he has a strong support network he just needs to be able to stand and say "carry on folks".
While there is no comparison between the information quality of the NYT and Fox or Breitbart, it's a reminder that a good newspaper can't just be a good newspaper anymore.
The reason I like both of these video appearances is that the points they make reinforce each other quite nicely and their reasoning is sound.
The people panicking are not basing their reasoning on knowledge and experience. They are inflating the significance of debates, and they show absolutely no knowledge of how presidential campaigns work.
And clearly our journalists, by and large, are too busy harnessing the runaway sandworm of today’s “narrative” to carry the networks and papers to big profits to study the facts and history they are covering to cover this stuff responsibly. Their behavior has been absolutely shameless and reprehensible for some time.
Lichtman’s work is reassuring. It suggests that the fundamentals of governance are more important than we tend to appreciate. Maybe there is hope. That said, the malfeasance of the media is astounding and disgraceful.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
I hope so too. Life is full of surprises, and that can go either way.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
Heather Cox Richardson has provided some of the best recent-history commentary of our times. I started to read her stuff back during COVID. In her recent appearance in CNN, she raised a voice of warning, describing the recent spate of Supreme Court decisions “a legal coup.” She fears that we are very close to losing our Republic. She also points out, from her historian’s perspective, that it would be madness to replace Joe Biden over the debate.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
Happy 4th, dudes and dudettes.
- Doc
Happy 4th to you all! Thanks, DocCam!
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
Part of Heather Cox Richardson’s July 3rd message:
America was founded on the radical idea that all men are created equal.
What the founders declared self-evident was not so clear eighty-seven years later, when southern white men went to war to reshape America into a nation in which African Americans, Indigenous Americans, Chinese, and Irish were locked into a lower status than whites. In that era, equality had become a “proposition,” rather than “self-evident.”
“Four score and seven years ago,” Abraham Lincoln reminded Americans, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” In 1863, Lincoln explained, the Civil War was “testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
It did, of course. The Confederate rebellion failed. The United States endured, and Americans began to expand the idea that all men are created equal to include Black men, men of color, and eventually women.
But just as in the 1850s, we are now, once again, facing a rebellion against our founding principle, as a few people seek to reshape America into a nation in which certain people are better than others.
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, pledged their “Lives, [their] Fortunes and [their] sacred Honor” to defend the idea of human equality. Ever since then, Americans have sacrificed their own fortunes, honor, and even their lives, for that principle. Lincoln reminded Civil War Americans of those sacrifices when he urged the people of his era to “take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Words to live by in 2024.
"I have learned with what evils tyranny infects a state. For it frustrates all the virtues, robs freedom of its lofty mood, and opens a school of fawning and terror, inasmuch as it leaves matters not to the wisdom of the laws, but to the angry whim of those who are in authority.”
