Polling from The New York Times Confirms What Many Knew: The MAGA Republican Base is Out of Touch with Reality

Image from The New York Times.

Results from a July New York Times/Siena Poll of the Republican contenders for the 2024 Party Nomination are chilling. 

They also confirm what many in the political world have long known.

The fringe Trumpist-Maga Republican Base is out of touch with reality. 

Check out some of these findings with regard to Donald Trump.

• 76 percent of the people polled have a somewhat or very favorable view of Donald Trump.
• 71 percent of the people polled do not think Trump committed a serious federal crime. The same number thinks that the party should support Trump during these investigations. 56 percent think he did not do anything wrong with regard to the Mara Largo Classified Documents case. Even if he did commit serious crimes, 22 percent said they would still vote for him. 
• 75 percent do not think Donald Trump did anything wrong in contesting the 2020 Presidential Election. They obviously think differently about the events on January 6, 2021, than the people who live in the world of normal.
• Vaccine Denier and Conspiracy Theorist Robert Kennedy Jr. beat former Vice President Mike Pence on overall favorability 53 to 44 percent.
• 37 percent think Trump is moral.
• 58 percent feel Trump is better situated to beat President Biden. 
• 54 percent think Trump is more fun than the 16 percent that say that for Ron DeSantis.
• Donald Trump is besting Ron DeSantis by a 37-point margin (54 to 17 percent.) No other Republican Presidential contender is polling above three percent. That includes the three Republicans that have stopped drinking the Trump Kool-Aid: Chris Christie, Will Hurd, and Asa Hutchinson. 

Overall, 37 percent of the Republican electorate will only vote for Donald Trump while another 37 percent are persuadable, meaning they could be convinced to vote for the twice impeached, twice (going on three or four) indicted, twice KKK Endorsed, twice popular vote loser, Liar in Chief, catalyst for the January 6 Domestic Terrorist Insurrection, and person found liable for sexual assault.

Only 25 percent, according to this poll, of the Republican voting populace would never vote for Trump. 

On current political and social issues:

• 55 percent think a woman's right to choose should be either totally or mostly illegal with 59 percent supporting a ban commencing after the first six weeks of a pregnancy. 
• 57 percent oppose comprehensive immigration reform.
• 52 percent oppose further aid to Ukraine. 
• 58 percent feel society "should NOT accept transgender people as the gender they identify with." 41 percent oppose the marriages of same-sex couples. 
• 38 percent get news from FOX, Newsmax, or other conservative news outlets. Fox is the overall leader of all the news outlets (regardless of political leanings) with 26 percent.

These are not the majority views of the country. 

The majority of the people need to show that at the polls in November 2024 and beyond. 

Capehart and Abernathy from July 28, 2023

 

Editorial Cartoons for the Week

 

In a Parody of the X-Files, The Lincoln Project Produces "Unintelligent Life"

 In perhaps one of their funniest ads, The Lincoln Project, in a parody of The X-Files, released an ad yesterday called "Unintelligent Life."

With The X-Files theme music playing in the background and the premise of aliens looking for intelligent life here on Earth, the ad goes after the fringiest of the political world including:

• Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for saying the pharmaceutical industry, through the drugs they create, is making us all slaves.
• Marjorie Taylor Greene for saying "Q is a patriot" who believes many "in the government are worshipping Satan."
• Kari Lake is quoted as saying the people in the world of reality are "living on Planet Crazy."
• Mark Lindell for his claims that the computers controlling the elections were rigged.
• A Fox panelist said the United States was not founded on the backs of slaves and the notion of white supremacy. The Fox panelist apparently has not recently looked at the portraits of all the white men presenting the Declaration of Independence or the United States Constitution. 

The ad concludes with an alien reporting to his or her superiors, "no intelligent life found.."

That appears to be certainly true when one considers that a significant portion of the Republican electorate is still backing Donald Trump despite his checkered past including:

• Being found liable for sexual assault.
• Attempting to overthrow the 2020 Presidential Election. 
• Being indicted twice with new charges piling on him with two more indictments possibly on the way.
• Getting impeached twice.
• Mismanaging the country during the Coronavirus.
• Widespread business failures and potential fraud.
• Earning the endorsement of KKK Leader David Duke twice.
• Losing the popular vote twice. 

The ad has a point. 

President Biden Signs Proclamation Authorizing Monuments to Emmett Till and His Mother, Calling for Knowledge and Truth over Ignorance and Silence

Photo from CNN.

Today is Emmett Till's eighty-second birthday.

Unfortunately, because of the racists (and what we call white nationalists today) in 1955 Mississippi that kidnapped, tortured, and murdered him, he is not alive to celebrate it. 

Or attend with members of his family the White House Ceremony today where President Joe Biden, accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, signed a proclamation authorizing the creation of three monuments (one in Illinois and two in Mississippi) that honor his and his mother, Mamie Till Mobley's, contributions to the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

For those not familiar with what happened to Emmett Till in 1955, he was a 14-year-old child from Illinois, who while on a trip to family in Mississippi, was kidnapped by the racist husband of a woman Till allegedly made inappropriate comments, gestures, and touches towards. 

The husband and an accomplice proceeded to torture, mutilate, and kill the 14-year-old, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Photo from Meridian

The discovery of the body, funeral (where Till's mother Mamie insisted on an open casket so people could see what the brutes did to her son,) and sham trial where the jury acquited the two murderers, along with the journalistic zeal of the Black Press of the period, contributed to the rising Civil Rights Movement in that historical period. 

In the ceremony today (July 25, 2023,) both Vice President Harris and President Biden relayed the tragedy of Emmett Till as a lesson that should be learned from and not minimized or erased as some White Nationalist MAGA extremists would prefer. 

From NPR

In her remarks, Vice President Harris said the tragedy of Emmett Till and the fight for justice her mother pursued afterward was:

"Their stories continue to inspire our collective fight for justice...Our history as a nation is born of tragedy and truimph. Of struggle and success. That is who we are. And as people who love our country as patriots, we know that we must remember and teach our full history, even when it is painful, especially when it is painful. Today, there are those in our nation who would prefer to erase or even rewrite the ugly parts of our past. Those that attempt to teach that enslaved people benefited from slavery. Those who insult us in an attempt to gaslight us. Who try to divide our nation with unnecessary debates. Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget. We will be better if we remember. We will be stronger if we remember. Because we all here know it is only by understanding and learning from our past that we can continue to work together to build a better future..."

In his remarks, President Biden said he was trying to "temper his anger" when writing his speech, saying:

"I can't fathom. I can't fathom what it must have been like (for Till.) It's hard to believe I was 12 years old and I know that no matter how much time has passed. How many birthdays. How many events. How many anniversaries. It's hard to relive this. It brings it all back as if it happened yesterday. The images in your head. The things you remember..."

He further stated about the Till tragedy:

"The country and the world saw about Emmett Till and his mother as a story of a family's promise and loss in a nation's reckoning with hate, violence, racism, overwhelming abuse of power, and brutality...Today we join together as I sign a proclamation designating Emmett Till and Mamie Till Mobley National Monument in both Illinois and Mississippi...At a time when those who seek to ban books bury history, we're making it clear, crystal clear. While darkness and denialism can hide much, they erase nothing...We can't just choose to learn what we want to know. We have to learn what we should know. We should know about our country. We should know everything. The good, the bad, and the truth of who we are as a nation. That's what great nations do and we are a great nation. That's what they do. For only with truth comes healing, justice, repair, and another step forward toward forming a more perfect union. We got a hell of a long way to go... Look. Telling the truth and the full history of our nation is important... Hate never goes away. It just hides. It hides under the rocks and given a little bit of oxygen by bad people, it comes roaring out again. It's up to all of us to deal with that. It is up to all of us to stop it...The best way to do it is with the truth. Silence is complicity. I will not be silent nor will you be silent about what happened..."

In his closing comments, the President saluted the efforts of the Black Press from that era who wrote the first draft of history regarding the Till Tragedy, relaying:

"The reason the world saw what Mrs. Till Mobley saw was because another hero in this story. The Black Press...Jet Magazine. The Chicago Defender. Other newspapers and radio announcers who told the story. Were unflinching in the bravery in which they told that story, making sure America saw what they saw. Ida B. Wells once said 'the way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them. The way to right wrongs is to shine the light of truth on them.' That's our charge today."

President Biden and Vice President Harris are right. 

"Telling the truth and the full history of our nation is important."

"Let us not be seduced into believing that somehow we will be better if we forget."

Knowledge over Ignorance.

Light over Darkness.

Truth over Lies. 

The totality of details over cherry-picked fragments. 

Historical Literacy over Cultural Amnesia. 

Never Forget. 

Editorial Cartoons for the Week

 

The Best Spokesperson for The Biden/Harris Administration is....Wait for It...Marjorie Taylor Greene

MAGA Republicans are so obtuse that they unknowingly sing the praises of the opposition thinking that their words condemn them. 

Recent case in point. At the MAGA Turning Point Action Event last week, Marjorie Jewish Space Lasers Cause California Wildfires Greene gave remarks in which she was saying all the things that she thought was wrong with the Biden/Harris Administration when in fact everything she raised were issues that resonate positively with the American People. 

Hard to Believe. 

Listen to her below. 

https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1680598281259307011

While, surprise-surprise, she was incorrect in her assertion that Biden was the Senate Majority Leader and she, like other MAGA's likes to throw around the word socialist without having a full understanding of the term, everything else from Biden's emphasis on completing the New Deal and Great Society Programs of FDR and LBJ could very well have come from a Biden/Harris Campaign Ad. 

Wait a second. 

It has. 

The Biden/Harris Campaign Team, probably chuckling all the way to social media, produced a Twitter Ad, highlighting their best spokesperson: Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1681424737384435713?s=20

The ad, with background videos of the President and Vice President either together or at separate events, quotes Greene, stating:

"Joe Biden had the largest public investment in social infrastructure and environmental programs that is actually finishing what FDR started, that LBJ expanded on, and Joe Biden is attempting to complete. Programs to address education, medical care, urban problems, rural poverty, transportation, Medicare, Medicaid, labor unions. And he still is working on it."

President Biden in the caption of the post states "I approve this message."

Helping social infrastructure. Protecting the environment. Funding education and medical care. Strengthening cities and combatting rural poverty. 

Who in their right minds would be against any of that?

Greene left out how the Biden/Harris team is working to protect voting rights and civil liberties like reproductive freedom but everyone knows they are the ones that are for those too. 

Mika Brzezinski and her husband/cohost Joe Scarborough had a lot of fun commenting on how idiotic Greene was for providing the Biden/Harris Campaign this golden opportunity to throw her unknowingly praise of the Administration back at her. 

Do not be surprised if you see variations of this ad along with current and future segments showing Republicans praising aspects of all the legislation they voted against like the American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act. 

Perhaps the President can ask Greene to make more ads for him when he attends her district for the groundbreaking of a Georgia Solar Facility made possible by Bidenomics Legislation. 

Democrats May Have Found Their Daisy Ad for 2024

Remember watching or learning about the LBJ Daisy Ad from the 1964 Presidential Campaign where the little girl is county flower petals and then the sound of a man reciting a nuclear warhead countdown takes her place. 

That ad was broadcast only once but the intense media scrutiny that surrounded it immediately afterward and in the historical description of the campaign sealed the impression that 1964 Republican Presidential Nominee Barry Goldwater was too dangerous to be entrusted with the nuclear codes in the White House. 

Now, in 2023, Democrats may have found the Reproductive Freedom ad equivalent of the Daisy piece that can greatly assist their candidates in this years and the 2024 elections. 

The Democratic Super Pac, Progress Action Fund, has launched a PG-13 rated ad in Ohio designed to turn out voters to both:

• Reject an August Republican measure that would require a 60 percent vote (instead of a simple majority) to approve amendments to the Ohio State Constitution.
• Secure the rights of reproductive freedom in this year's November election. 

Called "Ohio Republicans in Your Bedroom," the ad starts with a couple in bed about to have sex. The woman asks if the man has a condom and as he is reaching for it in a night stand drawer, an old man takes it out of the drawer first, saying "Sorry you can't use those."

When the woman asks who the old man is, he states that "I am your Republican Congressman. Now that we're in charge, we're banning birth control."

The woman protests, saying "this is our decision, not yours. Get out of our bedroom."

To which the insensitive, out of touch old Republican, acting like Big Brother out of 1984 responds, "I won the last election. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to watch and make sure you don't do anything illegal."

The caption at the end of the ad states, "Keep Republicans Out of Your Bedroom. Vote No on August 8." 

This is a very effective and powerful ad that perfectly captures the theme of do you want the government in your bedroom, interfering with your love life, or worse watching you and your partner through some hidden camera watching you at your most intimate moments?

Commenting on the effectiveness of the ad, Matters of State Strategies Partner Matt Grodsky commented:

"It's a genius concept that cuts through the noise and will resonate especially with younger audiences who require some shock to pay attention. This is the kind of messaging that Democrats need to utilize in 2024."

With many Republicans across the country continuing their attack on reproductive freedom and the right to use contraception, variations of this ad should be very helpful to Democratic Candidates from the top to the bottom of the ticket in the 2023, 2024, and future election cycles.

Democrats crushed Republicans in a landslide in 1964 thanks in part to the one time broadcast Daisy ad. 

Imagine what they can do if ads like the one being shown in Ohio can continually appear on regular and social media 24/7 in all 50 states and American Territories. 

Imagine. 

Editorial Cartoons for the Week