Amanda Marcotte

@amandamarcotte.bsky.social

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Senior politics writer at Salon.com. Subscribe to Standing Room Only: salon.com/newsletter

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Reply to

Patrick Brennan

We're well past Godwin's law. It doesn't count when you're talking about actual fascists.

Reposted by

Amanda Marcotte

Check me out on "All In With Chris Hayes" last night! We talked about Project 2025 and how people who aren't political junkies are starting to hear about it. www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch...

Trump World ‘panicking’ as Project 2025 gets on the radar of voterswww.msnbc.com “Trump does not want people to know about the entire vanguard of extremist weirdos around him—and what their plans are when he governs,” says Chris Hayes on voters finding out about the far-right agen...

Here's the article we discuss on the show. In a 6 minute segment, I can't bring the evidence, but it's in here. Chris mentioned that he's heard people mention Project 2025 in the wild. I have, too, and some folks have told me they have, as well. www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign — but now it may be backfiringwww.salon.com Trump's authoritarian game plan is breaking through to people who haven't heard of it — and it's scaring them

Check me out on "All In With Chris Hayes" last night! We talked about Project 2025 and how people who aren't political junkies are starting to hear about it. www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch...

The discussion about persuading Biden. To offer a counterpoint to the yes-men he's surrounded himself with. But mostly it continues to be astonishing that folks believe it will be easier to shut up the entire media and millions of voters with concerns than to ask Biden to do the right thing.

There’s nothing wrong with looking at a candidate’s fitness for office. I understand the concerns a lot of people express about Biden. I felt the same way after that miserable debate. But the discussion’s over unless Biden changes his mind, because today he made it clear that he’s not quitting.

It does not speak well of Biden that his biggest defenders think it's harder to reason with him than it is to browbeat millions of people into silence.

Sarah Longwell reports that in her post-debate focus group of Clinton-Biden voters, three said they can't vote for Biden now. They aren't voting Trump. They just won't vote. Extrapolate that out over the swing states and you're talking thousands of people, far more than Trump needs to win.

I reject the idea that it's easier to talk thousands of people in swing states to pretending they didn't see what they saw than it is for Biden to just say, "Yeah, I thought I had this, but life comes at you fast when you're 81."

I've been in this business a long time and find that when people go into "shut up shut up shut up" mode, it's rarely because they think silencing people will actually achieve the stated goal. It's usually because they don't have a good rebuttal and so they blame the person bringing up the points.

Anyway, if the goal is getting people to suck it up and vote Biden if he won't drop out, then "shut up" won't get you there. "Yes, it's shitty that he's so selfish he's using our fear of Trump to get what he always wanted, but still, it's about your future not his," is a better move.

Reply to

Adina M. Yoffie

65% of voters say Biden is too old. That's not just millions you are trying to silence. It's a couple hundred million. Sorry, don't think you can shut them up. www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/6/...

In Post-Debate Poll, Voters Think Biden Is Too Old to Be President Yet Alternative Candidates Perform Similarly Against Trumpwww.dataforprogress.org Only 51% of Democrats and 35% of all likely voters say that Joe Biden should remain as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 presidential election.

Reply to

your buddy eric

To be even more fair, that's all the more reason he'll happily sign off on their entire agenda because he doesn't give a single fuck.

Yeah, just like he claims he never met any of the over two dozen women he's sexually assaulted. www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump...

Trump Claims Project 2025 Nothing to Do With Him: ‘Abysmal’www.thedailybeast.com The 900-page conservative wish-list includes a massive abortion crackdown. Now Trump claims he knows nothing about it.

Don't let his lies scare you out of sharing the details of Project 2025 with everyone you know — especially those who are on the fence about their vote this year. There's good reason to believe knowing about Project 2025 focuses people's minds on the stakes. www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

Reply to

Michelle Lamb

Don't feed trolls. Block them.

Reply to

Sarah Darer Littman

We all have a role to play. Tell people about Project 2025.

Reposted by

Amanda Marcotte

Project 2025 was from the Chris Rufo school of fascist communications, where you discuss your evil schemes out loud, confident the "normies" are not paying enough attention to notice. But now it seems less politically engaged people are taking notice. www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

Why read past headlines: If you wonder why Trump and his cronies say terrible things out loud that should turn off swing voters, this article explains it. But it's a high-risk/high-reward fascist strategy. With Project 2025, it may be backfiring. www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

I wrote this Wednesday, drawing on search data and social media evidence. But I got anecdotal confirmation last night. I was a 4th party and spoke to an educator from a suburban district who expressed worry about "plan 2025 or whatever it's called." www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

"The MAGA goal with bad guy posturing is twofold: First, get the juices flowing in their base. "Second, cause those progressives who are paying attention to panic. "Trumpists then paint the people speaking out as a bunch of liberal crazies who are exaggerating." www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

One more reason to read — and share: I put this into the "news you can use" category. I know it can be hard to persuade fence-sitters that Trump is as dangerous as he is. But, my preliminary research suggests Project 2025 may be the kind of thing that breaks through. www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

Obviously, I'd love to see some more rigorous focus group and other testing of this idea. But that the Biden campaign is leaning so heavily on messaging about Project 2025 suggests they've done this research internally and my theory has some juice. www.salon.com/2024/07/05/p...

Reposted by

Amanda Marcotte

I'm obviously not here to defend the NYT, but this notion that no one in the US knows what to think until the New York Times tells them is just so Bluesky-pilled. I had friends and family who couldn't care less about the NYT texting me during & after the debate like "gah what's wrong with Biden??"

Also a lot of claims that the NYT is creating the narrative that Biden is too old out of whole cloth

Reply to

Mark Squires

Very few people believe that will happen.

One question — it came up on Pod Save — is why Biden's team wanted an early debate, if they didn't think he was doing well. Unfortunately, one answer could be, "Because they know he's going downhill and worried he'd be much worse in the fall."

That would comport with reporting that says the decline has been marked in the past few months. If the frequency of "senior moments" went from occasional a few months ago to what we've been hearing about now, then you'd be right to worry that things would be worse in a few months.

This is why I think folks who think this is a single hump to get over and it will be smooth sailing from here on out are missing the point. He needs to get out there more to reassure people. A lot more, and not all short, scripted events. But if he tries and can't, this gets worse.

And yes, I know I'll get a lot of "nuh-uh!" responses. But those folks are either gaslighting or in denial, or both. It simply isn't the case that all these different outlets reporting the cascade of leaks are lying. That's a Trumpian thing to say.

Reply to

RRRVVVWWW

Wow, you are grasping at tiny, spindly straws. She could pull a name out of a hat and it would be fine.