Chilling excerpts from “Why the ‘Brooks Brothers riot’ of 2000 inspired Trump’s campaign operative in 2020” by Zachary B. Wolf at CNN Politics: “For the Trump campaign four years ago in 2020, according to [Jack] Smith’s filing, disruption was the aim. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said the legal cases against him are all part of a “witch hunt.” He won’t get a chance to present a defense against Smith’s allegations before Election Day, but that’s because his strategy of delaying the case has been very effective….It’s worth focusing in on the Brooks Brothers riot of 2000 and comparing it with the request for a Detroit riot in 2020. Smith’s allegation could be as much a warning as a history lesson if, as many expect, counting and recounting ballots in the election next month stretches well past Election Day. Republicans have made no secret of their plans to deploy 100,000 supporters to keep a close eye on the counting of ballots in swing states….The Princeton University presidential historian Julian Zelizer wrote for CNN just before the 2020 election that the Brooks Brothers riot was a key early example of the GOP “weaponizing outrage,” and he predicted Trump and his allies would go to great lengths to dispute the election outcome. That wasn’t exactly an outlier prediction since Trump had been alleging, falsely, that the 2020 election was being rigged against him….“This moment builds on two to three decades of an increasingly radicalized party,” Zelizer told me by email. “We saw with the Brooks Brothers riot how media-attention grabbing theatrical chaos was an essential part of the strategy, shift attention away from damaging issues while also creating the impression that things are out of control – with the underlying argument that the GOP is needed to bring those things back together.”….As CNN’s Supreme Court expert Joan Biskupic has noted, the current Supreme Court includes three justices – John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – who, while they weren’t among the shouting lawyers in Miami, worked on behalf of the Bush campaign in Florida during the recounts that year.”

From “135.9 Million Reasons Why the Working Class Is So Angry: Workers know that when a private equity firm buys up the company at which they work or a stock buyback is announced, they are likely about to get kicked in the face” by Les Leopold at Common Dreams: “Since 1993, 60.2 million workers who had been on the job for at least three years have been laid off, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Another 75.7 million with less than three years tenure have also been let go….In total, that’s 135.9 million workers who know all too well the pain and suffering of a major disruption to their employment….Working people understand that the periodic ups and downs of the economy can legitimately lead to job loss. But they also know that in many cases the reason they lost their job was not mismatches in supply and demand. Rather, their jobs were sacrificed to satisfy out and out corporate greed….A stock buyback, which was essentially illegal until 1982, is a form of stock manipulation. A company uses its funds, or borrows money, to go into the market place and buy up its own shares of stock. By doing so, the number of shares in circulation goes down, while the earnings per share goes up. The stock price rises even though no new value was added to the company. The rise in the share price rewards company executives, who are mostly paid with stock incentives, and moves corporate wealth into the pockets of Wall Street investors….In 2025, Goldman Sachs estimates that corporations will conduct more than $1 trillion in stock buybacks. Tens of millions of jobs will be sacrificed to shift all that money to the richest of the rich….Reducing the use of mass layoffs to provide financing for corporate and executive looting would be a big win for working people. Alas, we all know deep down that politicians are not about to bite the Wall Street hands that feed them. In the meantime, millions of workers will continue to be sacrificed on the alter of corporate greed.” Read the article for Leopold’s proposed solutions to the problem.

At The American Prospect, Paul Starr mulls over a question on the minds of many a Democratic strategist, “What Should Democrats Say to Young Men? Young men appear to be drifting right. Ignoring them means trouble,”and comes up with a few provocative insights, including: “Signs have been mounting that, for the first time in recent decades, Democrats may lose majority support from young men in 2024. The risk to Democrats is that this is not just a one-time fluke but an indication of growing trouble with men in coming elections. Democrats can celebrate the support they are getting from young women, but they also need to take the disaffection of young men seriously, engage them directly, and respond to the visions of manhood and masculinity that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are offering….Although men overall have moved toward the Republicans over the past half-century, the youth vote has given Democrats grounds for hope that the losses among men have been transitional, a reflection of an older generation’s difficulties in adjusting to more equal gender relations and a changed economy. Young men’s support for Democrats reached a high point in Barack Obama’s victories. According to exit polls in 2008, Obama won 62 percent of 18-to-29-year-old men as well as 69 percent of women that age. By 2020, the gender gap among young voters had widened, but Joe Biden still received the votes of 52 percent of young men along with 67 percent of young women. As recently as the 2022 midterms, Democrats won 54 percent of young men as well as 72 percent of young women….Democrats need to find ways both to uphold their commitments to gender equality and to bring young men around from Trump and Vance….ALTHOUGH DEMOCRATS DID NOT ADDRESS YOUNG MEN or issues of masculinity directly at their convention, they do have a potential messenger in vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz. As a football coach, teacher, and officer in the National Guard, he has had long experience in working with young men. He could take up the challenge of engaging Republicans directly on what a worthy life is for men today. By going on the podcasts and YouTube shows with male audiences, he could reach out to the young men who have heard from Trump and Vance but not from the Democrats.”

Starr continues, “In late July, two weeks before Harris asked him to run on the ticket, Walz changed the national conversation about Trump and Vance with five words, “These guys are just weird.” What Walz said immediately afterward connected that weirdness to Trump and Vance’s hypermasculinity: “They’re running for He-Man Women Haters Club or something, that’s what they go at. That’s not what people are interested in.” Together, those attention-catching lines have the kernel of what Democrats ought to be saying to young men—one part a counterattack against Trump and Vance; one part positive statement about the Democratic alternative and the genuine interests of young men….In making their case, Democrats do not have to be highly original, any more than Trump and Vance have been. They can rightly claim to be the ones who are talking sense about how men and women normally relate today, not as boss and underling but as members of a team, as “Coach Walz” might say….A major part of the message that Walz could carry to the online audiences of young men concerns the Democrats’ economic program, including their commitments to expand housing construction and aid for first-time homebuyers, forgiveness of student debt, child tax credits, and policies aimed at bringing back manufacturing jobs that pay well and don’t require a college degree. Democrats shouldn’t expect to win the competition for young men with policy proposals, but the odds are that young men haven’t heard about their proposals, which convey a message that Democrats want to make a practical difference in their lives. Democrats don’t have to pull back on abortion rights to win their support; there’s no evidence that young men have turned right on abortion—they just don’t vote on it….we need more men in K-12 teaching as well as more investment in vocational education and technical high schools to give young men who may not go to college the chance to make a decent living….Guys, we see you. We’re on your side as well.” And because Republicans “performatively” side with young men but don’t follow that up with policies, Democrats can gain an advantage by backing up rhetoric with substantive ideas that work for young men. It wouldn’t kill them to point out to young men that the infrastructure bill Biden passed is creating lots of good-paying jobs for them.”