National politics reporter at semafor.com. Alum: WashPost, Bloomberg, Slate, Reason. Author of “The Show That Never Ends.”
Dave Weigel
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Gonna piss people off with this take but: I don't see the strategy for Dems who bring this up. Trump is not (whatever he says) running for re-election. You are running against Vance or Rubio in 2028. Voters think "old president" and say "oh like the zombie you pretended could serve until age 87?"
Everything they say about not getting to the movies as much if you're a new parent is true. But I'm having a solid Dudes Rock year with the stuff on Criterion and Tubi.
letterboxd.com/daveweigel/y...
You can see the soul leave Scalise's body as he says this
The scale is so obviously different (Burisma would be a Trump family rounding error) and it feeds an actual Democratic message: Trump is focused on himself, not you. He's focused on this stuff, not costs.
There is no overlapping message for "Trump old." Rs don't mind rebutting that.
"Biden old" put every Dem on the spot: Do you think he can seek another term, the way he's aging? It turned Democrats into liars.
"Trump old" doesn't do that.
Now, obviously, people will whatabout anything. Attack on corruption and you'll get some Hunter yadda yadda. But... (1/2)
I guess my point here is, if you are going to do Trump-centric messaging with the limited space you get in a news cycle, why this stuff and not corruption? Weirdly hard to make those stories stick, harder if you fritter away time with this stuff.
going to channel @nikobowie.bsky.social and Daphna Renan here and note that this piece conflates the court's horizontal review of congressional statutes (highly controversial and politically contested throughout American history) with vertical review of state law and enforcement of federal law.
She cried during the part of the speech when she said her kids only knew her as someone "running for office" and she was doing it for them. On some RW this became "she cried and conceded, why is she now winning?"
The Post corrected this quickly, but it makes you wonder what their inputs were.
Raman didn't concede. Her full speech was on C-Span, 12 minutes, easy fact check. The "she cried bc she lost" stuff was entirely RW X/YouTube chatter.
