Mid-terms of Endearment?

Plus our usual cartoons, John Oliver and some “Tony” music.

Still free to subscribe to this nearly daily newsletter! Greg Mitchell is author of fourteen books and director of five films for PBS since 2022. In a previous life, he was a longtime editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. His latest film “Woody Guthrie and The Ghost of Tom Joad Today” is now streaming everywhere via PBS.

John Oliver last night on HBO had a great takedown exploding DOT chief Sean Duffy’s ethically challenged “road trip,”, then offered main segment on everyone’s favorite complaints about “Subscriptions.”

Charles P. Pierce:

Over the last few weeks, the Democratic party, the wind at its back to begin with, has demonstrated a remarkably energetic and diverse intellectual and ideological diversity. New candidates with a startling variety of appeals to a startling variety of constituencies have popped up everywhere from Alaska to Florida. Money is flowing to all of them for different reasons. Ordinarily, this would be a cause for institutional joy, if not perilous giddiness.

However, in the realm of the spirits, nothing is as it seems. This diversity of appeals to diverse constituencies scares the daylights out of some Democrats. It’s expressed as a party wrestling with internal contradictions and with a collision of generations. But I would argue that it really represents the last, fading tremors of the fear that entered the Democratic party when it awoke the day after that dark day in 1980 and realized that its New Deal coalition had collapsed under its feet without anyone noticing.

Out of this came the ceaseless pursuit of white working-class men who were as gone forever from the party as their factory jobs were from places like Youngstown. The Republicans offered these folks someone to blame, which is precisely the crack cocaine they were seeking. Unfortunately, these also were the most reliable voters the Democrats had. The involuntary flinch reflex among the national Democrats proved very hard to unlearn. The available evidence so far this year is that the long process may have finally come to completion.

The Democrats come into November with a variety pack of very good candidates. In Massachusetts, Senator Edward Markey is fending off another challenge. Markey entered Congress in 1976, which was 13 years before James Talarico, the senatorial candidate in Texas, was born. Sherrod Brown in Ohio is trying to return to the Senate while Abdul El-Sayed up in Michigan is trying for the Senate for the first time.

Meanwhile, Paul Krugman:

The bottom line is that Trump is going to lose his trade war with Canada as thoroughly as he has lost his shooting war with Iran. But because he won’t face reality, trade with our northern neighbor will probably be disrupted until the narcissistic bully in the White House no longer controls trade policy.

Erin Brockovich thirty years on is now taking on data centers.

Music Picks

The new drama “Tony,” which we saw yesterday, about “Don’t Call Me Anthony” Bourdain’s origin story in Provincetown, is not known for its soundtrack but there are some great tunes in it, even Jonathan Richman’s “Girlfriend.” Given prominent time is the early Richard and Linda Thompson “The Calvary Cross” (Linda tells me she was unaware of this)

I’ve featured this tremendous song before, but also in the film “Something on Your Mind” by revered ‘60s folk/blues singer Karen Dalton:

From Tunes to Toons

Bramhall:

Goris:

KAL:

Brodner:

Matson:

deAdder:

Goris

Photo Finish

Again, thinking of Tony Bourdain: Oyster man at dawn at low tide in Provincetown.