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      Debate camp, role play and rival advice: Trump and Harris prepare for showdown – podcast

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      Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will meet face to face on the debate stage next Tuesday. Jonathan Freedland speaks to Paul Begala – who helped Al Gore to prepare for his 2000 debate against George W Bush – about what the 2024 candidates will be doing to prepare.
      What can they do to increase their chances of coming out on top, and will this debate be as election-defining as the last?

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Trump tells Jewish donors they would be ‘abandoned’ if Harris is elected

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      Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that they would be “abandoned” if Kamala Harris becomes president.In his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, the Republican presidential candidate also said he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror-infested” areas such as Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.While Trump sketched out few concrete Middle Eastern policy proposals for a second term, he painted a potential Harris presidency in cataclysmic terms for Israel.“You’re going to be abandoned if she becomes president. And I think you need to explain that to your people … You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president,” Trump said without providing evidence for such a claim.Under both Trump and Joe Biden, similar numbers of Palestinians were admitted to the US as refugees. From fiscal year 2017 to 2020, the US accepted 114 Palestinian refugees, according to US state department data, compared with 124 Palestinian refugees from fiscal year 2021 to 31 July of this year.Trump also said US universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House.“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said, speaking remotely to a crowd of more than 1,000 donors.Protests roiled college campuses in spring, with students opposing Israel’s military offensive in Gaza and demanding institutions stop doing business with companies backing Israel.Republicans have said the protests show some Democrats are antisemites who support chaos. Protest groups say authorities have unfairly labeled their criticism of Israel’s policies as antisemitic.The Association of American Universities, which says it represents about 70 leading US universities, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the United States, the federal government does not directly accredit universities but has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that give colleges accreditation.The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump’s speech.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe Democratic presidential candidate has hewed closely to the president’s strong support of Israel and rejected calls from some in the Democratic party that Washington should rethink sending weapons to Israel because of the heavy Palestinian death toll in Gaza.She has, however, called for a ceasefire in Gaza, calling the situation there “devastating”.Health authorities in Gaza say more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli assault on the enclave since the 7 October 2023 attacks led by Hamas.Approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed in the surprise attack and about 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.The subsequent assault on Gaza has displaced nearly its entire 2.3 million population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations at the world court that Israel denies. More

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      Hunter Biden pleads guilty to nine federal tax charges – live

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      Hunter Biden, the US president Joe Biden’s son, has pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.The 54-year-old entered his plea at a Los Angeles courthouse on Thursday. Prosecutors say he failed to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, and Biden faced two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.Hunter Biden’s decision to plead guilty in the high-profile federal tax case against him will spare the president from a potentially embarrassing trial ahead of a crucial US election.Hunter Biden has been open about his struggles with drugs and alcohol, and a trial was expected to dig into his life, including the millions he earned in consultancy work abroad, a crack cocaine addiction and the large sums he spent on online pornography. Republicans have long seized on his work with the Ukrainian industrial conglomerate Burisma and a Chinese private equity firm to criticize Joe Biden.Hunter Biden faces up to 17 years in prison and $450,000 in penalties after pleading guilty to all nine counts against him in a federal tax case.The president’s son was scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles after he allegedly failed to pay $1.4m in taxes between 2016 and 2019. During that time, the 54-year-old, who has struggled with addiction, was reportedly spending lavishly on “drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature”.“In short, everything but his taxes”, prosecutors said.His guilty plea will allow Biden to avoid a trial. Typically, defendants who plead guilty in criminal cases reach an agreement with prosecutors beforehand in order to obtain a shorter sentence, but that does not appear to have happened in this case.Hunter Biden, the US president Joe Biden’s son, has pleaded guilty to federal tax charges.The 54-year-old entered his plea at a Los Angeles courthouse on Thursday. Prosecutors say he failed to pay his taxes on time from 2016 to 2019, and Biden faced two felony counts of filing a false return and an additional felony count of tax evasion.US investigators have indicted a prominent Russian state television personality and his wife for violating sanctions and for money laundering as the White House targets Kremlin influence operations before the US presidential election.Dimitri Simes, a television presenter and producer for Russia’s state-owned Channel One, was charged with receiving more than $1m (£759,000) in compensation, a personal car and driver and a stipend for a flat in Moscow, despite the television station’s designation in 2022 by the US’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. He and his wife, Anastasia, were charged with money laundering to hide the proceeds of his work for Channel One.Anastasia Simes, 55, was also charged with buying arts and antiquities for a sanctioned Russian oligarch, Aleksandr Udodov, and then storing the works in their home in Virginia before they were shipped onward to Russia. The works were bought from galleries and auction houses in the United States and Europe.The couple faces 20 years in prison for each count if convicted. They left the US after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and are now believed to be in Russia, the justice department said.Allan Lichtman, the historian dubbed the “Nostradamus” of US presidential elections, has predicted that Kamala Harris will win the White House in November’s poll.Having previously warned the Democrats of the dangers of removing Joe Biden from the ticket, Lichtman nevertheless forecast that the vice-president, who became the party’s nominee after the president withdrew in July, would be elected in a video for the New York Times.He said Harris was on course to beat Donald Trump even though the Democrats had effectively surrendered the valuable key of presidential incumbency, one of 13 he used to determine the likely outcome.“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States – at least that’s my prediction for the outcome of this race,” Lichtman, 77, says at the conclusion of the quirky seven-minute video, which features him running in a track athlete’s garb against other elderly competitors in a qualifying race for the 2025 national senior Olympics.“But the outcome is up to you. So get out and vote,” he adds.Lichtman’s predictions are based on a set of true/false propositions, and take no account of polling trends.Hunter Biden’s attorney said Biden is offering to plead guilty to the federal tax charges he faces, without a deal with prosecutors, according to CNN.Hunter Biden, 54, had earlier on Thursday offered to plead guilty to federal tax charges but avoid admitting any wrongdoing – an unusual, last-minute legal manoeuvre that federal prosecutors quickly opposed.In a Los Angeles court earlier today, Hunter Biden sought to enter what is known as an “Alford plea”, an unusual type of guilty plea wherein a defendant does not admit to the allegations against them. US justice department prosecutors in the courtroom, however, said they would not accept that plea.On Thursday afternoon, his lawyers took a surprising turn and said that Hunter Biden was prepared to admit that his conduct satisfied the elements of the tax offenses with which he has been charged, CNN reported.The Harris-Walz campaign launched a new ad on Thursday focused on Project 2025 aimed at Black Americans in key battleground states, warning that a Donald Trump administration would “take Black America backwards”.Trump’s “Project 2025 agenda will give him unchecked political power with no guardrails”, the Harris campaign’s new 30-second spot says:
      Project 2025 would strip away our voting rights protections, and it eliminates the Department of Education. It would also require states to monitor women’s pregnancies. It bans abortion and would rip away health coverage for millions.
      “Donald Trump’s Project 2025 makes one thing clear to Black America: He doesn’t give a damn about us,” said Quentin Fulks, the Harris-Walz principal deputy campaign manager, in a statement.
      This campaign is going to make Trump defend his indefensible Project 2025 and ensure the key coalitions this campaign needs to win in November know exactly how his extreme agenda will take their communities backwards.
      Black voters in the US are often lumped into one bloc, but a new national survey has found that they can be defined by specific clusters: legacy civil rights, secular progressives, next-gen traditionalist, rightfully cynical and race-neutral conservative.Out of the 2,034 registered voters and 918 Black unregistered voters surveyed, 41% of respondents were found to be legacy civil rights voters who skewed older than 50 years old and had the highest voter turnout rates. Legacy civil rights voters were also the most likely group to believe that their vote has the power to drive change. On the other end, the rightfully cynical, 22% of respondents, were the youngest cohort and the least likely to vote. Based on their personal experiences of racism at work and with the police, this cluster was the least likely to believe that their vote matters.Next-gen traditionalists, 18% of respondents, were the most religious and least educated cluster, mostly consisting of millennial and generation Z voters. They had a low voter turnout rate and a moderate belief in the power of their vote. The most progressive respondents fell within the secular progressives cluster, at 12%, of which the majority were educated women who were highly likely to vote.Finally, the race-neutral conservatives, 7% of respondents, consisted mostly of men and were the second oldest cohort as well as the most conservative. Race-neutral conservatives had a moderate voter turnout rate and were likely to blame systemic barriers on individual choices.Katrina Gamble, CEO of Sojourn Strategies, said during a press conference on Wednesday:
      These clusters indicate that there are incredible differences within the Black community, in terms of how people think about democracy and their role in our democracy.
      Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Thursday that President Joe Biden would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.“No, it is still very much a no,” the White House press secretary said in response to a reporter asking her whether the president intended to pardon or commute his son’s sentence.This comes as earlier this summer, the president said that he would not commute his son’s sentence, according to the New York Times, and has said over the last few months that he would not pardon his son.“I’m extremely proud of my son Hunter,” the president said in June, per the Times. “He has overcome an addiction. He’s one of the brightest, most decent men I know. I am satisfied that, I’m not going to do anything. I said I’d abide by the jury decision. I will do that.”After Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, offered to plead guilty on Thursday to federal tax charges but without admitting any wrongdoing, the US justice department prosecutors in the Los Angeles courtroom said they would not accept that plea, according to Reuters.“It’s not clear to us what they are trying to do,” one prosecutor reportedly told the judge overseeing the case.It was not clear whether the judge would accept the offer or go ahead with the trial. Jury selection is due to begin on Thursday. More

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      Kamala Harris will win election, predicts leading historian Allan Lichtman

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      Allan Lichtman, the historian dubbed the “Nostradamus” of US presidential elections, has predicted that Kamala Harris will win the White House in November’s poll.Having previously warned the Democrats of the dangers of removing Joe Biden from the ticket, Lichtman nevertheless forecast that the vice-president, who became the party’s nominee after the president withdrew in July, would be elected in a video for the New York Times.He said Harris was on course to beat Donald Trump even though the Democrats had effectively surrendered the valuable key of presidential incumbency, one of 13 he used to determine the likely outcome.“Kamala Harris will be the next president of the United States – at least that’s my prediction for the outcome of this race,” Lichtman, 77, says at the conclusion of the quirky seven-minute video, which features him running in a track athlete’s garb, against other elderly competitors in a qualifying race for the 2025 national senior Olympics.“But the outcome is up to you. So get out and vote.”Lichtman’s predictions are based on a set of true/false propositions, and take no account of polling trends.He previously vociferously argued against replacing Biden as Democratic nominee after his disastrous debate performance against the former president in June and dismissed the validity of opinion polls indicating it had damaged Biden’s ability to win the race.View image in fullscreenNevertheless, of 13 keys, he found eight favoured Harris – who he said gained from the absence of a strong third party candidate following the demise of Robert F Kennedy Jr’s independent campaign, positive short- and long-term economic indicators, major legislative achievements enacted by the Biden administration, and absence of social unrest or scandal attached to the White House. She was also favoured in not having had to undergo a party nomination battle to succeed Biden, as other mooted candidates quickly lined up to endorse her before last month’s Democratic national convention.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven if two still unanswered keys on foreign policy successes or failures fell in Trump’s favour, they would not be enough for him to win the election, according to the formula.Lichtman accurately forecast Trump’s unheralded 2016 election triumph over Hillary Clinton at a time when most opinion polls indicated a contrary outcome. He also correctly forecast that Trump would be impeached during his presidency – which he was, twice.A history professor at American University, he has been forecasting the results of US presidential elections since 1984 and claims to have accurately predicted all but one – George W Bush’s contested triumph over Al Gore in 2000, which was decided after the US supreme court ruled in Bush’s favour following weeks of legal wrangling over disputed ballots.Lichtman claims even that blemish is unjustified, arguing that thousands of disallowed ballots had been cast by voters who had tried in good faith to back Gore, the then vice-president and Democratic candidate, but had inadvertently spoilt their ballot papers. More

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      Trump announces plan for Elon Musk-led ‘government efficiency commission’

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      Donald Trump announced in a speech on Thursday that, if elected, he would form a government efficiency commission, a policy idea that Elon Musk has been pushing him to take on. The former president claimed the tech billionaire had agreed to lead the commission.Trump made the attention-grabbing announcement during a campaign event at the Economic Club of New York, but gave no specific details about how the commission would operate.He reiterated Musk’s argument that such a commission would cut unnecessary spending, while also saying that he would massively walk back government regulations.“I will create a government efficiency commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government, and making recommendations for drastic reforms,” Trump told the crowd.Musk and Trump have forged an increasingly close alliance over the past year, as the SpaceX and Tesla CEO has thrown his full support behind Trump’s presidential campaign. Musk’s backing of Trump has consequently given the world’s richest man a direct line to influence Republican policy – and, if Trump were to actually create an efficiency commission, sweeping powers over federal agencies.Musk’s potential involvement in Trump’s proposed commission would create obvious conflicts of interest, as his businesses, such as SpaceX and Neuralink, are both regulated by, and have business with, numerous government agencies.Musk reposted news of Trump’s plans on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, which he bought for $44bn, and suggested he would accept such a position. “I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises,” Musk posted. “No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”Musk raised the idea of an efficiency commission with Trump during their interview on X last month, with Musk offering to “help out on such a commission”. Musk has frequently pushed for deregulation and opposed government oversight into his businesses, while at the same time facing investigations and lawsuits over a range of allegations including breaking labor laws, violating animal-welfare protections and engaging in sexual harassment.Although Musk and Trump formerly had an acrimonious relationship – Trump once referred to Musk as a “bullshit artist”, while Musk said Trump was too old to run for president – the two have formed a symbiotic relationship in recent months.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMusk, who frequently engages with far-right activists on X and promotes anti-immigration content, has attacked Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, as a communist, while his allies in the tech community have poured money into a Super Pac backing Trump. More

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      Trump campaign pulls away from three target states after Harris surge

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      Donald Trump has quietly wound down his presidential campaign in states he was targeting just six weeks ago amid polling evidence showing that Kamala Harris’s entry into the presidential race has put them out of reach and narrowed his path to the White House.The Republican presidential nominee’s campaign has diverted resources away from Minnesota, Virginia and New Hampshire – states Trump was boasting he could win while Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate – to focus instead on a small number of battleground states.Money is being poured into the three “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which were all carried by Biden in 2020 and are seen as vital to the outcome of November’s election.Special attention is being paid to Pennsylvania, which has 19 electoral college votes, and where a new CNN poll shows Trump and Harris tied at 47% each.Resources have also been transferred to southern and south-western Sun belt states – namely North Carolina, Georgia Nevada and Arizona – where Trump previously had healthy leads over Biden that have been whittled away since Harris replaced the US president at the top of the Democratic ticket.Maga Inc, a Trump-supporting Super Pac, has recently spent $16m in adverts in North Carolina as polls have shown Harris close to drawing even in a state the Democrats carried just once in presidential elections since 1980.The tactical shift is a graphic sign of how the dynamics of the electoral contest have shifted since the Republican national convention in July, when euphoric Trump campaigners talked confidently of winning Minnesota, Virginia and New Hampshire.Democrats have carried all three in recent presidential polls but Biden’s support showed signs of serious erosion following June’s calamitous debate performance in Atlanta – prompting bullish Republican forecasts that they would be “in play” in November.An internal Trump campaign memo even before the debate posited ways that the former president could carry Minnesota and Virginia – partly helped by the presence of the independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, whose campaign was initially thought to pose a greater threat to Biden before contrary polling evidence changed Trump’s calculus.As optimism surged, Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, held a rally in Minnesota shortly after the Republican convention, while the campaign said it planned to open eight offices in the state and build up staff.Since then, Harris replaced Biden and chose the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, as her running mate – helping her to shore up local support – while Kennedy has suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump.Harris’s ascent has also infused the Democrats’ supporters with fresh enthusiasm, leading to a surge in popularity that has propelled her into a small but consistent national poll lead and a fundraising bonanza that saw her campaign raise $540m in August alone.The predicted rash of new Trump offices and hires in Minnesota appears not to have happened, Axios reported.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Virginia – the site of Vance’s first solo rally after being appointed to the ticket – Trump has not staged a rally for six weeks and the campaign has stopped citing memos claiming it can flip the state. Its apparent slide down the priority list is a far cry from 28 June, when the former president staged a rally in Chesapeake a day after his ultimately race-changing debate with Biden.The clearest evidence of the switch in campaign’s thinking has come in New Hampshire, which a former Trump field worker said this week that it was no longer trying to win.Trump has not appeared there since winning the Republican primary in January and has not sent a major surrogate since the spring, despite New Hampshire being identified by Michael Whatley, chair of the Republican National Committee, after the June debate as one of the states the Trump campaign was targeting to expand its electoral wining map.Recent polls have shown Harris leading outside the margin of error.“This election is going to be won in those seven swing states,” Lou Gargiulo, the co-chair of Trump’s campaign in New Hampshire, told Politico. “That’s where the effort’s got to be put.” More

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      Black US voting ‘bloc’ composed of five distinct political groups, survey finds

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      Black voters in the US are often lumped into one bloc, but a new national survey has found that they can be defined by specific clusters: legacy civil rights, secular progressives, next-gen traditionalist, rightfully cynical and race-neutral conservative.“These clusters indicate that there are incredible differences within the Black community, in terms of how people think about democracy and their role in our democracy,” said Katrina Gamble, CEO of Sojourn Strategies during a press conference on Wednesday,Out of the 2,034 registered voters and 918 Black unregistered voters surveyed, 41% of respondents were found to be legacy civil rights voters who skewed older than 50 years of age and had the highest voter turnout rates. Legacy civil rights voters were also the most likely group to believe that their vote has the power to drive change. On the other end, the rightfully cynical, 22% of respondents, were the youngest cohort and the least likely to vote. Based on their personal experiences of racism at work and with the police, this cluster was the least likely to believe that their vote matters.Next-gen traditionalists, 18% of respondents, were the most religious and least educated cluster, mostly consisting of millennial and generation Z voters. They had a low voter turnout rate and a moderate belief in the power of their vote. The most progressive respondents fell within the secular progressives cluster, at 12%, of which the majority were educated women who were highly likely to vote.Finally, the race-neutral conservatives, 7% of respondents, consisted mostly of men and were the second oldest cohort as well as the most conservative. Race-neutral conservatives had a moderate voter turnout rate and were likely to blame systemic barriers on individual choices.Community-based organizations from Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan discussed the need to tailor mobilization efforts to different types of Black voters during a Wednesday press conference. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the grassroots group Power Interfaith is using the results of the survey to engage 50,000 eligible Black voters throughout the state. Ahead of the election, the organization will tap Black Muslim and Christian congregations to help recruit 2,000 hosts who will serve soul food dinners to young people.Hosts from the legacy civil rights cluster will use the survey results to inform discussions with younger generations at the dinner. “For Black folk, food actually is our love language,” said Rev Dr Gregory Edwards, interim executive director of Power Interfaith. “Something magical happens when folks sit around the dining room table with some good food; it creates space for conversation about politics, about relationships, about dreams, hopes and aspirations that aren’t happening elsewhere.”This fall, the Georgia-based voter engagement group New Georgia Project plans to use the research findings to tailor its door canvassing, phone and text scripts. “We’re able to train our canvassers and others to talk to people and to listen to them and to make sure that they are addressing what they care about, versus some traditional operations that may just talk at people,” said Ranada Robinson, the group’s research director.In Michigan, a series of events called Just Effing Care Fest hosted by the grassroots group Detroit Action will engage rightful cynics by showcasing local influencers and artists while convening young Black people to discuss the issues that they’re most concerned about. “Young Black community artists have a strong influence with the rightful cynics,” said Branden Snyder, the group’s senior advisor. “They’re able to talk about how they’ve transformed their own cynicism into artistic expression, building a world that should be.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile Black registered voters overwhelmingly favor Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, the Black values research is not targeted toward a particular campaign or party, said Gamble from Sojourn Strategies.Instead, the survey is designed to help the Black electorate see that their vote matters. “It really centers understanding, how do we not only increase Black folks across the segments’ perceptions of their own power, but also get this research into the hands of organizations that can organize them into having actualized power in our democracy and our elections?” said Gamble. More

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      The strangest insult in US politics: why do Republicans call it ‘the Democrat party’?

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      The Democratic party? Robert F Kennedy Jr’s never heard of it.On Tuesday, the former presidential candidate issued his latest condemnation of the “Democrat party”, endorsing a bizarre linguistic tradition among haters of the institution. As Donald Trump told a rally in 2018: “I call it the Democrat party. It sounds better rhetorically.” By “better”, of course, he meant “worse”, as he explained the next year: he prefers to say “the ‘Democrat party’ because it doesn’t sound good”.In removing two letters from “Democratic”, the former president is adopting a jibe that’s been around since at least the 1940s. Opponents of the party long ago decided, for some reason, that this brutal act of syllabic denial would shame their opponents. Democrats don’t seem particularly devastated by the attack, but Republicans and those who love them have stuck with it. We hear it regularly from party luminaries such as JD Vance, Mike Johnson and Nikki Haley; pragmatic independents like RFK Jr; and media voices across the vast spectrum from Fox News to Infowars. Last week, even Tulsi Gabbard, once a Democratic presidential candidate herself, wrote an op-ed proudly describing her departure from the Democrat party and support for Trump.But even if the misnaming doesn’t exactly leave liberal snowflakes in tears, it does serve a purpose, says Nicole Holliday, acting associate professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. It’s a marker of affiliation – an indicator of the media a person consumes and the politicians they listen to. She recently heard a friend remark on “Democrat party” policies and asked why they used the term; the friend wasn’t even aware they had done it. “Language is contagious, especially emotionally charged political language,” Holliday says. “Most of the time, we don’t have the cognitive bandwidth to think very hard about every single word that we’re using. We just use it because it’s what other people do.”That lack of awareness “shows how normalized it’s become”, says Larry Glickman, Stephen and Evalyn Milman professor in American studies at Cornell University, who likens the term to a “schoolyard taunt”. It suggests the party is “outside the mainstream of American politics so much so that we’re not even going to call them by the name they prefer. We refuse to give them that amount of respect.”It’s part of a familiar pattern, as Holliday has written: “Intentionally calling a set of people by something other than their official and preferred form of reference is a common tactic of opposition that is designed to confer disrespect.” If someone named Christopher prefers not to be called Chris, and you do it anyway, it’s pretty clear you’re being rude – regardless of your politics, she says. And she and Glickman both point out that we’re seeing a new version of the same unpleasant phenomenon when it comes to the pronunciation of Kamala Harris’s first name. Almost half the speakers at the Republican convention got it wrong, according to the Washington Post. At a July rally, Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if he mispronounced the word. Eventually, Harris’s grandnieces, ages six and eight, felt compelled to offer a lesson at the Democratic convention this month.Such bullying may be a Trump trademark, but its origins are a bit fuzzy. According to Glickman, the term first came to prominence in 1946 thanks to a congressman named Brazilla Carroll Reece, who headed the Republican National Committee. Unlike Trump, Reece saw himself as a liberal – at least according to that era’s definition of the term; still, he wasn’t a fan of the New Deal or other recent developments. He used the term to indicate that what was once the Democratic party no longer existed: it had been commandeered by “radicals”. In 1948, the Republican party platform left off the “ic” in “Democratic”, and in 1952, a newspaper columnist asked: “Who has taken the ‘ic’ out of the party of our fathers?” Senator Joseph McCarthy, meanwhile, helped popularize the term.Over the decades, the Democratic party became associated with liberal policies, and eventually, “the ‘Democrat party’ slur became a condemnation of liberalism itself”, Glickman wrote. The phrase was a huge hit in the 90s and 2000s; Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and George W Bush played it on repeat. By the following decade, Trump was mandating the word: “The Democrat party. Not Democratic. It’s Democrat. We have to do that.”Removing the “ic” does seem to suggest the party isn’t about democracy. But if that’s the goal, Glickman wonders: “Why not call it the undemocratic party? Like Trump used to say the Department of Injustice.” And anyway, as they’ve proved since 2020, democracy isn’t high on the list of Republican values. Instead, Glickman suggests, it’s more about a “babyish” tendency to misname people. Also, as Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in the New Yorker in 2006, “it fairly screams ‘rat’.”So what should Democrats do? Is it time to start calling Republicans Republics? Licans? Relics? President Harry Truman tried “Publicans”, and it clearly didn’t take off. Perhaps it’s best, especially considering that many people don’t even know it’s an insult, to just keep ignoring it. Getting mad would be taking the bait. “This would be constructed as Democrats are weak pedants who can’t take a joke and they’re policing our language and see how they’re so heavy-handed with regulation?” Holliday says.So Democrats can let the attempts at bullying continue. Trump and his gang clearly need to blow off some steam; might as well be through the world’s tiniest, oddest insult. More