Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Today's News: Commentary on Poilievre v. journalists, and on Harris v. Trump (plus dissing Poilievre's wardrobe)


Starting with Poilievre v. journalists:

David Moscrop Why Pierre Poilievre disowns the extremists he flirts with
...Poilievre, who supported the Convoy that descended on and occupied Ottawa in 2022, keeps showing us who he is and this fits with that history. When he’s called out on that support, he simply turns the table, rails against the government and Trudeau, and attacks journalists. Pretending not to know of Diagolon gives him an opportunity to turn things around on the media and generate highly-clippable “gotchas” in a bid to control the narrative.
...Poilievre may be foolish, but he isn’t a fool. He’ll shun the media until he hears a question that allows him to frame discussions as he’d please – or else he’ll take the conversation in that direction anyway and berate journalists...
...As he attempts to portray himself as a respectable centrist, why was the leader of the official opposition cavorting with the far right? The best answer seems to be because he supports their anti-government ends....
In the face of Poilievre’s cynical politicking, the media and other observers ought to keep up the pressure. Keep asking questions, keep calling out his bullshit and flood the zone with the facts. If he gets aggressive, get aggressive right back. Bullies only understand and respond to power, and so the Conservative leader ought to get a dose of that in return every time he decides to “forget” what Diagolon is, hurls abuse at a wire service for issuing a correction as he did with the Canadian Press, or insists on taking a direct question and using it to attack the reporter who’s asking it, like he did when he attacked Akin.
This approach won’t make for elegant and conciliatory politics, but who thinks politics can always be elegant and conciliatory? And when a guy such as Poilievre shows up on the scene, the rules change. We must change right along with them.
And on a side note, before I lose track of this tweet, here is mens-wear guru Derek Guy's enjoyable critique of Poilievre's "t-shirt and jacket" look: Moving on to Trump v Harris
Josh Marshall: Team Happy vs Team Mad
...those broad descriptions can capture realities that transcend the details; they are often the takeaway for those watching only at a distance.
It doesn’t take much imagination to think of Trump and the MAGA movement as the Angry Tribe. I mean, they’ve always been Team Angry, or maybe Team Grievance or Team Vengeance. But what about the Harris campaign and the earlier Biden campaign? The Biden campaign, which I supported greatly, was not a happy tribe. I don’t mean that as a criticism. ...
The Biden campaign was a slog. We’re having to fight a political campaign to protect what most of us view as our birthright as Americans. And we thought we’d already had that fight and won that fight four years ago. ....
...Within moments of the beginning of Harris’s campaign, Democratic small donors went to their devices and sent her almost $100 million dollars in 36 hours. Though it’s taken about three weeks for her to move into a small but significant popular vote lead, almost from the first days polls registered a jump in support. Then there are the crowds, totally eclipsing those for President Biden’s rallies and even those of Trump’s. And all of this is impossible to separate from the three weeks that preceded it, a dismal and seemingly unending passage that functioned as a vast psycho-social slingshot, pulling back with ever-mounting physical tension into as yet unplumbed lengths of despair, anxiety and fear to be able, when released, to sling forward with an unimaginable intensity.
But the character of Harris’s campaign can’t be limited to prelude and success. The Harris campaign has a different texture. It is forward-looking and loose and ebullient in a different way. As we’ve discussed in other posts, her campaign has entered the broader popular culture in ways that neither Biden nor Trump ever has. I find it very difficult to pick apart what is intrinsic to the campaign vs the feel of energy and the possibility of victory. As I’ve told people countless times in other contexts, every losing campaign is full of idiots and vice versa. It may be a chicken and egg question that is mostly beside the point. But the difference in mood, texture and message is dramatically different and there’s little question this bulks very large in the campaign’s ongoing momentum going on one month in.
...The Trump you are seeing now is the best Trump you will ever again see. It may seem hard to believe. After all he is melting down before our eyes....He has spent most of the past couple weeks hiding out in what some Internet wag has called Bunker-a-Lago. And when he does speak publicly he has revealed himself to deeply unwell, sundowning 24 hours a day. But it is only going to get worse from here. During the next 85 days as it becomes clearer and clearer that he is going to lose this election and be confronted by jail time, ignominy and possibly even worse for him, irrelevance, he is going to act out in ways that will make his past ugliness seem statesmanlike. He will become more racist, more misogynist. He will spread more lies. He will increasingly cast doubt on the soundness of the election process and argue once again…but this time with more desperation…that that the 2024 is going to be stolen from him. He will become a greater and greater threat to our institutions and more openly encourage his followers to disrupt voting, vote counting and vote certification. He will take to every medium that will have him with hysteria. He will become even less coherent and much more demented. It will be horrifying to watch because it will not only be the final shrieks of desperation from a creature headed for political extinction but he will have no reason to restrain himself, no reason to respect what few norms he has not already violated. So, bad as he is today, his current pathetic performance is likely to be as good as it gets for America’s worst president, America’s worst presidential candidate and one of the worst Americans in our history.
  
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