David Corn's Blog, page 10

Millions Have Amnesia About the Worst of Trump’s Presidency. Memory Experts Explain Why.

One of the most oft-quoted sentences ever penned by a philosopher is George Santayana’s observation that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” In 2024, this aphorism is practically a campaign slogan. Donald Trump, seeking to become the first former president since Grover Cleveland to return to the White House after being voted out of the job, has waged war on remembrance. In fact, he’s depending on tens of millions of voters forgetting the recent past. This election is an experiment in how powerful a memory hole can be.

In March, Trump posted this all-caps question: “ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO?” A realistic answer for most would be, hell yeah. Four years prior, the Covid pandemic was raging, the economy was cratering, deaths were mounting, and anxiety was at a fever pitch. Trump responded erratically, downplaying the threat, pushing conspiracy theories, and undermining scientific officials and public health recommendations. (Bleach!) In the final year of his presidency, more than 450,000 Americans died of Covid; a Lancet study concluded that 40 percent of those deaths could have been averted had Trump handled the crisis responsibly.

Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci listen as President Trump gives a March 2020 Covid-19 press briefing.Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty

Yet his question—a rip-off of a line used by Ronald Reagan in 1980—assumed many voters would not recall the horror of 2020; he was encouraging them to focus on the sentiments (and high prices) of now, not the mortal dread of then. And to regain the White House, Trump needs to cover not just the pandemic but a lot else with the mists of time, including his attempt to overturn an election and his incitement of January 6’s insurrectionist attack, a trade war with China that cost the US hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars in GDP, his love affairs with dictators like Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin, his broken vows to boost infrastructure and to replace the Affordable Care Act with a better and cheaper program, his two impeachments, and nine years of chaos, scandals, and mean-spirited, racist, and ignorant remarks.

That’s a lot of forgetting to rely upon, and the fact that Trump still has a good shot at victory is a sign that he can successfully stuff much of this history into the mental recesses of the electorate. Fortunately for him, the nature of human memory plays to Trump’s favor—even, perhaps especially, when it comes to a pandemic.

Historians have long observed how quickly the so-called Spanish flu of 1918, which killed 50 million worldwide and nearly 700,000 in the United States, vanished from public conversation. As George Dehner, an environmental historian at Wichita State University, observed in his book Influenza: A Century of Science and Public Health Response, “the most notable historical aspect of Spanish flu is how little it was discussed,” resulting in “a curious, public silence.”

“Humans are really good at compartmentalizing things in the past, and Americans appear to be especially good at that. That’s a nicer way of saying we don’t keep track of history very well,” Dehner tells me, explaining Trump is “counting on, and his supporters are cultivating, this tendency to compartmentalize unpleasant associations from the past.”

A Maryland crematorium in April 2020. Owners estimated a 30 percent increase in demand due to the pandemic.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/GettyCheyenne Pipkin (left) and her mother, Loraine Franks (center), on April 27, 2020, in Porterville, California. Pipkin was visiting her grandfather, Jerry Hogan, who contracted coronavirus in a nursing facility.Jeremy Hogan/Sopa/Zuma

Guy Beiner, a professor of history at Boston College who edited a 2021 collection of essays called Pandemic Re-Awakenings: The Forgotten and Unforgotten ‘Spanish’ Flu of 1918-1919, notes that today “there is plenty of social forgetting generated in regards to Trump’s presidential term, in particular the mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic. It could be argued that such forgetting is typical of post-­pandemic societies.”

In August, Weill Cornell Medical College psychiatrists George Makari and Richard Friedman argued in the New England Journal of Medicine that a “collective inability among many people in the United States to remember and mourn what was endured during the pandemic” could help explain why, in early 2024, half of Americans told pollsters they were no better off than they had been “at the height of the deadliest epidemic in the country’s history.” They likened the finding to classic studies by German social psychiatrists that explored how many post–World War II­­­­­ Germans “had seemingly lost the ability to acknowledge the atrocities.” Makari points out that chronic trauma and stress can inhibit memory—and the pandemic yielded much of both. “In addition,” he says, “psychologically this loss of memory is compounded by defenses against helplessness. Finally, socially this is all made worse by collective amnesia. No one wants to remember how terrifying that first year was, before tests, before vaccines. I can barely recall…So from biological, psychological, and social points of views, we grow hazy.”

In a way, this is a mechanical issue. The basic function of memory allows for—or even facilitates—such forgetting, says William Hirst, a New School for Social Research psychology professor. “When you recall the past, you do so selectively,” he explains. “Trump people do that selectively with his agenda in mind.” As Hirst puts it, a narrative that leaves out information “induces forgetting of the unmentioned material.”

“You might think that normally if you don’t mention something, it slowly fades,” he says. “It’s much more dynamic than that.” Talking about other parts of the story actively leads people to forget what is not discussed. So when Trump brags about how wonderful his presidency was and, of course, doesn’t mention the horrors of Covid or the violence at the Capitol, memories of these events become suppressed—but only, Hirst adds, for “in-group members” who see Trump as a legitimate conveyor of information.

“We seem to have a brain that is designed to build a collective memory around collective remembering and collective forgetting,” he explains. “Why? It’s adaptive. We’re social creatures oriented toward our in-group and away from out-groups. Memory is designed to reinforce our in-group membership.”

When Trump falsely says no one was killed during the January 6 riot—which he doesn’t call a riot—and calls the marauders victims and patriots, this shapes the memories of his supporters, according to Hirst, and recollections about brutal facts of that day are smothered. Trump’s repetition—a cornerstone of propaganda—boosts this process. “Each time they hear his account of that day,” Hirst remarks, “the negative part—the breaking-in, the broken windows, the violence—becomes less accessible. And once you suppress the memory image of people breaking in, it’s easier to impose the false memory of protesters having been invited in. There’s no longer a competing memory. So Trump creates this collective forgetting to establish the groundwork for another narrative that is not accurate.”

Memory HoleHere are some reminders of the painful reality Trump wishes we’d forget: Trump’s 100 Days of Deadly Coronavirus Denial A Look Back at 2021 in Photos, if You Can Bear It Portraits of Survival: COVID and Community Strength Through an Artist’s Eyes COVID Killed the Atlanta Drug Trade—for a Time. This Photographer Captured the Lull. A Portrait of a “Last Responder”: The Funeral Director Serving Louisiana’s Virus-Stricken Communities

Certainly, all politicians want voters to forget the negative and remember the positive. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris do not often discuss 2021’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. Because of that, their supporters may have weaker memories of that event and stronger recollections of the accomplishments Biden and Harris tout.

Trump’s attempts to ride a wave of pandemic amnesia may have been aided by the Harris team’s choice to keep her campaign rollout future-focused. But the foundation was laid long before that, in our lack of any collective narrative about the era. As Makari and Friedman wrote, “Nearly everything about the Covid-19 pandemic is contested: its origins, what could have been done to stop its spread, how politics affected various outcomes, the performance of public health sentries, vaccine science, and the appropriate balance between personal liberties and public health demands. Debates about these issues are often marked by misinformation, tribal allegiances, and rage.” After the pandemic, there was no bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel established—like the 9/11 Commission—that could derive a consensus account of what occurred during that crisis and how it was handled by the Trump administration and others.

El Paso County inmates earning $2 an hour load bodies wrapped in plastic onto a morgue trailer in November 2020.Mario Tama/Getty

Trump is in a unique position for a non-incumbent presidential candidate. He has a record as the nation’s chief executive. And to win, he needs to shape how millions of voters remember that time. Whether he realizes it or not, the human mind affords him much opportunity. How we recall the past, Hirst says, “is a real memory hole, and it can become so deep it’s difficult to get out of…It’s not a pleasant story, but it’s what we are as humans.”

Dehner wonders if accurate memories might end up prevailing in this election, but he is not sure: “In the quiet of the voting booth or just in thinking about it, will voters revisit what it was really like during the previous administration? These personal memories remain, and I suspect there will be a certain unease about how one portion of the candidate pool is seeking to portray that past. As an academic, I’m curious about how this all will turn out; as a citizen, I’m quite disturbed.”

Top image credits: Photo illustration by Alma Haser; Bill Pugliano/Getty; Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty; Kevin Dietsch/Getty (2); Anna Moneymaker/Getty; Rebecca Noble/Getty; Chip Somodevilla/Getty (2); Emily Elconin/Getty; Spencer Platt/Getty

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How Harris Trapped Trump

Kamala Harris came to the presidential debate to invite voters not yet on her side to join her. Donald Trump was there to stoke the fears, grievances, and hatreds of the MAGA Americans already in his corner. She spoke in well-composed sentences, as she tried to persuade voters with her economic proposals, declaring she was interested in what she could do for them and asserting Trump was more interested in himself. Trump, often rambling, stuck to his playbook and described America as a hellhole, accusing Vice President Harris and President Joe Biden of purposefully trying to destroy the nation. She pitched optimism. He peddled darkness. She often smiled (and added several eye rolls). He scowled or wore an expression of condescension for much of the night.

These performances illustrated their differing approaches to politics. Following the traditional rule that campaigns ought to be about addition not subtraction, Harris sought to expand her electorate. Trump, as he has usually done, focused on firing up his enraged base. It was a case of coalition politics versus the harnessing of extremism.

Within this context, Harris slammed Trump for being simultaneously extreme and stale. With a near-perfect blend of sass and derision, she repeatedly baited Trump, and he almost always chomped at the chum. She slammed him for being obsessed with personal grievances and being tied to an old playbook of division and insult. When she pointed out that people leave his rallies before he’s done because they are exhausted by the same-old rhetoric, steam nearly shot out of his ears, and he barked that “people don’t go to her rallies.” (Fact-check: untrue.) She cited top officials from his first presidency who now oppose Trump and brand him a threat to the country, and he responded, “I’m a different kind of person,” and boasted he had fired many of the supposedly best people he had originally hired. He bragged that in 2020 he had received more votes than any other Republican president ever had, not mentioning Biden received seven million more.

Harris succeeded in her two goals: To present herself and her aims in a positive light and to make Trump seem small, vindictive, mean-spirited, and old. For his supporters, he likely came across as vigorous and fervent, and he landed a few punches, blasting Harris for the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and, at the end, asking why she had not yet implemented the economic proposals—such as an expanded child tax credit, a first-time home-buyers program—she was now touting. But mostly Harris succeeded by maneuvering Trump into being Trump.

He tossed out—often in a hard-to-follow jumble of words that probably could only be deciphered by his true devotees—one debunked lie after another. Undocumented immigrants are stealing and eating people’s pets in Ohio. (“I see people on television talking about it,” he said as way of confirmation.) And undocumented migrants are violently taking over apartment complexes in Colorado. Doctors in Democratic states are executing babies after they are born. Crime is down throughout the world but increasing in the United States. Everyone—Democrats, Republicans, and all legal scholars—wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. Harris and the Democrats are scheming to confiscate all guns. Joe Biden has pocketed money from Ukraine and China. Harris is a “Marxist” and hates Jews, Arabs, and Israel. He has had no connection to Project 2025. Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the violence on January 6. Top professors at the Wharton School have praised his tariffs plan (which many economists have said will lead to inflation and unemployment). The economy when he was president was the best ever.

It was Trump’s greatest hits of conspiracy theories, fabrications, and disinformation. Occasionally ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis called him out on his false statements. But it didn’t seem necessary for them to interrupt his every lie, especially when they occurred during unhinged jags. No doubt, all Trump’s bunk plays for his people. But how well does this stuff register beyond that, especially when delivered in an irate and occasionally incoherent fashion?

Harris was tough on him, essentially calling Trump a racist and dismissing him as a weak person who admires dictators and who threatens both civility and democracy. Trump helped her out on this front. When Muir pressed him on whether he regrets his inaction during the initial hours of the January 6 riot, Trump refused to answer the question and shifted to his main move of the night: accusing Biden and Harris of allowing millions of criminals to pour into the country. Once again, he refused to acknowledge his 2020 loss.

Trump also declined to say whether he would, if elected, veto a national abortion ban. (His vice presidential pick, JD Vance, has stated that Trump would, but Trump at the debate remarked that he has never spoken to Vance about this.) Harris, expectedly, was clear and fierce on reproductive rights and decried the “Trump abortion bans” that have been implemented in 20 states after the fall of Roe. She described the horrific realities that women have been confronted in these states, as she stared at Trump, who did not return her gaze.

On another key topic Trump would not answer the question. Asked if he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russia, he would only say that the war should end. He claimed he could end this war in an instant, but he would not explain how. (He was not asked about the recent news stories reporting that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has been mounting covert information operations against the United States to help Trump.)

Throughout the evening, Trump was once again all doom and gloom. The United States is on the verge of total collapse. He is the best, his foes are the worst. And Harris, who came across as a confident normie with a binder full of policy ideas, kept insisting it was time to “turn the page” on Trump and his chaos. She treated him like a loser, jabbing him for having a “hard time processing” his defeat and calling his confusion about such facts “troubling.” Trump’s counter: Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban likes him and…Biden “hates” Harris.

Trump was fully himself, and Harris was in her zone. He was the familiar (though older) blathering MAGA King of Carnage, and she was a fierce former prosecutor who effectively delivered her two-fold case. She did what all politicians should do: She respected the audience, showing that she understood her task was to win them over. He was there to perform a rerun of The Trump Show, with little new material. To call the debate an evisceration of Trump would be going too far. But it did what a debate should do: reveal how each candidate sees the world and make clear the differences between them. As soon as it ended, Harris’ campaign called for another face-off. Trump ought to think twice before saying yes.

Let’s Be Clear: Putin Is Again Trying to Put Trump in the White House

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial.

“I hate saying, ‘I told you so.’” That is one of the biggest lies. I, for one, enjoy saying it. That is, on the right occasions. And I’d like to point out that in recent months I have repeatedly warned that Russian tyrant and war criminal Vladmir Putin intended to mess with the US election to help Donald Trump once again. (See here, here, and here.) This week, in a pair of actions, the Justice Department outlined elaborate schemes mounted by covert Moscow operators to influence the 2024 campaign. But in each instance, the feds declined to explicitly state the obvious: The Kremlin efforts have been designed and mounted to aid Trump’s bid to regain power.

In one case, the Justice Department seized 32 internet domains used in a Russian operation called “Doppelganger” to spread disinformation in the United States. These sites mimicked legitimate American news sites. (One example: washingtonpost.pm—as opposed to washingtonpost.com.) The Russians, the DOJ noted, “used these domains, among others, to covertly spread Russian government propaganda with the aim of reducing international support for Ukraine, bolstering pro-Russian policies and interests, and influencing voters in U.S. and foreign elections.” The sites often posted legitimate stories but would include a false piece that would aim to undermine US support of Ukraine. (One fake Washington Post article claimed the paper had obtained secret video showing that Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was scheming with Washington regarding dangerous biolabs.)

In a released statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said of this covert project: “As alleged in our court filings, President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle…directed Russian public relations companies to promote disinformation and state-sponsored narratives as part of a campaign to influence the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. An internal planning document created by the Kremlin states that a goal of the campaign is to secure Russia’s preferred outcome in the election.” But Garland did not specify Moscow’s preference.

In the other action, the Justice Department indicted two employees of RT, the Russian state-controlled media operation, for allegedly secretly funneling $10 million to an American right-wing media outfit. The goal, as Garland put it, was to “create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” The indictment did not name the firm. But as soon as the indictment was released on Wednesday, I and other journalists quickly found one big fat clue: The document noted that the unnamed media outlet identified itself as a “network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western political and cultural issues.” That’s how Tenet Media, an operation created last year featuring the work of right-wing and libertarian firebrands such as Tim Pool, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, describes itself. It was easy to Google the phrase and discover that only Tenet popped up. (Meanwhile, the Justice Department also indicted Dimitri Simes, a Soviet-born American citizen, longtime foreign policy think-tanker, and Trump campaign adviser in 2016, for making more than $1 million by working for a sanctioned Russian television channel.)

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco characterized this clandestine operation as an attempt “to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences” and “to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.”

The RT-Tenet story was quite a bombshell: A clutch of far-right and generally pro-Trump commentators influential on social media, particularly among younger people, has allegedly been covertly subsidized by Moscow. One of the founders of the company, Lauren Chen, a right-wing influencer, has been associated with Turning Point USA, the rabidly pro-Trump outfit run by Charlie Kirk, and with Blaze Media, the outlet founded by conservative wild man and conspiracy theorist Glenn Beck. Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco characterized this clandestine operation as an attempt “to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences” and “to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.” The statement released by the Justice Department to announce this indictment did not mention the 2024 election.

The Justice Department was avoiding saying that these covert Russian ops were attempting to get Trump back in the White House. But it’s not hard to add two and two here. If you’d looked at the YouTube channel for Tenet Media, you would have found one video after another bashing Kamala Harris. While months ago, Tenet was posting all sorts of provocative right-wing material on the US-Mexico border, Ukraine, Black history month, culture wars, and other hot-button issues, while denigrating President Joe Biden—Pool has decried Ukraine as the United States’ greatest enemy and exclaimed, “We should apologize to Russia!”—it has in recent weeks become largely focused on assailing Harris.

Moreover, the affidavit in support of the seizure of those 32 domains includes as attachments internal documents from the Doppelganger operation that state the program’s intent. Where an American presidential candidate or political party was mentioned, the Justice Department redacted their identities and referred to them as “Candidate A” or “Candidate B” and “Political Party A” and “Political Party B.” But one need not be Sherlock Holmes to suss out that “A” represents Trump and the Republicans and “B,” Biden and the Democrats. Thus, the meaning is clear when one of these quasi-redacted documents states, “It makes sense for Russia to put a maximum effort to ensure that [Political Party A] point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of Candidate A supporters) wins over the US public opinion.” (Bold in the original.) This Russian document cites the operation’s goal as to “secure victory” for the GOP candidate. It lists as targets swing state voters, American Jews, Latinos, and the “community of American gamers, users of Reddit and [messaging] boards, such as 4chan (the ‘backbone’ of the right-wing trends in the US segment of the Internet).”

The Doppelganger project, according to these documents, has been bent on exploiting all the various social media platforms and amplifying media persons on YouTube and elsewhere to exacerbate political conflict within the United States and spread an assortment of talking points: The United States is a country in decline, US support of Ukraine is bankrupting the United States, the Democrats are corrupt and dishonest losers. A list of “campaign topics” in one planning document included “record inflation…risk of job loss for white Americans, privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled…threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants.” Memes, social media posts, comments on social networks and in group chats, and video content (“including news stories in the Fox News style”) promoting all of this were to be directed at Republican voters, Trump supporters, “supporters of traditional family values,” and “White Americans representing the lower-middle and middle class.” The alleged operation to finance Tenet Media would be in sync with these overarching aims.

Earlier this year, according to the indictment, the Russians allegedly running the Tenet Media operation succeeded in encouraging Tenet to promote video of Tucker Carlson gushing about a Moscow supermarket during a visit to Russia to interview Putin—a visit for which Carlson was rightfully and mightily mocked.

The affidavit and the indictment are chock-full of fascinating details illuminating the ins and outs of this clandestine Russian campaign. Earlier this year, according to the indictment, the Russians allegedly running the Tenet Media operation succeeded in encouraging Tenet to promote video of Tucker Carlson gushing about a Moscow supermarket during a visit to Russia to interview Putin—a visit for which Carlson was rightfully and mightily mocked. (Two years ago, I revealed Kremlin memos showing that Putin’s regime pressured Russian media outlets to feature Carlson in their propaganda reports on the war in Ukraine.) One Russian document attached to the affidavit spells out a social media plan to make Mexico seem like a threat to the United States to help Trump’s candidacy.

As they have done for eight years, Trumpers rushed to declare all of this no big deal and nothing but a Biden administration/Deep State effort to smother the speech of right-wingers. David Sacks, the Silicon Valley bigwig who’s raising money for Trump, huffed, “Even by the standards of Russia, Russia, Russia hoaxes, the Tenet Media/Lauren Chen case makes no sense…As far as Red Scares go, this one seems pretty lame and people are seeing through it. Hopefully this means we’re at the end of Russiagate hoaxes.”

On Fox, host Laura Ingraham, not surprisingly, dismissed the seriousness of the alleged Russian intervention: “The DOJ seems to be back to Russia, Russia, Russia because they announced indictments against Russians for alleged election interference…Are they laying the groundwork for more censorship?” Her guest, failed GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, embraced the Russia denialism that has infected the Republican Party for eight years: “The reality is that they already did this in 2016. So they have a historical practice. When they are afraid of Donald Trump coming back to office, they invent every figment of imagination of Russia or somebody else putting him there without actually paying attention to the threats coming from our administrative state to free and fair elections in the United States.”

On Friday, Trump referred to the indictment and the seizures of the domains as a “scam.”

For their part, Tim Pool and Benny Johnson maintained they were unaware they were receiving Moscow gold and depicted themselves as victims. They did not publicly reflect on why the Kremlin wanted to prop up them and their comrades with millions of dollars.

With Trump and his political allies either dubious about or opposed to US assistance to Ukraine, Putin has more motivation than ever to try to aid his longtime admirer.

This is the third American presidential election in a row in which Putin has waged covert information warfare against the United States to help Trump. In 2016, he ordered a hack-and-leak operation and a clandestine social media campaign to hinder Hillary Clinton and boost Trump. Four years later, Ukraine officials tied to Russian intelligence spread disinformation designed to smear Joe Biden. He’s one for two and back for the rubber match. With Trump and his political allies either dubious about or opposed to US assistance to Ukraine, Putin has more motivation than ever to try to aid his longtime admirer.

In its public statements, the Justice Department avoided a simple declaration: Russia is secretly screwing with the American information ecosystem to assist Trump. Garland wants to keep these cases from appearing political. But they are deeply political. Russia is conniving to put a lying, misogynistic, chaotic, narcissistic, right-wing authoritarian into the White House—and Trump World is once again denying this reality and, thus, abetting a foreign adversary’s attack on the United States. There should be immediate congressional investigations and hearings. This ought to be front-page news for weeks and fundamentally shape the final leg of the campaign. But if the past is any guide, it won’t. That means Putin has a shot at winning. Even exposure of his plot by the Justice Department might not be enough to thwart it. If Moscow succeeds, it will be not because of any Russian brilliance but due to American decline and weakness.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, is available in an expanded paperback edition.

GOP Senate Candidate in Nevada Can’t Stop Shifting His Position on Abortion

In June, Sam Brown, the GOP candidate for US Senate in Nevada and longtime abortion opponent, published an op-ed that said that if he were elected and a national abortion ban came up for the vote in the Senate, he would oppose the measure. This was obviously a move to defuse incumbent Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen’s effort to wield the abortion issue against him. Brown’s campaign released an accompanying press release that complained, “Jacky Rosen and Nevada Democrats have spent nearly a year lying about Sam Brown’s personal position on abortion.” With this editorial—in which Brown said, “It’s our duty, as a society, to let women know they have options”—Brown was trying to fuzzy up the picture and become less of a target on this front. That was nothing new. A review of his campaign website reveals that over the past year Brown, an Afghanistan war veteran, has steadily shifted how he presents his position.

In July 2023, Brown’s site offered a brief and clear message on abortion: “Every life is precious, and it is in our American interest that we protect the lives of unborn babies just as we would protect the life of any other American. As a Senator, I will oppose any federal funding of abortion and only support U.S. Supreme Court Justices who understand the importance of protecting Life.” This was routine, if somewhat vague, rhetoric for a politician who calls himself “pro-life.” No mention of exceptions. No talk of respecting those who support women’s freedom on this matter.

The following month, Brown’s website expanded its statement on abortion, adding that he opposed late-term abortions and abortions without parental notification. Brown noted, “Every life is precious, I learned that firsthand when I nearly lost my own life in Afghanistan.”

By the end of February, the “Life” section on Brown’s website had changed again. He still stated his opposition. But Brown added a twist: “Nevada voters have made it clear where they stand on this issue, by enshrining protections for abortion in our state law. As a U.S. Senator, I will not vote to overturn the decision of Nevadans—I will not support a national abortion ban.” He added, “We must come together, as a nation, to engage in honest dialogue to personalize—not politicize — this important issue and make sure all voices are heard.”

Brown had moved from stating his outright opposition to abortion to now saying that he would not challenge Nevada state law that protects reproductive freedom and that he would oppose an nationwide ban. (In Nevada, thanks to a 1990 referendum, abortion is legal through the the first 24 weeks of pregnancy and afterward to protect the health of the mother.) He also was calling for a productive national conversation about abortion—not merely advocating curtailing or outlawing it.

This was quite a step for Brown. The previous September, he had declined to say whether he backed a national abortion ban. He had also then refused to comment on his previous support for a 20-week abortion ban during his failed 2014 bid for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. Touting that measure, Brown had declared at the time, “On issues of life, that is a nonnegotiable for me.” Texas law at that point included an exception for preserving the life of the mother but not for rape or incest. And during that losing campaign, Brown had even called for greater restrictions on abortion: “I think that it’s a shame that here in Texas, which is being lauded as such a conservative state with regard to the issue of life, half of Europe has stricter laws than we do here.”

Brown’s declaration of opposition to a national ban in February coincided with his wife Amy Brown revealing that she had an abortion in 2008 when she was 24 and single. She said it had caused years of anguish but had made her sympathetic to women who encounter unwanted pregnancies. Both Browns said during an emotional joint interview that they would follow the will of the people of Nevada with respect to abortion—again, a major departure from his days in Texas as a fiery anti-abortion advocate.

The current version of Brown’s website contains yet another alteration to the “Life” section. It now states, “I am pro life, with exceptions for the tragic cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother.” Brown had added the standard exceptions (though he said for the “life” not the “health” of the mother) that he had once seemed to oppose.

Brown has been no model of consistency on abortion. In fact, he has been on something of an awkward journey regarding abortion that can be seen as driven by political calculation. In Texas, he was a full-throated anti-abortion crusader. Four years after his failed campaign there, he managed the campaign for a Texas congressional candidate who called for an abortion ban with no exceptions. Brown also served as the executive board chairman of the Nevada Freedom and Faith Coalition whose national chapter has been a champion for severely restrictive anti-abortion measures.

Now, with a referendum on the Nevada ballot this November to enshrine reproductive rights within the state constitution and Brown being barraged on the issue by Rosen, he has jettisoned his past, non-negotiable support for a highly restrictive ban, embraced exceptions, and claimed he would not vote for a national prohibition.

Still, Brown is having trouble navigating this bob-and-weave course. Ever since the Nevada initiative qualified for the ballot in late June, he has declined to say publicly how he would vote for it—a dodge that looks like another step designed to keep him from being pegged as a die-hard abortion foe in a state where abortion rights are popular during an election season in which the Republican war on reproductive rights is a top issue.

Yet this week, the Nevada Independent published audio from an August 28 campaign meet and greet in which Brown, not surprisingly, privately suggested he would not vote for the measure: “I’m not for changing our existing law. Our existing law has been in place for over 34 years. The ballot measure would change the law and essentially [create] no limit on access to abortion.”

There have long been politicians who have changed their minds on abortion. But Brown has not said he has altered his view. In this case, he seems not to be evolving but evading.

Derision and Danger: The Democrats Figure Out How to Attack Trump

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

Back in the Before Times—when Joe Biden was the Democrats’ 2024 presidential nominee—I had some advice for the fella for his debate with Donald Trump: Employ strategic derision. Here’s how I put it:

Like most bullies, Trump cannot bear humiliation. His whole act is an act. He pretends to be strong and the best in everything—with the “best words” that come from a “very, very large brain.” But his malignant narcissism is clearly interlaced with deep insecurity. Real stable geniuses don’t have to brag about being stable geniuses. Trump might best be attacked not with frontal assaults about his lies, shortcomings, and misdeeds but with mockery. One goal Biden ought to have during the debate and afterward is to provoke Trump into the most erratic Trumpish behavior so voters are reminded of the perils of placing this guy in charge again. Ridicule can be quite useful in this regard.

Biden, as we all know, was not up to this task when he faced off against Trump in June. It takes a certain sass and a talk-show-host facility to pull off such a maneuver. And it’s best done with a smile or a twinkle in the eye—preferably both. But during the Democrats’ convention, I felt seen—or listened to. Trump was routinely treated with mocking scorn that aimed to portray him as small, weak, and, yes, weird. Yet at the same time, convention speakers effectively highlighted the multiple threats he poses. When it came to balancing the dissing and the warning, the Dems got the mix pitch-perfect.

At their Chicago convention, the Democrats embraced a more positive overarching theme than democracy-could-die. That was freedom—as defined in a progressive manner.

As a candidate for reelection, Biden proclaimed that a Trump restoration could mean the end of American democracy. He noted that this election would determine the United States’ future as a constitutional republic. This was entirely accurate—Trump did try to mount a coup and incited insurrectionist violence—but it was also dark and heavy. And polls showed that Biden’s we-must-fight-for-democracy message that cast Trump as a Voldemort-like character was not resonating. It was not boosting his campaign.

At their Chicago convention, the Democrats embraced a more positive overarching theme than democracy-could-die. That was freedom—as defined in a progressive manner: freedom from government intervention in your most private decisions, freedom to love who you want, freedom from fear of gun violence, freedom to pursue opportunity within a fair economic system. There was overlap with democracy protection. But freedom is a positive and uplifting notion, while focusing thematically on a threat can be a downer. And when it came to the threat Trump presents, speakers deftly executed a one-two punch that combined put-downs of him with alerts regarding the dangers of Trump 2.0.

New York Rep. Hakim Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, offered a good example with this snarky poke: “Donald Trump is like an old boyfriend who you broke up with, but he just won’t go away. He has spent the last four years spinning the block, trying to get back into a relationship with the American people. Bro, we broke up with you for a reason.” Then Jeffries went on to cite the damage Trump did as president: “Trump was the mastermind of the GOP tax scam, where 83 percent of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1 percent in America. Trump failed our country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump is a chaos agent who is focused on himself, not the American people. Trump tried to destroy our democracy by lying about the election and inciting a violent mob to attack the Capitol. Trump put three extreme justices on the Supreme Court who destroyed Roe v. Wade.”

Vice presidential nominee Tim Walz dismissed Trump as a person less mature than the student body presidents he once taught: “Those teenagers could teach Donald Trump a hell of a lot about what a leader is. Leaders don’t spend all day insulting people and blaming others.” But the Minnesota governor also pointed out that Trump and his crew in recent years have threatened to repeal the Affordable Care Act and weaken Social Security and Medicare, and he raised the prospect of abortion bans across the country.

As you will recall, the Obamas went to town on Trump. With several sharp jabs, Michelle Obama depicted him as a narrow-minded bigot.

His limited narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black. I want to know—I want to know—who’s going to tell him, who’s going to tell him, that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs? It’s his same old con. His same old con. Doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions that will actually make people’s lives better.

And her husband slapped Trump hard.

Here’s a 78-year-old billionaire who hasn’t stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago. It’s been a constant stream of gripes and grievances that’s actually been getting worse now that he’s afraid of losing to Kamala. There’s the childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes. It just goes on and on and on. The other day, I heard someone compare Trump to the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day. From a neighbor, that’s exhausting. From a president, it’s just dangerous.

When Obama mentioned Trump’s obsession with crowd sizes, his hand motions indicated this might apply to another size issue for Trump. Yes, an off-color reference from a former president.

When it was her turn, Harris neatly summed up this two-fold approach: “In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man. But the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.” That is, he’s a clown but one who could do real damage. She demeaned him an agent of “chaos and calamity.” Noting that Trump “tried to throw away your votes” and “sent an armed mob to the to the US Capitol, where they assaulted law enforcement officers,” she outlined the possible perils of a Trump return to power: efforts to shower the wealthy with more tax cuts, to gut the Affordable Care Act, to deploy the Justice Department and the US military against Trump’s domestic foes and critics, and to further restrict women’s reproductive rights. In a bit of a schoolyard diss, Harris said, “Get this. He plans to create a national anti-abortion coordinator, and force states to report on women’s miscarriages and abortions. Simply put, they are out of their minds.” And she told her audience, “Just imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails.”

Democrats simultaneously mocked Project 2025 and repeatedly cited the plan as cause to vote against Trump.

Unserious—for a person seeking the most powerful job in the world, that’s quite the insult. The message from all the speeches was that though Trump is a buffoonish egotist who warrants disdain, he nurtures the evil intent of a supervillain.

This strategy of scoff-and-concern was also applied to Project 2025, the far-right and extremist blueprint for a second Trump presidency compiled by the Heritage Foundation and other conservative outfits. Democrats simultaneously mocked it and repeatedly cited the plan as cause to vote against Trump. One night, Saturday Night Live cast member Kenan Thompson appeared onstage—with an oversized edition of the 900-plus-page report—and simultaneously spoofed and skewered it: “You ever seen a document that could kill a small animal and democracy at the same time?”

All of this prevented the convention from becoming an orgy of gloom and doom. One of the themes was joy, and depicting Trump over and over as an all-powerful threat to be feared would have been a buzzkill. Yet the Ds got the tone right by melding humor and concern in the correct amounts.

For years, some Trump antagonists, including the Lincoln Project and George Conway, the onetime Republican and conservative advocate, have pursued the strategy of ridiculing and taunting Trump, believing such actions get under the skin of the failed casino owner and compel him to be even more erratic and nasty. And I’ve thought that Trump is definitely the sort of jerk whose overinflated sense of self—a selling point for some voters—could be punctured with the right jabs. As former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) zinged the former reality TV celebrity, “Trump is a weak man pretending to be strong. He is a small man pretending to be big. He’s a faithless man pretending to be righteous. He’s a perpetrator who can’t stop playing the victim. He puts on quite a show, but there is no real strength there.”

Exposing that with cheek could be the best way to deflate Trump. The convention did seem to rattle him. On Friday, among the many social media posts he spewed was one that proclaimed, “My Administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” Uh, no. He’s already made parts of the United States a hellscape for women. And this post, undoubtedly, would upset his religious right allies who passionately oppose the concept of reproductive rights. Yet something moved him to push back against the weeklong onslaught.

After the Democrats smoothly orchestrated the Biden-to-Harris transition, they mounted a convention that hit almost all the right notes. (Preventing a Palestinian American state representative from Georgia, who was a Harris supporter, from giving a short speech highlighting the plight of civilians in Gaza was a misstep.) And they succeeded in portraying Trump as both a whiny loser and a real threat to the nation. Still, as we are constantly reminded, there are 10 weeks until the election, and—you know the drill—anything can happen. (Particularly this year.)

The next big event on the schedule is the Harris-Trump debate on September 10 to be held by ABC News. I would offer the same advice to Harris as I did to Biden: deride, deride, deride. But it looks as if she got the memo. She’s a former prosecutor who seems to know how to handle this current felon. After watching the Democrats demean and disparage Trump during the Chicago shindig, Trump and MAGA ought to fret about him going mano-a-mano with Harris, who seems to have his number. If Harris follows the example of the convention, American voters might witness quite a spectacle.

A Happy Marriage at the DNC: Coastal Liberalism and Prairie Progressivism

If you did a word cloud diagram of the Democratic convention in Chicago, the two big words that appear would be “freedom” and “joy.” Less prominent, if it showed up at all, would be “progressive.” Yet the Democrats spent four long nights deploying the attractive concepts of freedom and joy to sell a progressive agenda to voters. Moreover, with the ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the Ds have bolstered this pitch by marrying coastal liberalism with prairie progressivism. This union offers a powerful punch to the party’s core message: Government ought to be proactively deployed to address the problems and challenges Americans face.

When Vice President Harris two weeks ago chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her campaign partner, there was much obvious commentary that he provided from-the-heartland balance to her California lineage and that his white-guy-dad-plaid-coach persona complemented her Black-Indian-Jamaican-woman identity. What drew less attention was how Walz’s selection reinforced the ideology and values message of the ticket. He and Harris are both progressive-minded politicians, but they hail from culturally different strains of liberalism.

Harris, more or less, represents what many folks these days think of as a liberal. She’s from the Bay Area. She’s a person of color. She talks about helping marginalized communities and seeking economic justice. She crusades for abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. Her days as a prosecutor have caused some conflict with the left. But in general she fits the familiar mode—a Big City Lib, a Blue State Lib. There’s a reason why Donald Trump and JD Vance believe they can score points by falsely branding her a crazy “communist.” Not a real American, in their view.

Walz is not an easy-to-attack caricature. Nebraska-born, he’s a hunter and a former National Guard noncommissioned officer. He ice fishes. He wears flannel shirts. He could be in a truck commercial. And, yes, he coached high school football—and middle-school track and basketball—in a very red district, where he won his first election to Congress in 2006.

Yet as governor, Walz has assembled an impressive progressive record. He signed into law a measure that made abortion a “fundamental right” and guaranteed access to contraception, fertility treatments, sterilization, and other reproductive health care. Having been an advocate of gay rights as a high school teacher, he signed an executive order protecting access to gender-affirming care and a “Trans Refuge” bill that banned the enforcement of arrest warrants and extradition requests for those who traveled to Minnesota for such care. He okayed a package of gun safety measures. He approved a law implementing paid family and medical leave. He legalized recreational marijuana.

There’s more: He backed drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants. (Advocates, including business leaders, said it would lead to safer roads and a better state economy.) He restored voting rights for former felons. He expanded access to health insurance, took steps to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, imposed stricter regulations on pollutants, and promoted electric vehicles. He signed a measure to provide free breakfast and lunch to all public school children.

This is a list that these days might be equated with Blue State politicians. Yet Walz represents a long tradition of prairie progressivism.

Long before the nation’s political map ossified into Blue and Red territory, there was a vibrant history of Democratic and Republican progressivism in the Midwest. The National Grange, founded after the Civil War, lobbied for progressive measures to aid farmers and others. William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska thrice ran for president as a fiery populist Democrat assailing corporate power. (He later became an anti-evolution crank.) Robert La Follette, a progressive and populist Republican, served as governor of Wisconsin and then a senator. He ran for president in 1924 to break up “the private monopoly system over the political and economic life of the American people” and proposed a host of what now would be called liberal initiatives: pro-union laws, civil liberties protections, a prohibition on child labor, government ownership of railroads and electric utilities, and easy credit for farmers (He won 16.6 percent of the popular vote as a third-party candidate.)

Later in the 20th century, the Midwest produced a roster of progressive Democratic senators, including Frank Church (Idaho), Birch Bayh (Indiana), John Culver (Iowa), George McGovern (South Dakota), and Gaylord Nelson (Wisconsin), the founder of Earth Day. (This batch were wiped out during the 1980 election that landed Ronald Reagan in the White House) And today’s Minnesota Democratic Party is officially known as the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (or DFL) and is the result of the 1944 merger between the state’s Democrats and the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, a left-wing party that had tried to fuse the interests of rural farmers and urban laborers. The late Sen. Paul Wellstone, first elected in 1990, was a perfect symbol of the DFL. (A training camp established in Wellstone’s name after he died in a plane crash in 2002 helped Walz launch his first congressional campaign.)

Walz, now the leader of the DFL in Minnesota, is fully in sync with this legacy of prairie progressivism, which does overlap significantly with Big City liberalism. The difference may be in how key values and ideas are presented. For a long time, Democratic politicians have tiptoed around the issue of abortion, even when fully supporting reproductive rights. As Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) told my colleague Abby Vesoulis this week, “For many years, people wouldn’t even say the word abortion out loud.” That’s clearly changing, with this Democratic convention full of explicit references to the procedure and citing the right to an abortion as a bedrock element of freedom. And Walz has embraced abortion rights with talk about as plain as it can be. As he put it in his acceptance speech in Chicago, “In Minnesota, we respect our neighbors and the personal choices they make. And even if we wouldn’t make those same choices for ourselves, we’ve got a golden rule: Mind your own damn business. And that includes IVF and fertility treatments.” This is taking a supposed heartland value—respecting neighbors—and applying it to a contentious issue.

Walz is unapologetic about his liberalism in a football-coach sort of way. He knows that right-wingers have attacked his school meal program as they do with many progressive proposals, deriding it as expensive big government spending. Here’s how he non-defensively defended it during that address at the convention: “And we made sure that every kid in our state gets breakfast and lunch every day. So while other states were banning books from their schools, we were banishing hunger from ours.” In your face. No apologies.

For years—decades—Republicans have tried to stake a monopoly claim on the idea of freedom. (Cue Lee Greenwood.) But Walz, grabbing the main theme of the convention by its…well, you know, perfectly executed a jiu-jitsu move:

Freedom. When Republicans use the word freedom, they mean that the government should be free to invade your doctor’s office. Corporations — free to pollute your air and water. And banks—free to take advantage of customers. But when we Democrats talk about freedom, we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids’ freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall. 

As far as I can tell, there are no major policy differences between this veep candidate and the woman who picked him. (On the GOP side, JD Vance, a few years ago, was a Never-Trumper who compared his future running-mate to Hitler and who said some Trump backers were “racists” who voted for Trump for “racist reasons.”) And their publicly stated values are the same.

Toward the end of his speech, Walz expressed his goals. “We’ll build a country where workers come first, health care and housing are human rights, and the government stays the hell out of your bedroom.That’s how we make America a place where no child is left hungry. Where no community is left behind. Where nobody gets told they don’t belong. That’s how we’re going to fight.”

Any Blue State lib could say the same.

Vice presidential picks often expand the reach of a ticket in terms of geography, experience, or ideology. Barrack Obama, who had only two years of service in the US Senate when he ran president, tapped Joe Biden, the veteran legislator. Trump, a wild-card candidate, recruited Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, a well-known Republican who some (foolishly) thought could be a reassuring figure. With Walz, Harris has amplified and diversified her message—and that of the Democratic Party.

When Harris delivered her big speech on Thursday night, she eloquently and fiercely reiterated her progressive stances on reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights, gun safety, affordable housing, expanded health care access, climate change, taxes, and other matters, as she slammed Trump for being both “deeply unserious” and dangerous. There was nothing surprising in these policy statements. But one of the big accomplishments of the convention—which hit the mark on so many fronts—was to expand and bolster the progressive vision of the Democratic Party. With the Harris-Walz ticket, the Democrats have achieved both a synergy and a unity of purpose. In what will be a helluva fight over the next 10 weeks, this will afford them a clearer shot in the battle for joy and freedom.

Talking to a Former Madam About Using AI and Big Data to Help RFK Jr.

Last week, a mini-scoop on Radar triggered titters within the political media world: The once notorious “Manhattan Madam,” who ran a high-end escort service in New York City, has been working as an adviser to a political action committee supporting independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The gossip website did not go into details about what the former call-girl ringmaster was doing to help RFK Jr. And, it turns out, the full story is far more interesting than what Radar reported, for Kristin Davis, that former prostitution entrepreneur, has made at least $215,000 since May 2023 working for the Common Sense PAC overseeing an artificial intelligence-driven project to find voters likely to support the anti-vax conspiracy theorist.

Davis, who served four months in 2008 on charges related to her prostitution business and then 18 months in the mid 2010s for selling prescription pills to an FBI cooperating witness, has been involved in politics for years. She ran a protest campaign for New York governor in 2010—an effort managed by longtime right-wing dirty trickster Roger Stone. And since 2008, she has operated a public relations firm called Think Right, which has represented Stone and other conservative figures. In 2012, she was a fundraiser for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. On her LinkedIn page, she says she also “designed proprietary software platform to disseminate issue-based messaging on various platforms such as email blasts, Twitter and Facebook.” She is doing her work for Common Sense through a firm she set up called Buzzify PR.

After Davis recently returned to the headlines due to her pro-RFK Jr. endeavors, I spoke with her about her work for the Democratic scion. She says that she had been advising Common Sense since it started up in mid-2023. The PAC, she notes, was founded by actress Sofia Karstens, Nate Porter, who owns a healthcare staffing company, and “a few other guys who are tech guys who don’t want to be named.” (Karstens and Porter had a falling out, and she left the PAC.)

The group, according to the Federal Election Commission, has raised nearly $2 million through the end of June. Its biggest donations have included $500,000 contributed in July 2023 from Planeta Management, a company tied to Nicole Shanahan, who Kennedy named as his running mate in March, and $300,000 from Aubrey and Joyce Chernick. Aubrey is a Canadian-born billionaire tech entrepreneur and philanthropist. He runs a cybersecurity firm called Celerium, and he and his wife in recent years have been generous donors to Republicans and pro-Trump political action committees. Other large donations have come from Big Lie advocate and ardent conspiracy theorist Patrick Byrne ($100,000) and billionaire venture capitalist and Trump fundraiser Chamath Palihapitiya ($90,000).

Porter did not reply to a request for comment.

According to Davis, Common Sense was created “to utilize AI technology to create custom messaging and personalized marketing campaigns working off mobile advertiser ID numbers.” A mobile advertising ID (or MAID) is a unique identifier that is assigned to each mobile device. As Davis explains it, “Everything you do on your cell phone is monitored by the provider—what you read, what you listen to, what you purchase. There are companies that take that data and use AI to create profiles of the users. They know your attitudes, values, and beliefs based on data from your cell phone provider, for instance what Facebook groups you are part of.”

In her telling, Common Sense did not want “any notoriety.” Its goal was to use this AI-organized data to “take out really great ads” to help Kennedy. The PAC invested in expensive technology to assemble custom audiences of people—say, voters who don’t care for Donald Trump but who strongly support gun rights. Davis could then create email, text, website, or social media ads targeting these people with messages emphasizing Kennedy’s support for gun rights. “These companies are monitoring what you’re listening to and what you’re buying tickets to,” she adds. “They know if your top channel is Fox News or the House and Garden Network.”

Davis says a big part of the job is monitoring the effectiveness of the PAC’s messaging. If it is sending out ads to 500,000 people who have been identified as anti-Trump but pro-guns, it will hit 2,000 or so of those people with ads that seek to have them click through to a website with different messages about Kennedy and guns and track how these pages affect the attitudes of these voters. “This is real-time polling,” she explains, which allows her to figure out what ads “moved them into liking Bobby.”

Davis is overseeing what sounds like a sophisticated targeting project exploiting Big Data—the sort of operation certainly being run by other campaigns. “We’ve reached over 10 million people,” she says. “It took us a few months to get the AI to where we need it.” She adds, “AI is very good at sorting out groups. The company we use has like 14,000 data points on each person. It knows everything.” This firm, she adds, has “asked us not to talk about them.”

The two vendors that have received the most money from Common Sense, according to its FEC filings, are companies that have scant footprints on the internet. One is called Cinnected, which on the PAC’s filings is listed as being based in Miami, though it appears to have been incorporated in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It has been paid over $500,000 for “advertising expenses.” The other, the Parte Company, registered at a four-bedroom home in Duarte, California, has received at least $200,000 for “social media, brand management consulting services.” Cinnected, Davis acknowledges, “is one of the companies we get data from.”

Asked how this AI-propelled data and targeting project has been going, Davis replies, “It’s definitely been a challenge. The race has been upended so many times, between Bobby switching from a Democratic to an independent run, and Joe Biden dropping out. It’s hard to keep up with changes in real time. Maybe we’re reaching people and then something happens and the whole political universe changes.” Data Davis compiled for the PAC originally indicated that 49.8 million voters could be up for grabs, including 16.9 million who were considering voting for a third-party candidate. With Biden’s withdrawal, she says, that data needs to be updated, which means retargeting 187 million voters. That could take up to six weeks.

Davis notes that the PAC is running low on money but that it has already paid for ads in advance. So she’s not worried on that front. But the recent change with the Democratic ticket has thrown her project for a loop. “Unfortunately,” she says, “some of the people who were voting for RFK because they didn’t like Biden or were concerned about his age have switched back to Kamala Harris. That’s what some of the data shows. I hope we can make an impact still.”

Without much hope that Kennedy can win the race, Davis notes another desirable outcome would be for RFK Jr. to cut the deal he has reportedly discussed with Trump: an endorsement of Trump in return for being named head of the Department of Health and Human Services. (Kennedy also sought a meeting last week with Democratic presidential nominee Harris to discuss the possibility of scoring a position in her administration, should he endorse her and she wins. The Harris camp showed no interest in the offer.)

As for the recent headlines about her and her past, Davis muses, “I will forever be notorious for something from 16 years ago. I have done a lot of campaigns and stayed in the background because I realized most of the time it hurts a candidate. In 2022, I posted a pic and said I was so happy to have been hired to do an event for Rudy Giuliani, and he got criticized. As if hiring me makes them dumb. I’ve gone through a scandal, a government investigation, and I’ve been slammed by the media. Who better than me to represent all theses people? But I don’t personally want to be the focus of anything. I’ve been successfully behind the scenes for many things for a long time.” She also points out that she worked at a hedge fund before becoming a madam.

Davis says that she no longer is in contact with Roger Stone and that he has not been involved with Common Sense. “I stopped talking to him last September,” she says. “It’s probably not wise to say why. Sometimes people don’t treat you very well.”

Davis insists it was not hard to switch fields: “I’ve been working in politics for 15 years. My former business was far more honest. You knew what was involved in the transaction. In politics, everyone is for sale and you don’t know what the price is.”

JD Vance’s Racist Populism

The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter comes out twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories and articles about politics, media, and culture. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here.

When JD Vance, the GOP vice presidential candidate, delivered his acceptance speech at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, he lauded the people of eastern Kentucky, his family’s ancestral home. Though it’s one of the poorest regions in the United States, he said, its residents are “very hardworking” and “good” people: “They’re the kind of people who would give you the shirt off their back even if they can’t afford enough to eat.” He then added, “And our media calls them privileged and looks down on them.”

Privileged? Who refers to the low-income families of Appalachia as privileged? Vance did not explain and moved on to talk about “American greatness.” But this sentence was something of a dog whistle and a callback to a demagogic rhetoric that Vance has been slinging for years.

During his convention speech, Vance repeated the message that has led the political press to label him a populist: The ruling elites have screwed over Middle America by pushing economic policies that benefit the well-off and harm working-class families. (His support for Donald Trump, who implemented a tax cut that heavily favored the wealthy, has not undercut his standing as a populist.) But Vance’s populism has a dark underside that has largely gone unnoticed: racism.

Vance’s populism has a dark underside that has largely gone unnoticed: racism.

Vance has blended working-class resentment and white racial grievance. In various venues, he has charged that plutocrats (whom he doesn’t name) are conspiring with the woke crowd (whoever they are) to silence Middle America. According to Vance, these powerful interests deploy false accusations of racism to prevent people—white people, that is—from complaining about the economic hardships they face. This is how Vance put it in a 2021 interview with conservative talk show host Bill Cunningham:  

Here’s what the elites do. When they say that those people are white privileged, they shut them up. Look, you’re unhappy about your job being shipped overseas? You’re worried that a lawless southern border is going to cause the same poison that killed your daughter to also affect your grandbaby? Don’t you dare complain about that stuff. You are white privileged. You suffer from white rage…What they do is use it as a power play so they can get us to shut up. So they can get us to stop complaining about our own country. And they get to run things without any control, without any pushback from the real people.

As I noted over a year ago, this is deft demagoguery. Vance conflates legitimate concerns about economic power with racist paranoia. It’s much more sophisticated than the usual GOP playing of the race card. Instead, Vance fuses toxic culture wars to bread-and-butter issues. Look at how he weaved all this together when a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last year and sparked a chemical fire. Vance blamed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his Department of Transportation’s racial equity initiatives for the catastrophe: “I’ve got to say, the Secretary of Transportation…talking about how we have too many white male construction workers instead of the fact that our trains are crashing…This guy needs to do his job.” So the good (white) folk of East Palestine were victimized supposedly because Buttigieg was spending too much time trying to help Black people.

This is what Vance meant when he groused about the media calling his people “privileged.” It was code for “white privileged.” And he was insinuating that such labeling—a.k.a. wokeness—is used to repress these working-class Americans.

This is what Vance meant when he groused about the media calling his people “privileged.” It was code for “white privileged.”

In Milwaukee, Vance did not spell out his racism-shaped populism. He hinted at it, and there’s no telling whether he’s going to be more explicit as he campaigns as Trump’s running mate. But Vance—who only a few years ago was a Never Trumper who compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and who then appeared to be positioning himself as a public intellectual with center-right politics—has demonstrated that he is willing to ally himself with the extremism that has thoroughly infected Trump’s GOP. As I reported last week, Vance recently endorsed a book co-written by an alt-right extremist (who promoted the crazy Pizzagate conspiracy theory) that contends that progressives are part of a group of “unhumans” who for centuries have been trying to destroy civilization. The book says that conservatives must not abide by the rules in countering the left and describes January 6 rioters as “patriots.”

Moreover, Vance has promoted a paranoid and Manichean view of American politics. Here’s what he said at a conservative conference in 2021:

We have lost every single major cultural institution in this country—Big Finance, Big Tech, Wall Street, the biggest corporations, the universities, the media, and the government. There is not a single institution in this country that conservatives currently control. But there’s one of them, just one that we might have a chance of actually controlling in the future, and that’s the constitutional republic that our founders gave us. We are never going to take Facebook, Amazon, Apple and turn them into conservative institutions. We are never going take the universities and turn them into conservative institutions…We might just be able to control the democratic institutions in this country…This is a raw fact of cynical politics. If we’re not willing to use the power given to us in the American constitutional republic, we’re going to lose this country.

In his convention speech, Vance praised Trump’s call for national unity. But that was camouflage. He is not aiming for unity. He has enthusiastically adopted the stance of a far-right culture warrior and has shown he’s willing to exploit racism to advance his form of populism.

Vance got into hot water recently when a video emerged of him referring to Vice President Kamala Harris as one of a group of “childless cat ladies.” And Democrats have taken to calling him and Trump “weird” to cast the Republican ticket as outside the norms of American life. I’m not sure that label will stick and hurt Trump and Vance. But it’s clear that Vance deserves to be tagged as extreme. Throughout his short political career, he has been a chameleon, changing his colors to match his ambitions—that includes aligning with radical conservatives. This offers Democrats much material to show voters that Vance is not a champion of the heartland but a friend of the fringe right.

David Corn’s American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy, a New York Times bestseller, is available in an expanded paperback edition.

How Paul Wellstone Helped Give Us Tim Walz

It was damn cold in St. Paul—even cold for Minnesotans—on a weekend in late January 2005, when one or two dozen wannabe politicians trudged into the hall of the Carpenters Local Union 322. They had come to learn how to campaign for office. Most were new to electoral politics. That included a 40-year-old high school social studies teacher and football coach named Tim Walz.

The three-day training session was called Camp Wellstone. It was the signature program of Wellstone Action, a nonprofit created by aides and supporters of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), after the the fiery prairie progressive died in a plane crash in October 2002. The group emphasized Wellstone’s devotion to grassroots politics; Wellstone had first been elected to the Senate in 1990 by mobilizing an army of volunteers that included college students and local activists who mostly had not been involved in campaigns previously.

Walz showed up at the union hall wearing a t-shirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. He was new to politics. The previous August, he had taken a few of his students to a George W. Bush rally at a local quarry in their home town of Mankato, a small city in the southern part of the state. When they entered the event, security spotted a John Kerry sticker on the wallet of one of the students and wouldn’t let the group in. This so angered Walz that he signed up to volunteer for the Kerry campaign. A command sergeant major in the National Guard, in which he had served since 1981, he eventually became a district coordinator for Veterans for Kerry. After the 2004 election—in which Bush defeated Kerry—Walz decided to stick with politics and that led him to Camp Wellstone.

A middled-aged white guy from a conservative part of the state who had coached his school’s football team to a state championship—his fellow campers at first wondered if Walz might be a Republican. (Camp Wellstone was a nonpartisan project and obligated to assist candidates of different political stripes.) But they soon figured out that Walz, who was set on running for the US House of Representatives against a six-term Republican incumbent, was no right-winger. “Tim Walz came in saying he was disgruntled by politics and mad at being denied entrance to the Bush rally,” recalls Pam Costain, a founder and director of training for Wellstone Action

One of Walz’s classmates was Mark Ritchie, who had recently worked on a national voter registration campaign. During that effort, he had witnessed what he calls “manipulation” and “denying people the right to vote” in states across the country and in Minnesota. That had propelled him to consider running for office and to attend the session, where he bonded with Walz. “We were both mad about where democracy was heading,” he says

The attendees were schooled in what was called the “Wellstone triangle”—the necessity of connecting three different activities: electoral organizing; grass-roots, issues-oriented organizing; and the formulation of public policy. “Paul had argued that there was an unfortunate disconnect between electoral politics and people who did community organizing,” Costain says. “People in electoral politics had disdain for grassroots organizing and people who did community organizing had cynicism for electoral politics. Paul’s view was that we can’t win without the three parts of the triangle.”

The camp also highlighted what Costain calls Wellstone’s “guiding values”: “integrity, authenticity, talking to people in plain-speak about their problems, and the joy of politics.” Wellstone, she notes, viewed politics as “not about grievance and anger, but getting to know people to solve problems.”

Overall, the training session was short on ideology and long on pragmatic concerns. The potential candidates—who were interested in seeking a variety of city, state, and federal offices—received courses on the basics: how to conduct door-to-door canvassing, how to fundraise, how to build a campaign team, how to hold a press conference, how to write and deliver a stump speech. The instructors were mostly young politicos with campaign experience. This included Melvin Carter, the current mayor of St. Paul, and Peggy Flanagan, a 25-year-old veteran of the Wellstone campaign and a Native American organizer who had the previous year won a Minneapolis school board seat. (Today she is Minnesota’s lieutenant governor.) A fundraiser for ret. Gen. Wesley Clark, who had run unsuccessfully in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary, handled the course on attracting funders. “It was frightening what you had to do to get money,” Ritchie remembers.

Throughout the weekend, there was role-playing in which the attendees held mock press conferences and gave stump speeches. They were also taught how to handle campaign crises. One scenario Camp Wellstone used was a situation in which a campaign manager is revealed to be having an affair with a staffer. What do you as a candidate do about that?

“This was all about brass tacks,” says Ralph Remington, an actor and arts advocate who was at Camp Wellstone in preparation for a run for an open seat on the Minneapolis city council. “How can you differentiate between persuadable and non-persuadable voters. The dos and don’ts of direct mail. What do you say at the door? What do you say in an interview? You’re a candidate. You’re a product. How do you get your product to market? How do you get the product to succeed?”

During the session on stump speeches, Ritchie noticed that the several participants who had served in the military, including Walz, delivered strong and coherent addresses, much more so than the others. Remington recalls that Walz in his speech talked about being a coach and a family man and his time in the military and how all this would inform how he would act as a public servant. “He emphasized how he had been raised and the values of his community,” Remington says. “I could see he was hitting on the right mojo. Tim came across as very folksy, very next-door, the guy at the hardware store. I knew Minnesotans, and I knew that would resonate. I knew that he would win some office eventually.”

The attendees forged friendships that would continue in the coming years. In 2006, as Mark Ritchie ran for secretary of state and Walz for Congress, they occasionally campaigned together. “I did parades different from Tim,” Ritchie says. “While I walked down the middle, he would run from side to side, and I realized that’s how you do parades.” Remington recalls that that camp attendees held reunions with cook-outs and happy hours. “We would be sounding boards for each other’s decisions—say, what donations to take or not to take—and provide each other a sense of accountability,” Ritchie notes.

Many of them won. Ritchie was victorious in his campaign for secretary of state. Remington was elected to the Minneapolis city council. Others in their class won state legislative or local seats. Andrew Lugar, another participant, went on to serve twice as US attorney for Minnesota. (He’s currently in the job.) And Walz won his first race for office in 2006 and was re-elected to Congress five times—in a district Trump won in 2016—before successfully running for governor in 2018 with Flanagan, then a state representative, as his running mate.

“That class success rate was extraordinary,” says Costain. “Now, watching Tim on the national stage, I see he’s so reminiscent of Paul. He has this relatable ability. He can talk progressive politics for real people. I see a lot of Paul in Tim.”

Wellstone, who considered running for president in 2000 and opted not to, had his political career tragically cut short. But he inspired his colleagues to set up a shop that gave a boost to the political career of Walz and many others. Though Wellstone has been gone for over two decades, there now is a Wellstone Democrat on the national ticket.

The Court Case That Could Sink RFK Jr.’s Campaign

This week in an Albany, New York courtroom, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is fighting a legal challenge that has the potential to sink much of his independent presidential campaign. The dispute is over where he calls home.

In a lawsuit that was engineered by Clear Choice PAC, a super PAC formed earlier this year by political allies of President Joseph Biden to combat independent candidates or third-party efforts that could threaten the Democratic ticket, several New York State voters challenged Kennedy’s position on the state’s presidential ballot, contending that he falsely stated his residence on the nominating petitions he filed to obtain ballot access. They argue that this renders his petitions invalid and that he ought to be tossed from the ballot. (The original complaint also challenged signatures on Kennedy’s petitions, but that matter has been put to the side.)

Being kicked off the Empire State’s ballot would be embarrassing for Kennedy but not likely to affect the overall presidential race. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to win the heavily Democratic state. But strategists for Clear Choice PAC say they have identified about 18 states where Kennedy is on the ballot and could be vulnerable to similar challenges if he loses the New York case. This collection of states includes most of the swing states, where Kennedy could impact the ultimate outcome by drawing votes from Harris or GOP nominee Donald Trump. (In some states, if Kennedy loses this case, he would likely be allowed to correct his filings.)

The key issue is simple and involves a private room in a one-family house in bucolic Katonah, New York.

The house is owned by the wife of an old friend of Kennedy. RFK Jr. claims this room is his official residence and has listed it on his ballot petitions in New York and in ballot filings in other states. The petitioners contend that this is a ruse and that he has been living in California for years with his wife Cheryl Hines, the actor best known for co-starring with Larry David in HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Each side has submitted court filings arguing its case. In an affidavit, Kennedy insists that “at the very marrow of my being” he is a New Yorker. He notes that he is registered to vote at this Katonah address, that his car is registered there, and that he pays New York State income taxes. He adds that he maintains falconry, fishing, and hunting licenses at this address. “My life, my passions, the years I spent raising my family, my career and my political contacts, and my orientation have been and are ever in my home state of New York,” says Kennedy, who for years was an environmental lawyer who worked in the state (before becoming an antivax crusader and conspiracy theory promoter).

Kennedy acknowledges that since his 2014 marriage to Hines, he has lived with her in a series of homes in California, including houses in Malibu and a tony canyon in Brentwood. His affidavit includes a hard-to-believe claim: “My agreement with my wife, Cheryl Hines, to temporarily join her in the state of California, was that we would both return to the state of New York upon her retirement. We will return to my current residence at 84 Croton Lake Road, Katonah, New York.” The pair really will leave their luxurious $7 million Los Angeles home to reside in what Kennedy calls a “private room” in his friend’s house?

The petitioners maintain that Kennedy is pulling a fast one and that he essentially moved to California when he went LA with Hines. “Kennedy acknowledged his true residence in California when he purchased property,” their initial complaint says. It points to a letter he wrote when he resigned as an officer of Riverkeeper, an environmental group based in New York, and wrote the group, “As you know, I now live on the west coast and the weekly commute has been hard on my family to say nothing of my carbon footprint.”

The petitioners list instances when Kennedy in media interviews referred to California as his “home.” And they note that when he filed his candidacy statement with the Federal Elections Commission, he used his California address. Moreover, they point out that the Katonah home is in foreclosure, and they cite a New York Post article that reported that neighbors were unaware of Kennedy’s residence in this house and had never seen him.

There’s another wrinkle: Under the Constitution, if a presidential and vice presidential candidate are from the same state, they cannot claim that state’s Electoral College votes. It seems unlikely that Kennedy can win in California, Harris’ home state. But given that his running mate, Silicon Valley millionaire (or billionaire) Nicole Shanahan, is a Californian, RFK Jr. could encounter a problem should he surge to an improbable victory in the Golden State.

The legal filings of each side are filled with technical arguments regarding residency, and it’s tough to predict the outcome. Whichever side loses the case will likely appeal. The court proceedings are expected to end this week, and there’s already a date scheduled for an appeals court trial. With ballots soon to be printed in New York and other states, there is not much time to resolve the matter. And if Clear Choice PAC obtains the ruling it seeks, it will have to move quickly to mount challenges in other states.

On Monday, the Kennedy campaign released this statement about the case:

Independent Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will testify this week at the Albany County Supreme Court where campaign attorneys expect to prove that 1) Kennedy has had a residence in New York for decades; 2) that any attempt by New York to restrict candidates beyond the U.S. Constitutional standard of residence being the state to which you intend to return would be unconstitutional; and 3) that the nominating petition cannot be struck because Kennedy, relying on advice of counsel, in good faith listed his New York residence on his nominating petitions.

The Kennedy campaign said it is officially on the ballot in 13 states (including Michigan, Minnesota, and North Carolina), has submitted signatures in 19 states, and has collected enough signatures for ballot access in 10 other states.

The Clear Choice PAC was organized when polls suggested that RFK Jr. might draw more votes from Biden than Trump—though the picture was far from clear. More recent surveys have indicated that he now might be more a magnet for Trump-leaners than possible Harris voters. Yet Clear Choice is still rigorously pursuing the New York challenge and preparing to move forward in other states if it wins in Albany.

One strategist familiar with the PAC’s efforts notes that it may not be until late September that Kennedy’s impact on the race can be accurately estimated. But, this person adds, if the Democrats’ strategy is to consolidate the anti-Trump electorate to prevent the former president’s return to the White House, their best bet is a binary choice between Harris and Trump, with Kennedy and other independent or third-party candidates pushed to the side and considered non-factors.

One longtime Kennedy associate says that Kennedy, whose father was a senator representing New York, has never wanted to give up his ties to the state, perhaps because he might run for office there. It would be quite the turn of events if that desire caused his removal from the ballot in New York and, worse for his campaign, in other states.