The Corsair
Kanye West has been Cancelled. The Fate of Our Democracy, Part II. Who Cares About Bob Woodward's Tapes?
Kanye, Cancelled
Add Gap to Adidas and you get to the fact that, in essence, Kanye has been cancelled for his antisemitism. He is too toxic for major corporations to touch. His cancellation, however, is bittersweet.
“But while West is now being condemned and brands distance themselves from the artist, his behavior did expose how much hate they were willing to tolerate,” Oliver Darcy writes on Reliable Sources. “Most of the businesses speaking out against West now did not do so in the immediate aftermath of his initial bigoted comments — despite West openly threatening to go ‘death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.’”
The Fate of our Democracy, Part II
(image via the Center for Politics)
How to turn around this Democratic Titanic before the iceberg that is the midterms? Four respected Democrat party stalwarts published a piece in The American Prospect this month titled A Memo to Democrats. It is must-reading.
As loathe as I am to recognize polls, there is a growing consensus among them. And it does not look good for the party that is not neofascist. The party that does not give succor and love to the anti-Semites and the bigots and the misogynists is in decline as the issue of Inflation and Crime are now top-of-mind at kitchen tables around the country.
There is no way around it, no argument that the polling might be wrong. Even in my home state New York, where a Trump-endorsed a “all crime all the time” sleazeball candidate is running, the Governors race is in a single digit of difference, which is unthinkable! What does that augur for the House races in deep blue New York? If deep blue New York is feeling Independent voters breaking Republican, what does that say about Democrat prospects in states like Nevada?
This is why A Memo to Democrats is must-reading. Less than two weeks before the midterms, the Titanic must reverse course. The authors of the article are Patrick Gaspard, Stanley B Greenberg, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux. Their argument is that Democrats need to stop talking about abortion and the decline of Democracy if we are going to win the election, which may, in fact, determine the ultimate fate of our Democracy. Late breaking voters — Independents — care most about the price of groceries and the price of gas. Surprise! And, increasingly, these voters also care more about the perception of out of control crime. Fear of one’s physical and financial security, two of the human condition’s most primal, elemental fears.
If Democrat candidates do not focus on these issues, relentlessly, in the last 13 days, then we are essentially lost. But, keep your heads up, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. From A Memo to Democrats:
Even before the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act, when Joe Biden’s approval ratings were still in the 30s, what was striking in the focus groups we were watching was that people were not blaming Biden for inflation. They certainly wanted him to do something about rising prices and to be in touch with their lives, but their primary ire was directed at big corporations that have moved jobs overseas and created supply chain issues; and at the near-monopoly power these wealthy corporations have over prices, allowing them to price-gouge consumers.
Our candidates need to pivot, nimbly, whenever the Crime issue comes up to Gun Control. The Democrat Party is the party of Gun Control. The Republican Party is the party of the NRA. They are dripping in NRA money. If voters give Democrats control of both Houses, we will enact Gun Control legislation and make our streets, our public transportation and our classrooms safer.
Our candidates must make the closing argument that the Democrat Party is the party that is lessening the deficit. We prioritize cutting the deficit to giving corporations tax cuts.
The Republican Party this summer voted to block an effort to cap insulin costs for those on private insurance. The Democrat Party is giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices. We need to hear more — much more — about insulin from our candidates.
The Democrat Party is the party that stands athwart corporate greed. Candidates need to remind voters of that fact. “We will win this election if we convince voters we care about their economic well-being,” Tweets Celinda Lake.
Why all the hullabaloo about the new Woodward tapes? According to Bob, the tapes add to the reporting in his bestseller, Rage. Why should we care? I mean, isn’t he just ultimately just trying to get a final payday? Jon Allsop of CJR breaks it down:
Is any of this actually big news? Trump’s apparent acknowledgment of the sensitivity of the Kim letters shined some light on a story that has emerged only since Woodward published Rage, but it didn’t clear everything up on that front—and it’s already been well documented that Trump did take top-secret documents to Mar-a-Lago. (As always with Trump, what he did is more important than what he claims to have known about what he did.) The secret-weapons claim would be explosive if true—but there’s no evidence to suggest that it is; Woodward was not able to verify it. And Trump boasting about his toughness is a boast as old as Trump himself. Ultimately, the news-cycle hubbub around the audiobook strikes me as yet another iteration of a familiar, annoying trend that has been particularly pronounced during Trump’s post-presidency: news organizations treating book-length material whose primary value is for the long-term historical record as an urgent Trump story in its own right, even when its particulars are either not especially new or not especially important.
The “Shitty Media Men” L:ist goes to court. (NYM)
Podcast Dream Battle: House of Dragons vs. Ring of Power (Bloomberg)
Media braces for a cold winter (Sara Fischer/Axios)
Ariel Elias, who crushed that MAGA heckler, did the Jimmy Kimmel Show. (Ariel Elias)
“What’s the kind of professional journalism that people actually want to read every day?” (Moundsville)
Meghan Markle and Issa Rae unpack the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype. (VF)