71 Dewey Beats Truman 2.0: Annoy the Media-and the Vichy Democrats-Reelect Joe Biden
7/13/2024
This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the 1948 election which inspired me to begin reading an excellent book about it by A.I. Baime.
The similarities are striking-including the battle for America’s soul.
FN: If there was ever any doubt that is what 2024 is the recent ruling of the Republican Supreme Court that Trump has absolute immunity-for “official acts” though it’s not clear what the Trump-W Bush Court would agree was unofficial at least if Trump did it. Essentially IF Trump wins-God help us if he does and at least now he’s at least marginally ahead according to the polls-our democracy is basically DOA as unlike his first term Trump now knows he simply can’t be held accountable for anything.
Indeed, as I get through it it’s striking how many of the dynamics in 1948 are present in 2024-including things like Russian interference and the Israel-Palestine conflict-Truman had some very tough and consequential decisions to make regarding the formation of Israel
FN: -It’s certainly debatable if Truman all the decisions he there were the right ones with benefit of a lot of hindsight in what would be such a pivotal moment in the Middle East as we continue to reap the consequences of it post October 7.CF book on Truman and the formation of Israel.
And Truman was battling McCarythism which is clearly the direct ascendant of Maga. Here on the morning of Saturday, July 13-after over two weeks of an absolutely hysterical moral panic over Biden being 81 and why he-but not Trump of course who’s a whole 3 years younger AND a felon-needed to drop out of the election despite having won the primary-there are a lot of bad takes that have been made these last few weeks which have already “not aged well.”
Just yesterday morning, MSNBC had the following headline:
FN:
Indeed, Abramson had earlier tweeted info that showed MSNBC had a tough week seeing a notable drop in viewers. But there have been a LOT of bad takes the last few weeks and, honestly, the media flacks who purveyed them should NEVER be allowed to live them down. The media has been unmasked in a way that won’t be forgotten. One favorite media pundit canard the last two weeks post President Biden’s allegedly campaign ending debate-is that ‘Sorry we can’t unsee what we saw that night.’
Many regular Americans agree with the sentiment not regarding Biden’s debate but the absolutely unhinged freakout response from the legacy media-with the NY “But Her Emails” Times and CNN–where the CEO of its parent company Warner Bros says he is fine with whoever wins an election as long as it’s not Joe Biden-leading the way.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav would like a new president, too (msn.com)
Regarding Zaslav it’s not exactly well-kept secret that:
“Media and tech bosses hate Joe Biden’s antitrust policies, which they think are holding them back from buying and selling each other. But they tend to be careful about how they express that stuff out loud. What with the upcoming election and all.”
Zaslav is considerably less cautious:
“Not WBD CEO David Zaslav, though.”
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has no opinion about who should win the US presidential election this fall. Except he doesn’t want Joe Biden to win.
And no, he didn’t come out and use those exact words.
But he got plenty close Tuesday at Sun Valley, the annual media and tech mogul conference:
Via Bloomberg:
Asked about the upcoming presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business .”We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better,” he said.
FN: The point that he is fine with whichever party wins so long as the next president is friendly to business is worth keeping in mind in this moment-12:07 am on Sunday 7/21!-as at the moment many senior elite Democrats in Congress are demanding President Biden leave the race-and a number of these same senior elite Democrats are also arguing that it might be better to skip VP Harris too, notably Nancy Pelosi.
CF:
Pelosi voiced support for an open nomination process if Biden drops out – POLITICO
Seeing as much of the impetus for driving out Biden is coming from donors-AOC in her very important and provocative IG video revealed many of the elite Dems in these #DumpBiden conversations are saying “my donors, my donors, my donors, not my voters, my voters, my voters”-it’s worth at least keeping in mind that many among the wealthy CEO set see Biden as a drag on business which begs the question we’ll consider in greater depth below of wether the real reason all these big donors are paying the Democrats calling for President Biden to exit the race isfear of Biden losing or of him winning-as it’s self evident that Biden is the most progressive President since LBJ. The larger point AOC made in her IG stream was that many of these Vichy Dem elites want not just Biden but Kamala off the ticket and, indeed, besides being the first Black, female VP-the first female VP period-she is also likely even more progressive than Biden-who again, himself is the most progressive since LBJ. Again, more below.
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Basically, Zaslav said the quite part out loud-a lot of business moguls, particularly in media and tech-say quietly.
To be clear: What Zaslav is saying is what many business leaders — particularly in media and tech — say all the time, but relatively quietly: They don’t like Joe Biden’s antitrust regime, which has led the US government to question and in many cases try to block all kinds of mergers and acquisitions — from Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy Activision (which eventually went through) to Adobe’s $20 billion deal to buy Figma (which didn’t go through) to Meta’s $400 million deal for Within, a VR company (which eventually went through, too).”
There’s a pretty plausible theory that Trump will be much more “business friendly”
And Zaslav’s primary benefactor — billionaire investor John Malone, who put Zaslav in the position to run WBD and sits on its board — has been banging the consolidation drum for years.
FN: Regarding Malone, when he took over the he was described as “the Fox News admiring billionaire” who wanted to remake CNN.
“Why billionaire John Malone’s shadow looms over CNN”
“One of the world’s most powerful news outlets has a new mandate.”
Why Fox News-loving billionaire John Malone wants to remake CNN – Vox
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The two men frequently bring up the idea that WBD would like to buy something and trial-ballooned a Paramount deal last year. Though lots of people see WBD, whose stock is hovering near an all-time low, as a sale target itself. Comcast is usually floated as the potential acquirer in that scenario.
And it’s conventional wisdom that if Donald Trump wins the upcoming election, he’ll usher in an era where just about any M&A deal you can dream up can go through (as long as Trump doesn’t have a problem with one of those companies — ask AT&T and Time Warner, whose deal was held up in court for years during Trump’s first administration.)”
HIs comments at Sun Valley were reported on July 10. So Zaslav-who as we first saw in the Chris Litcht era is the opposite of a hands off CEO of the parent company of CNN-wants Trump to win this election. Which correlates in an interesting way with the frenzied CNN coverage of the post debate moral panic over Biden’s age and the demand that he end his campaign-despite the trivial fact that he won the primary with over 14 million votes.
FN: One zombie argument you’ve heard a lot during this time as it’s ok to throw out these 14 million+ votes because the primary wasn’t competitive. That’s true though not relevant-it’s normal for an incumbent party to not have a competitive primary and as we’ll look into more below it’s usually not a good omen when an incumbent party DOES have an open primary.
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Indeed, during what many call The Frenzy-regarding the breadth and scale of the MSM’s moral panic post June 27, one of the biggest Twitter scourges for us in the Democratic base has been Brian Stelter-which is pretty interesting on a few levels-as he has figured somewhat prominently in a number of the recent CNN wars.
On July 2, Stelter posted and pinned this tweet to his profile-as of today-7/21-it’s still pinned.
Stelter was no doubt responding to the fact that for many liberals and Dems he became the face of The Frenzy. Stelter and some of his colleagues on Twitter dismissed us as ‘Blue Maga” a nice example of false equivalence on steroids. The point was that as liberals were criticizing the media they were no different than Trump calling them the “Enemy of the People” because they accurately point out his lies or something.
The criticism of many liberals the last three weeks has been entirely substantive not calling accurate stories “fake news” while fomenting violence but this point is too subtle for the Savvy.
Why CNN is booting all the Trump critics who work there. (slate.com)
Inside the Meltdown at CNN – The Atlantic
President Zelensky may argue very eloquently that “Evil must never lose” but CNN disagrees-they, like the NY Times prefer to be seen as neutral in the war between fascism and democracy.
FN:
Let’s start the Bad Take Express:
CNN’s Brianna Keilar Stunned Over Glenn Ivey’s Biden Support (mediaite.com)
Maybe place below? As this is recent
Does this belong here or in Nate Silver section?
Aaron Sorkin says Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney, not Joe Biden (usatoday.com)
Christopher Bouzy on Spoutible
B. The Vichy Democrats
Aaron Sorkin says Democrats should nominate Mitt Romney, not Joe Biden (usatoday.com)r
Riding With Biden 2024 on X: “So glad she’s the one Dem elite not to drink this Coolaid” / X
File this under why Dump Biden is an idea not just wrong but terrible
Riding With Biden 2024 on X: “This completely validates @AOC ‘s argument” / X
C, Does Nate Silver get his own section? Refuting the Dump Biden arguments
Sarlin uses the Blue Maga canard-a favorite of the Savvy press:
We weren’t the only ones to notice the parallels. “It very much reminded me of Trump,” said one Democratic strategist after Biden’s call-in to Morning Joe (once a favorite Trump venue, by the way). “Tactically, Biden’s phoner was stealing a page out of the Trump playbook,” a Republican strategist said.
Over the last decade, Trump repeatedly used threats against party leaders as leverage in case they ever tried to turn on him. He threatened to run with a third party in 2016 if he felt he wasn’t treated fairly, and reportedly made a similar threat during his impeachment trial after January 6. When he announced his latest run this cycle, prominent Republicans openly worried he would deliberately destroy the party’s nominee if it was anyone but him. And, of course, anyone who opposed him could expect a nasty primary challenge.
Biden’s threat is similar in effect, but functionally different. He doesn’t command a rabid army of supporters to weaponize against opponents like Trump (though Democrats are watching for signs of pro-Biden backlash), and he’s the definition of an institutionalist and insider, not an anti-establishment rebel who could leave his party behind if he wanted to.
Biden’s last line of defense: Mutually assured destruction | Semafor
Wrong that Biden doesn’t have rabid supporters-they’re not fascists like Trump’s Deplorables but they are all in for Joe and furious at the elites in the media as well as in the Vichy Dems trying to take him down
Adam Carlson on X: “Very very very bad use of polling” / Xk
This anxious caller is so many of us in the Dem voter base currently.
My fairly viral tweet-for me
LOTS of breathless predictions