- Heather Cox Richardson taking a future historian’s perspective on recent political events;
- The irony of Republicans accusing Democrats of staging a coup;
- Paul Krugman on how Republican accusation of immigrants taking away “black jobs” is wrong in so many ways;
- Short items about garbage immigrants, lies and disinformation, them vs us, and the Christian concept of race.
- And a Peter Gabriel song, “I Grieve”.
A few more items about recent events. Then, I promise to switch topics in the next day or two.
Heather Cox Richardson summarizes events of the past few days, in her detailed, historian-looking-back-from-the-future manner.
Letters from an American, 23 Jul 2024: July 22, 2024
Thus it begins:
Vice President Kamala Harris has continued to rack up endorsements and delegates since President Biden’s surprise announcement yesterday that he would not accept the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination. As of tonight, Harris has the support of at least 2,471 delegates, more than the 1,976 she will need to secure the nomination.
Endorsements have also continued to mount, with the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) Victory Fund, and the Latino Victory Fund all endorsing her.
Various commentators today have been highlighting the “prosecutor vs felon” take on the Harris vs Trump race.
She was clear, though, that the fight is not just about Trump; it is about “two different versions of what we see as the future of our country…. Donald Trump wants to take our country backward. To a time before many of our fellow Americans had full freedoms and rights. But we believe in a brighter future that makes room for all Americans.” She promised to continue the work of building the middle class, protect abortion rights, enact commonsense gun safety legislation, and protect voting rights. She contrasted the Democrats’ vision of “a country of freedom, compassion, and rule of law” with the Republicans’: “a country of chaos, fear, and hate.”
And this, about Republicans not being about policy.
For a party that is offering voters a popular set of policies, the opposing party’s nominee shouldn’t matter all that much, but Trump policies and the Trump campaign’s Project 2025 are both so unpopular that operatives intended to run not on policy but by firing up their base against Biden himself.
Meanwhile I saw a link, that I didn’t save, to an article that said the Republicans will use a tactic that decades ago they used against Michael Dukakis: find something in her record as a prosecutor where she can be blamed for a bad outcome.
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This piece highlights the ironic absurdity of Republicans accusing Democrats of staging a coup.
AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 23 Jul 2024: ‘Sit down and shut up’: Ex-Reagan speechwriter torches MAGA GOP for bogus ‘coup’ claims
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), radio host Erick Erickson and other far-right Republicans have been claiming that replacing Biden with Harris constitutes a “coup.”
But veteran conservative columnist and former Nancy Reagan speechwriter Mona Charen, in a blistering article published by The Bulwark on July 23, finds that claim highly audacious coming from supporters of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
“This is rich,” the Never Trump conservative argues. “Here is indeed a candidate in this race who attempted to stage a coup, and we know who that is. Trump submitted his false electoral votes, pressured his vice president, and sent his goons to Capitol Hill because he would not accept the verdict of the voters.”
On X, formerly Twitter, Erickson posted, “Y’all can argue over the word coup, but Biden stepping aside is the American equivalent of all those people accidentally falling out of windows in Russia.”
Charen writes, “The party that openly admires Vladimir Putin — see Carlson, Tucker — has no business making snarky comments about people falling out of windows. So please sit down and shut up with your coup talk.”
Again, there’s an element of projectionism here. Republicans think in terms of coups, of overriding elections, and so that’s the first thing that occurs to them to accuse Democrats of doing.
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Paul Krugman. That Republicans talk about “black jobs” at all is a sign of their racism. You can guess what they mean by it.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 22 Jul 2024: Trump’s Cynical Attempt to Pit Recent Immigrants Against Black Americans
In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek published last week, Trump went even bigger, declaring that “The Black people are going to be decimated by the millions of people that are coming into the country.” He continued, “Their wages have gone way down. Their jobs are being taken by the migrants coming in illegally into the country.” He went on to say, “The Black population in this country is going to die because of what’s happened, what’s going to happen to their jobs — their jobs, their housing, everything.”
Trump’s diatribe forced Bloomberg to add this, parenthetically, as a fact check: “According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the majority of employment gains since 2018 have been for naturalized U.S. citizens and legal residents — not migrants.”
So why *haven’t* immigrants taken away Black jobs, or any other jobs? Krugman explains, and concludes,
The answer, which we’ve known since the 1990s, is that immigrant workers bring a different set of skills to the table than native-born workers, even when those workers have similar levels of formal education. And yes, I mean skills: If you think of workers without a college degree as “unskilled,” try fixing your own plumbing or doing your own carpentry. It shouldn’t need to be said, but a lot of blue-collar work is highly skilled and highly specialized. As a result, immigrants tend to take a very different mix of jobs than native-born workers do — which means that there’s much less head-to-head competition between immigrant and native-born workers than you might think, or what Trump and Vance want you to think.
The bottom line is that the attempt to portray immigration as an apocalyptic threat to Black Americans is refuted by the facts. Will it nonetheless work politically? I have no idea.
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A couple three four shorter items.
JMG, 23 Jul 2024: Sen. Tommy Tuberville: Most Immigrants Are “Garbage”. This is what you expect from conservatives; it’s all about tribalism and demonizing the other.
Right Wing Watch, 22 Jul 2024: Will David Barton Fill Oklahoma’s Curriculum With Lies and Disinformation?. Yes, probably.
Bloomberg, 21 Jul 2024: For JD Vance, It’s Always Been Them Against Us, subtitled “If you were surprised at the vice presidential candidate’s conversion to Trumpism, you didn’t read his book.” Yet again, this is the conservative worldview.
LGBTQNation, Dr. Warren J. Blumenfeld, 22 July 2024: The concept of race has its roots in Christian Nationalist views of “inferior” people, subtitled “Race has been a slippery and misused concept throughout history. Here’s a look at its origin and its ‘scientific’ justifications for discrimination.” One of the themes of his book, I gather.
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In lieu of any catchy phrase to title this post — the same themes occur here over and over — I’ll just quote a piece from the CD I happen to be listening to. From Peter Gabriel’s last great album, Up.
Life carries on in the people I meet
In everyone that’s out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on and on
