Trump Is Putrid... Fox (The Most Watched News Network) Says Biden Is Worse
Yesterday, Dan Pfeiffer noted that Republicans want a worse border crisis and that Trump’s congressional MAGA allies— including MAGA Mike— are making sure nothing improves: “they want a crisis at the border to help them in the election,” wrote Pfeiffer. “The Republicans see the border as a huge political vulnerability for President Biden. I am dubious that it is the surefire political winner that the MAGA set believes, but there’s no question the Right has used their propaganda apparatus and cruel stunts with migrant families to put the situation at the border on the radar screen for the electorate… Polling suggests that immigration and the border are the issues on which Biden’s approval is the lowest. Through agitprop and misleading messaging, Republicans see an opportunity to make the situation at the border an evocative example of chaos on Biden’s watch and advance the narrative that Biden is too weak to protect Americans.”
Trump opposes this deal because he wants to beat Biden over the head with the situation at the border. He can imagine Biden running ads touting his “historic, bipartisan deal to secure the border.” Trump and Johnson do not want to give Biden a win on what they view as his greatest vulnerability.
Johnson is taking a page from Paul Ryan’s book. In 2011, Ryan helped convince Speaker Boehner to scuttle a budget deal with Obama because Ryan was worried that it would help Obama win the 2012 election (this is one of the primary reasons why I hate Paul Ryan so much).
Trump and MAGA Mike are engaging in the worst, most cynical sort of politics.
Pfeiffer advocates making the GOP pay in November. “The voters,” he concluded, “are very open to an argument that the House Republicans are blocking progress on the border. In the CBS News/YouGov poll, the public’s view of how Congressional Republicans are handling the border is no better than their view of Biden. If a bipartisan deal is reached in the Senate and Mike Johnson follows through with his Trump-influenced pledge to kill it, Democrats should hammer Republicans for putting politics over border policy. It’s easy to imagine Biden using the State of the Union to make this case or responding to Trump on a debate stage. The Republicans will only get away with it if we let them.”
I’m glad— but not convinced— that Pfeiffer finds it easy to imagine Biden using the State of the Union to make this case or responding to Trump on a debate stage. Trump was smart to avoid debating Chris Christie, Nikki Haley, even Robot Ron… As cognitively impaired as he is, I don’t get the idea he has any fears at all about taking on Biden.
No matter how furiously they deny it, the Democrats are always going to believe that Trump’s horribleness is what will defeat Trump. It almost did in 2016. And it almost didn’t in 2020. Team Biden also thinks that when they talk to each other and text each other about what they’ve accomplished— how much they’ve accomplished— that’s proof they can’t lose. They’re delusional. They just don’t seem to understand how actual voters think and feel. As opposed to Fox News, which does understand... since they tell them how to think and feel.
I’m afraid Team Biden doesn’t understand that genocide (+ ethnic cleansing + apartheid) = a state of being as bad as Trump fascism, certainly not less bad. There’s no in between with genocide. You either oppose genocide or you’re helping commit genocide. Biden’s on the wrong side of that one, no matter what mealy-mouthed, embarrassing statement’s his administration issues from time to time for domestic consumption. Pramila Jayapal is ringing the alarm bells on that (+ the immigration disaster), warning that it’s fractured Biden’s fragile electoral coalition. The disenchanted are not going to vote for Trump; they’re just not going to vote (for genocide).
If the Democrats don’t want to see Trump march back into the White House, they’d better do something. In a series of e-mails, Florida Senate candidate Alan Grayson centered his proposal about what to do around what Obama did in Florida in 2008 and what Stacey Abrams did in Georgia in 2018 and 2020. “The Florida Democratic Party,” wrote Grayson, “is in the toilet, circling the bowl. But we can change that. We can make Florida blue again. Look what we accomplished in 2008, led by President Obama:
Now, look what’s happen since COVID shut down our door-to-door registration campaign:
But… we can add almost another 1,000,000 Democrats just by re-registering the Democrats from 2020”
He’s asking for contributions, not to waste on negative TV ads but to pay door-to-door canvassers. Grayson’s case is that in order to accomplish his goals:
Universal healthcare
Reducing drug addiction, gun violence and violent crime
Ending inflation
Ending discrimination and bigotry
Saving Planet Earth
Florida Democrats— his campaign— would have to register a million new Democratic voters.
In another e-mail, Grayson noted that "the way for Democrats to win, in Florida and everywhere else, is to register our vote. There is no better illustration of that than what Stacey Abrams has accomplished in Georgia. Here are the actual voter registration numbers for Georgia:
2014 – 5,191,182
2016 – 5,443,046
2018 – 6,428,581 (one million new voters!)
2020 – 7,233,584
2022 – 7,866,677
And the result? Trump went from winning Georgia in 2016 to losing it in 2020. And Georgia, a “Deep South” state, elected two Democratic senators, giving the Democrats the majority in the U.S. Senate. If Georgia can register 2.6 million new voters, then Florida can register 1,000,000. Think about it. Thirty more Electoral Votes for the Democratic Presidential candidate. Two more Democratic Senators, and two fewer Republican Senators. We can do this— Si se peude! We have to hire canvassers to go door to door to register voters. And we have to pay those canvassers. Will you join in that effort?"