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Nancy Jacobson No Labels

With No Candidate And No Campaign, No Labels Is Zeroed Out

Well, well, well. It seems that No Labels has no future. At least, not in the 2024 presidential election.

The supposedly centrist, supposedly bipartisan group that tried desperately to find someone—literally, anyone—to run on a “unity” ticket against President Joe Biden is admitting defeat, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down,” said Nancy Jacobson, founder and CEO of No Labels in a statement.

It’s not for lack of trying. Like, really trying—by basically begging everyone they could think of. As Daily Kos reported just a few weeks ago, the list of people who said no to No Labels was quite long:

  • Former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming
  • Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan
  • Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp
  • Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie
  • Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels
  • New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu
  • Failed Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley
  • Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick
  • Businessman Mark Cuban
  • Retired Navy Adm. William McRaven
  • Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

You might notice that most of the people on that list are Republicans, though the group was apparently desperate enough to ask the Democratic former governor of Massachusetts if he’d be willing to give it a go.

But that’s no accident. In December, the group’s chief strategist admitted that the “unity” ticket didn’t need to have any Democrats on it. A Republican and an independent would do just fine!

Well, it turns out the No Labels ticket won’t have a Democrat on it after all. Or a Republican. Or anyone at all. Or an independent. What a shame.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Elon Musk

Samsung, Dish, And ​'Wall Street Journal' ​Ads Appear On White Nationalist Twitter Account

Ads for major brands including Dish, Samsung, and The Wall Street Journal have been appearing on the verified Twitter account of VDare, a leading white nationalist group. Those companies are associating with a site that is largely dedicated to complaining about the alleged danger and inferiority of nonwhites, especially immigrants.

Musk has turned Twitter into a nightmare for advertisers, with accounts featuring antisemitism, racism, anti-LGBTQ hate, and misinformation thriving on the platform. Media outlets and researchers, including Media Matters, have documented that corporate ads have appeared next to toxic accounts, including those that promote Holocaust denialism, and major advertisers have left Musk’s platform.

The advertisers remaining on Twitter are having their ads placed directly on the accounts of white nationalists, including VDare’s verified account. Information on that account states that it’s been “verified since February 2023.” (Musk stated in June that “Twitter will start paying creators for ads served in their replies. First block payment totals $5M. Note, the creator must be verified and only ads served to verified users count.”)

VDare is a white nationalist site and organization. Headlines on its site have included:

  • “One Problem With These Hispanic Immigrants Is Their Disgusting Behavior.”
  • “Diversity Is Strength! It’s Also…Hispanic Immigrants Taking Over FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.”
  • “Indians Aren't That Intelligent (On Average).”
  • “America Does Not Need ANY Immigrants From Africa.”
  • “New Wave Of Failure Migration: Ethiopians On The Way.”

Tags on the site include: “Immigrant Mass Murder,” “Anti-White Hate Crimes,” “White Guy Loses His Job,” “Birthright Citizenship Reform,” “Minority Occupation Government,” “Disgruntled Minority Massacre,” “Death Of White America,” “Black Serial Killers,” “War On Whites,” “Jewish Fear and Loathing of Donald Trump,” and “Immigrants And Disease.”

It also runs regular “great replacement” updates designed to warn white readers that they are being replaced by nonwhites. (The so-called “great replacement” conspiracy theory is a white supremacist trope that’s motivated violence, including mass murders.)

VDare has previously posted content praising Musk for calling out supposed “anti-white racism from U.S. Media” and responded to his complaint about the new Lord of the Rings series on Amazon by tweeting, “Elon Musk is /ourguy.”

Numerous companies and even the U.S. government have been advertising directly in VDare’s Twitter account. Media Matters found ads for the following while looking at VDare’s feed:

The advertisement for CBP was an invitation to apply for jobs. Border Patrol has a history of problems with online racism and bigotry in its ranks.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Does Rupert Murdoch Have The Guts To Take Down Trump?

Does Rupert Murdoch Have The Guts To Take Down Trump?

If the stunning midterm results bear any message for Republicans, it is that Donald Trump continues to poison their party’s prospects, as he has done in every election since his fluke Electoral College squeaker six years ago. Nobody sees Trump more clearly now than Rupert Murdoch, the party’s would-be kingmaker, whose media empire trained its artillery on him after the election fiasco.

In classic New York Post style, Murdoch’s flagship tabloid lampooned its former object of affection on page one as “Trumpty Dumpty,” with a suitably humiliating illustration and accompanying columns that blamed him for the midterm failure and urged him to forget about running for president again. On the same day, Murdoch’s upscale Wall Street Journal editorial page whacked Trump as the midterm’s “biggest loser,” pinning on him the GOP defeats in 2018, 2020, 2021, and now 2022-- and suggesting that maybe, finally, Republicans are “sick and tired of losing.”

Meanwhile, on Fox News Channel, the Murdoch network that once served as state TV for the Trump campaign and White House, the post-election commentary was so shocking to Trump—man bites dog--that he snapped back on his Truth Social platform. “For me, Fox News was always gone, even in 2015-16 when I began my journey,” he complained with typical dishonesty. “But now they’re really gone.”

As Erik Wemple noted in the Washington Post, we’ve watched this melodrama unfold more than once already, most recently last summer after the House Select Committee’s devastating hearings, when the Post and the Journal both denounced Trump’s incitement of the January 6insurrection. The media mogul has never liked Trump, whom he regards as an intellectual inferior and a business fraud. But the problem, as Murdoch has learned, is that Trump’s mass cult following can affect Fox’s ratings by turning to its competitor Newsmax.

Despite his current apparent enthusiasm for flavor-of-the-month Ron DeSantis, Murdoch and his minions will of course crawl back if the Florida governor’s scant appeal fizzles away. But what would Rupert do if he had the testicular fortitude to rid the Republican Party of that meddlesome mountebank Trump?

If Rupert at all means what his publications now say, he must direct their fire as he does whenever he pursues a political vendetta. Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, among many others, know exactly how that goes.

If Murdoch is serious and not just striking a frivolous pose, the test for him is clear. To put the stake in Trump, Murdoch must at once instruct his editors and producers, his writers and TV personalities, to desist from undermining the myriad investigations into the former president’s alleged crimes – and instead lend support to those probes and publicize their ruinous revelations.

In his past feuds with political figures, the News Corp boss (and those who do his bidding) have never hesitated to fabricate or fib. This time, however, there is no need for his trademark journalistic malpractice. The Murdoch media could do something completely new and different -- real journalism that accurately reports the current federal and state investigations of Trump and his associates, and editorially encourages prosecution to uphold the rule of law.

Murdoch is mean and reactionary, but he isn’t stupid. He is well aware that the Trump Organization has acted fraudulently for decades, as shown in the evidence compiled by New York Attorney General Letitia James. He has heard Trump’s taped conversation with Brad Raffensperger, attempting to bully the Georgia secretary of state into fixing the 2020 election for him by “finding 11,780 votes.” Murdoch understands the wider conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election, not least because individuals on Fox News were privy to the coup as it unfolded. He has seen the FBI photos of top-secret documents that Trump stole from the White House and took to Mar-a-Lago.

Knowing all that, the old press lord must dictate a course correction to his corps of obedient lackeys and get on board with the investigations. He would find himself in familiar company, from hardcore conservative Rep. Liz Cheney to Bill Kristol, the Never Trump neoconservative who edited the Weekly Standard magazine when Murdoch owned it.

Chances that this will actually happen are vanishingly small. But unless he backs the investigations that could haul Trump and his gang before the bar of justice, Murdoch’s current criticism will be exposed as cheap talk and nothing more.

Murdoch has now set the test for himself. Will he back down as he did after blasting Trump over the January 6 insurrection? Will he again prove to be a blowhard and a weakling? The whole world is watching, Rupert.

The Willful Blindness Of America's Conservative Intellectuals

The Willful Blindness Of America's Conservative Intellectuals

The headline of a Wall Street Journal editorial caught my eye: "Arizona's School Choice Election." Writing as if nothing had changed in American politics since 2011, the editorial board assailed Katie Hobbs, the Democratic candidate for governor, as a tool of the teachers unions for her opposition to school choice. The Journal advised that parents would be well-advised to vote Republican.

There you have it: the failure of the intellectual leaders of conservatism in one editorial. The once magisterial voice of the conservative worldview looked at the race for governor in Arizona and airily overlooked reality. School choice? Are they out of their minds?

Disturbing, extremist, and otherwise unfit candidates dot the national landscape in 2022 like monkeypox, from Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania to J.D. Vance in Ohio to Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, but Arizona surely takes the highest honors for the sheer concentration of ranting incompetents who threaten the democratic process.

Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor, whom the Journal is endorsing, may be in favor of school choice, but that's a little beside the point when you consider the larger picture. Lake has declared that the 2020 election was "corrupt and stolen." Regarding the current president of the United States, she has expressed pity, urging that "Deep down, I think we all know this illegitimate fool in the White House — I feel sorry for him — didn't win. I hope Americans are smart enough to know that." She has no patience for temporizers. "It is not enough to say you are for 'Election Integrity' if you are not for DECERTIFYING the 2020 election if wrongdoing, fraud or different results are revealed," she tweeted last year.

There is no fiction she has not willingly endorsed. She told a group of young women that they shouldn't take precautions about COVID because "The truth is that hydroxychloroquine works and other inexpensive treatments work." A week before the voting, she announced, "We're already detecting some stealing going on." And despite her victory, she carried a sledgehammer onstage on primary night and pantomimed smashing electronic voting machines.

That's the GOP nominee for governor of Arizona. What does the Wall Street Journal do with these awkward realities? The editorial board interprets them as problems only insofar as they make it harder for her to win.

"GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake hasn't helped herself or her party by insisting that the 2020 election was stolen. Her election fraud claims put off many Republicans and independents and are a loser in the general election. A winning and unifying issue for Republicans this November is school choice."

The important thing is for the election-denying cult member to win, so let's find something that can distract disaffected Republicans and independents.

Despite all of the foregoing, it's just possible that Lake is the most mainstream of the major Republican candidates in Arizona this year. The GOP nominee for Senate is Blake Masters, an election denier who spices up the usual fare with "great replacement" talk. "The Democrats dream of mass amnesty, because they want to import a new electorate," he says. He attributes America's problems with gun violence to "Black people, frankly." When asked for a "subversive" thinker he admires, he responded with "How about, like, Theodore Kaczynski?" Yes, Wall Street Journal editorial board, how about that?

But wait, we're not finished with Arizona's contributions to national insanity. The Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona is not just an election-denying extremist enemy of democracy, but a card-carrying member of the Oath Keepers, the fine gentlemen who are currently being tried in federal court for seditious conspiracy. Mark Finchem has appeared on QAnon-linked radio talk shows and spoke at a rally in January with Trump, Mike Lindell, and the whole clown car of kooks. His website features a banner inviting readers to "Sign the petition to decertify and set aside AZ electors." Soon he may be the secretary of state of Arizona.

Some are able to see what is at stake here. When Liz Cheney was asked whether she might campaign for Democrat Katie Hobbs, she said yes. "In this election, you have to vote for the person who actually believes in democracy."

Again, I tend to agree with the Journal's editorial board on many policy matters. But they are pretending, or perhaps deluding themselves, that the Republican Party remains, underneath it all, the party of Paul Ryan and Larry Hogan and Chris Sununu, and that the country will be better off if Republicans win elections, full stop.

As Liz Cheney sees and is willing to say, not this Republican Party. This GOP is the party of Mastriano and Vance and, yes, Kari Lake. This is a party that cannot be trusted with power; that openly proclaims its eagerness to overturn elections. Next to that, everything else, including school choice and regulation and taxes, pales to insignificance. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has continuing influence with reasonable center-right voters. They owe them better.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.