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Hey big thanks for this!
Iâve been a little busy and I just got a call this morning from a neighbor who wanted the lowdown in Texas since early voting started. He already checks in with the League of Women Voters in Texas. I suggested checking over at the Chron for endorsements. (Our county doesnât have anything on the ballot this round, which is slightly unusual.)
Unfortunately the Texas League of Conservation Voters is now on Facebook. Yuck. And Save Our Springs Alliance weirdly doesnât have anything up on its site right now re the Texas Water Fund (Prop 6).
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A recent Quinnipiac poll underscores Bidenâs disastrous standing with the youth vote. The presidentâs favorability rating has cratered out at an almost-unbelievable 25 percent among registered voters under 35 years old. A few weeks prior, a Washington PostâABC poll had Trump winning voters under 35 by 20 points. (The Postâs story notes that the poll differs from others taken recently, and that it may be an outlier. Itâs not the only recent presidential poll thatâs made publishers raise an eyebrow.)
Liberal commentators have been quick to dismiss these data points, even as they continue to pile up. Itâs wise not to overreact to individual polls, especially more than a year from Election Day.
And yet, something is clearly awry between Biden and the kids, who are, arguably, the most critical demographic constituency for Democrats. In 2020, 60 percent of 18-to-29-year-old voters, by far the most Democratic-voting group by age, threw in for Joe Biden. Itâs likely there are many explanations for the slide since then: Biden, hesitant to even grant interviews to the Sunday shows, has done basically zero communications outreach to any outlets or platforms that millennials and zoomers actually consume. Turning student loan payments back on before actually implementing the promised loan debt cancellationâwhich never would have happened without an archconservative Supreme Courtâs dubious intervention against his initial proposal, of courseâprobably didnât help.
Now Bidenâs Israel policy threatens to deepen that divide even further. Again: Itâs wise not to overreact to polls, but the data is not terribly ambiguous on this. On this issue, young voters are far from the president, who publicly remains hawkish and unstinting in a way that has not kept pace with their political attitudes (or even those, to a lesser degree, of the Democratic Party). Biden has continued to pledge unquestioning and total support for Israel, even as human rights groups sound the alarm about the threat of the Israeli military committing ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, humanitarian groupsâ inability to deliver anything resembling sufficient aid to Gaza, and comments from Israeli military leaders that indicate a willingness to target civilians. Bidenâs Thursday night public address on the matter, which broadcast right around the same time that Israel was bombing one of the worldâs oldest churches, killing 16 people, was cheered by Fox Newsâwhich is not, incidentally, a youth outlet.
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Maine - just filled out my absentee ballot today. Lots of good local candidates to choose from. Feeling pretty lucky.
Also, as today is 90 days after the last session, a bunch of laws went into effect today that are very heartening. Gender affirming care and coverage, increased reproductive rights, a bunch more Iâm forgetting. A few traffic safety things Iâm impressed with but in that, âIâll believe it when I see it enforced,â kind of way.
But itâs exciting to see how much our state has shifted in a lot of the right ways since we got a D governor. Best to all of you!
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Hmm, letâs see which candidates try to address this (or even mention it).
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The Speaker drama is over (for now) â but who is Mike Johnson? His ascension is not only further evidence that the January 6 insurrectionists are now fully in charge of the House, but also a manifestation of how much the Republican Party is dominated by the interests and sensibilities of religious reactionaries. Johnson rejects the separation of church and state, he disdains pluralism, and he certainly doesnât like âdemocracy.â
We also discuss the role threats of violence played in this whole affair. The MAGA base wanted Jim Jordan â and threatened those who didnât support him. We talk about the surge of political violence from the Right, violent threats as a form of political communication, and the kind of political culture that has been established on the Right and is constantly being normalized not just by Donald Trump, but also by an inability and/or unwillingness of Americaâs elected leaders and political institutions to hold the line. Does the fact that some Republicans publicly resisted these threats signal that this is about to change? We are skeptical: After all, even those Republicans who lamented the MAGA threats have not been willing to break with Trump or critically reflect on the escalating demonization of âthe Leftâ that is animating the rise of rightwing violence.
Finally, we are taking a big-picture look at the state of the 2024 presidential race. On the Republican side, Trumpâs âlegal troublesâ have not hurt him â he is not only in a stronger position now than before he was first indicted, but also than at a comparable point in time before the 2016 election. What are the reasons for his hold over the Right, and what does this tell us about the field of Republican âchallengersâ? On the Democratic side, we discuss what to make of all the polling data that suggests a tough road ahead for Joe Biden â and why the conventional wisdom about the electoral effect of presidential approval rating and perceptions of the economy might not apply. We also discuss the question of Bidenâs age: There is a real issue here, as Americaâs political elite is indeed significantly older than that of any other comparable democracy. But the mainstream mediaâs fixation on the âBiden so oldâ trope also signals something else.
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Some of them, the âmoderates,â are not ideological fascists, they are merely fascists-of-convenience, willing to enable the fascists to allow them to hold and consolidate power. But you know what a fascist-of-convenience is, right? Yup,
A FUCKING FASCIST!!!
Every damn one of them needs to be evicted from power and shunned for the rest of their natural lives. No exceptions.
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True the Vote is continuing attempts to challenge voter eligibility 
:
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Looks like the guy who wasnât MAGA enough to appeal to Trump voters and not critical enough of Trump to appeal to anyone else finally saw the writing on the wall.
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