The last refuge of one who cannot defend his own plans

Media has been full of the story of the huge prisoner swap between the West and Russia. This deal brought Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan home. Reporters discuss how complicated the deal was, how many countries were involved, and how many prisoners on both sides were a part of the deal. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos adds one more detail to the story. Kamala Harris was part of the negotiation team. Which means she already has lots of foreign affairs experience and she was mentored by one of the better presidents in foreign affairs. At one point the nasty guy claimed he could get the prisoners free with a phone call to his friend Putin. That strongly suggested if Putin waited until after the election he could get a more favorable deal. Putin didn’t wait. As I had heard elsewhere, this leads to the question: Has Putin concluded that the nasty guy is going to lose? In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a couple good quotes. First is from Jonathan Last of The Bulwark discussing the nasty guy’s horrible appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists:

Trump’s view of politics is that nothing can be accomplished without dominating cultural attention. It does not matter if people love you or hate you—you want them fixated on you. From there, you can figure out the angles. (And let the Electoral College do its work.) Yes, Trump set himself on fire yesterday. But this self-immolation wasn’t an accident and it wasn’t crazy. It was exactly what he wanted. For the 11-day span from Joe Biden stepping aside to yesterday, Donald Trump was invisible. Kamala Harris dominated the country’s attention and sparked the emergence of a genuine cultural movement. Trump needed to get back on the screen in order to compete with her in the attention economy.

I rather think they are crediting the nasty guy with more smarts than he actually has. I think he was just being his racist self. A few days ago I wrote about Rachel Maddow and her discussion of election deniers running elections in some counties and refusing to certify the November results. I thought here in Michigan that would probably happen in some of the low population counties. Dworkin quoted Bolts magazine that says we should think much bigger. Like Maricopa County, Arizona. That’s where Phoenix, with its 4.5 million residents is, making it the most populous swing county. They just had their primary and Stephen Richter, the Republican head of elections in Maricopa, just lost to a far-right challenger. Richter came to office in 2021 and a big part of his job has been to constantly debunk the far-right claims of fraud, amid harassment from fellow Republicans. I assume the far-right challenger isn’t in the job yet, so will have minimal influence on this year’s election. I hope there is a vigorous Democratic challenger. In the comments are several good cartoons and memes. Ann Telnaes drew the cartoon, but the succinct words are from Senator Harris, spoken during the confirmation hearing for Brett Kavanaugh:

Can you think of any laws that give government the power to make decisions about the male body?

Kamala’s Left Converse posted an image of the reaction by black people after hearing the nasty guy questioning Harris’s blackness. exlrrp posted a meme of what Secretary Buttigieg said about that same incident:

Remember that all of this is a strategy. The politics of outrage and insult are the last refuge of a politician who cannot defend his own plans.

Much farther down exlrrp posted a meme of “2024 voting lines” showing a long line of women (in 1960’s dress?) and many of them have a black cat on a leash. In another roundup Dworkin quoted Farah Stockman of the New York Times discussing the nationalism of JD Vance.

People who speak of America as an idea tend to have a global outlook, arguing for more immigration, free trade and a robust role for the United States around the world. Those who emphasize that it’s also a homeland see the country’s resources as being squandered on outsiders, while the needs of citizens are brushed aside. There is so much that is troubling about Mr. Vance and the MAGA movement in general — election denialism and support for insurrections come to mind — but this message resonates, especially among the working class. I’ve spoken with American workers who compete with undocumented immigrants for low-wage jobs in home construction and landscaping and they speak of the downside of the notion that America is an idea — anybody can walk across the border to claim it. Any soldier in an ill-fated war that tried to export America’s self-evident truths to foreign lands may understandably prefer to think about the country as a homeland rather than a set of principles that must be defended everywhere.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers post for Kos, he quoted late night commentary. One of them:

"[Monday was] the hottest day ever recorded on earth. Suck on that, dinosaurs—we can destroy the planet ourselves, we don't need no asteroid! … It's hard to know whether to be more worried about the record heat or the record stupidity." —Louis Black