Everyone should pay attention to THE LINCOLN PROJECT.

[caeron]

My money went to Stacy Abrams.

We have the votes, if we can get them to bother to fucking show up. 

She did.

[Pete1111]

1 hour ago, caeron said:

My money went to Stacy Abrams.

We have the votes, if we can get them to bother to fucking show up. 

She did.

Same here.  I donated to her initiative.  I hope the Dems figure it out, what she is doing.

[RockHardNYC]

I supported Stacy, too. America needed to push extra hard for the non-White vote, and Stacy delivered, twice. However, Stacy did not have the capacity to attract the never-Trumpers. Both Stacy and the LP needed our support.

[Guest]

 

In Praise of the Lincoln Project 

They kept Trump off-balance - and that was vital 

Louise Mensch 3 hr ago 11 8   It’s hard to fathom how close we came to disaster. And no, for once I’m not talking about the insurrection at the Capitol that saw Officer Goodman receive the Congressional Gold Medal, and nearly saw the Vice President or the Speaker lose their lives. In another scenario, quieter, but more deadly, the insurrection would never have happened, because Donald Trump would legitimately have won a second term in office. No rage at Brad Raffensberger; no spite to the Georgia GOP; no Senator Ossoff, no Senator Warnock. Just another female Vice Presidential candidate who failed, Trump and Pence for four more years, a 52-48 Republican Senate and a greatly diminished Democratic majority in the House.  Subscribe     Moscow Mitch in charge. An unbridled Donald Trump stacking SCOTUS and the rest of the courts. Sanctions probably lifted on Moscow. Who knows what hell inflicted on immigrants. Seven souls who died in the Capitol riots would be alive, but God alone knows how many more Americans would die as Javanka ran the vaccine program into the ground. Q Anon would have been proven ‘right’ and the cult would be growing, and thriving. America might leave NATO. The intelligence services would come under sustained attack. The pardons denied in his last days in office would have rained down upon anyone associated with Trump. The hell we as a nation might be living through now would be worse than the last four years. It doesn’t bear thinking about. And don’t kid yourself. We came close. Uncomfortably close. A fatuous focus on the “popular vote margin”, which is stupid, flatters the Democrats. In a popular vote system, millions of suddenly-enfranchised Republican voters in NY and CA are going to head to the polls - we have absolutely no idea who would have won in a popular vote system, so the “margin” is irrelevant. The real margin for Biden was wafer thin. In Arizona, it was 0.4%. In Wisconsin, 0.6%. In Georgia, it was 0.3% - as Trump famously asked for, just 11,000 and something votes, against millions of cast ballots, would have made the difference. Even in Pennsylvania the difference was only 1.2% for Joe Biden.  After a brutal summer of rioting and violence, much of it decried by actual protestors for racial justice and fomented by obvious agitators, in Portland for example, ignoring the wishes of the local NAACP - Trump was well-placed to do the impossible, again, and triumph again. Truly, polls do not measure his voters well. Unlike their President they didn’t hang out on Twitter. They don’t care what the liberal outrage of the week is. And they were being fed a solid diet of propaganda by Fox News, OANN and other outlets, amplified by Facebook and You Tube algorithms that kept them locked in a bubble. Even a tiny “pivot” by Trump would have been enough - just a touch of normality, just a smidgeon of sense, just being the man MAGA Haberman wanted him to be, the man the New York Times kept normalizing him into. Enter, thank God, the Lincoln Project.  Those articles that dwell on how many voters the LP’s brilliant ads “persuaded” are interesting, but, speaking as a former politician, they missed the point. The point was to unsettle Donald Trump, to get in his head, to keep him tweeting bad, sad, insane things. The loss in Arizona? Call that the McCain Factor. You don’t get to dump on an American hero and Arizona’s most beloved son and win the state. Joe Biden picked a phenomenal VP in Kamala Harris - and he could easily have taken a wrong turn and chosen Susan Rice, but that’s a topic for another day - but Joe Biden, and America’s, greatest ally in this narrowly-won victory wasn’t Kamala or political genius Ronald Klain. NOPE. It was Donald John Trump. For he, and he alone, could and did throw away a simmering victory that right-thinking Democrats secretly perceive when they look at their losses in the house. For all the Proud Boy MAGA racists, and there were many, there were plenty of others - those who went to Trump’s rally on the 6th but did not storm the Capitol, for example - who just like him for different reasons - annoying the libs, cutting taxes, stopping immigration, standing up to “Antifa”. And that crucial slice of Trump’s vote is very traditional. They like the CIA. They like kicking Taliban ass and they don’t care about “forever wars”, Russia’s propaganda phrase designed to get us to disarm. These voters hate Colin Kaepernick ‘taking a knee’ because they see it as rude, improper, an insult to the National Anthem. And for exactly the same reasons they really, REALLY, dislike, even detest, Trump’s endless tweets.  Share He was ‘ridiculous’, ‘embarrassing’, ‘needs to stop’. Trump supporters said this over and over again. But Trump did not stop. And the Lincoln Project made absolutely certain that he did not stop. They got him to fire Brad Parscale, and they caused chaos in Trump’s ranks. On Fauci, on Georgia, on treason, the Lincoln Project hit Trump and kept hitting him. In a narrow electorate, their brilliant ads kept Trump angry, rage-tweeting and throwing away the advantadges that chaos had brought him. They also kept Democrats engaged and focused, as with my personal favorite, the campaign ad filmed entirely in Russian.  There is no excuse whatsoever for sexual harassment, quid pro quo and dangling jobs-for-favors. The Lincoln Project know that, and it’s right that they bring in someone to independently review it. Any crimes committed should be investigated and prosecuted. But from my point of view, it’s also not right to demand, as reported, an enormous signing bonus and consulting contract when joining a good team in crisis. Factually, the Lincoln Project got results - so much so that 60 minutes featured their efforts. There are well-founded concerns, but there’s also more than a whiff of envy about the financial success of some of the founders. I think we should get it straight - men like Rick Wilson, who saw the Republican consulting business he’d set up over decades crumple into dust because of his principled opposition to Trump, entirely deserved to make money and be paid for the incredible, on point work he and his PAC did keeping Trump rage-tweeting - tweeting his way into a loss that so very, very nearly became a win, with incalculably large consequences for America, the Western Alliance, and the entire free world.

[Latbear4blk]

I do not think anyone is arguing against the importance of the role played by the LP during the campaign, the quality of their videos, or the political talent of its members. I'd rather understand this as ironic commentary on the Conservatives talent to mess up their best moves with sex scandals and ethical questionable practices. Let's hope nevertrumpers can quickly move on from this.

[RockHardNYC]

Absolutely incredible. Steve Schmidt resigns from Lincoln Project's board while revealing his own Boy Scout abuse experience. His resignation letter is a masterpiece. Here it is:

https://beta.documentcloud.org/documents/20478630-steve

The good news: Steve is not giving up the fight. I am thrilled that Steve publicly apologized to Jennifer Horn in his letter. I hope they have had private conversations, too. I am hopeful for the future. Steve did the right thing here.

Edited February 13, 2021 by RockHardNYC

[Guest]

The Lincoln Project “scandal” reminds me of the nonstop media frenzy over Hilarys emails 2016 election cycle.  The GOP and American press became hyper-focused on a elative sideshow while Trumps background and far bigger scandals were overlooked. It’s the same exact thing here.  It’s no coincidence Lincoln Project hysteria Is peaking while Trump is on Impeachment 2.

While there is obviously some wrongdoing at Lincoln Project and questions need to answered - it has long been the GOP/Trump strategy to simply continue with nonstop lawless & illegal activity that simply overwhelms the media and American public, thus they are truly never held to account. At the time time - they divert attention to a liberal/Dem/anti-Trump scandal to further minimize scrutiny.

Taking the bait and focusing on Lincoln Project now is exactly what they want.  I’d think people would wise up by this time as we seen it over and over.  I guess not.

We will never get a full accounting of all the crime and scandals during the Trump years precisely because the American public is just too gullible and always ready to move on th the next sensational headline.

if Trump had succeeded in either re-election or his violent coup attempt, it would have been the end of American democracy. How that compares to infighting and improper sexting at a political action committee isn’t even debatable.

[Guest]

And, definitely agree Stacey Abrams was the undervalued hero in 2020.  Im glad she has been recognized and will expand her role going forward.  We would not have Senate control without her.  She may have saved the Republic.

[RockHardNYC]

4 hours ago, Slvkguy said:

The Lincoln Project “scandal” reminds me of the nonstop media frenzy over Hilarys emails 2016 election cycle.  The GOP and American press became hyper-focused on a elative sideshow

In the Capitalist United States, the media is a for-profit business. It thrives on "sideshow" because a sideshow makes money.

4 hours ago, Slvkguy said:

there is obviously some wrongdoing at Lincoln Project and questions need to answered

Everyone now knows the impact The Lincoln Project had on Trump's loser status. The numbers are in. However, they did not decrease Republican turnout for this Fascist asshole as they had hoped, and that singular reality placed a bull's eye on their heads.

The Fascist, racist Trump movement is loud and strong. They're going to want to destroy the LP. In order for the LP to maintain public support with a moral high-ground message, honesty and transparency take on new meaning.

By publishing Jennifer Horn's private text messages, Steve Schmidt made a terrible mistake. He and the LP may yet be sued for it. He has apologized for this mistake, but I doubt the opposition will care or forgive him. The opposition loves to take human foibles and turn them into life-long calls for crucifixion. This is the ugly world of power and politics.

[Lonnie]

15 hours ago, RockHardNYC said:

The opposition loves to take human foibles and turn them into life-long calls for crucifixion. This is the ugly world of power and politics.

Truer words were never said...but Mr. Greenwald does seem to have a different opinion on The Lincoln Project and their founders:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-lincoln-project-facing-multiple

---

From the start, it was obvious that this disgraceful collapse was the inevitable end for this group. The very idea that this freakish hodgepodge of life-long D.C. Republican consultants were men of profound conscience defending the Republic was a complete and total joke. They are life-long grifters, responsible for some of the most grotesque and amoral attack ads in the modern era, with a very long and recent history of advocating the exact opposite values of what they claimed to represent once they opportunistically identified the optimal Trump-era profit model: namely, relentlessly fleece scared and gullible #Resistance liberals of their cash by posturing as brave and principled warriors against Trumpism.

But their lucrative scheme could never have succeeded without the knowingly fraudulent cooperation of liberal networks such as MSNBC and CNN. Over and over, those Democratic Party spokespeople masquerading as TV journalists — knowing exactly who these bottom-feeding GOP operatives have always been — encouraged their misguided and trusting viewers to regard the Lincoln Project as a selfless and noble bulwark against Trumpism rather than the scamming, grifting, lowlife con it so obviously was from the start.

What this sorry episode reveals above all else is that much of American liberalism, including its all-but-official arm in corporate media, replicated, in the name of combatting Trump, every unethical tactic, every deceitful method, and every toxic assault on basic decency that they insisted Trump singularly represented. They allied with the most amoral societal actors, venerated the most corrupt factions, and vouched for the sleaziest operatives in the name of uprooting amorality, corruption and sleaze. The claimed Trump acted without limits or respect for normalcy and truth while proudly relinquishing all boundaries, principles and constraints of truth in order to fight him.

In doing so, they became everything they claimed they were fighting. And unlike Trump, who is now gone, these unholy alliances and ethic-free habits that define them will remain and fester forever. That is why when American liberals, including in the media, look in the mirror, what they see staring back is Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt and John Weaver. That is the perfect reflection of what they have become, of who they now are.

[RockHardNYC]

5 hours ago, Lonnie said:

Mr. Greenwald does seem to have a different opinion

I'm not a fan of Glenn Greenwald, but many of his questions deserve answers. To dump everyone from the LP in the pot of "life-long grifters" seems grossly unfair and histrionic. In America, politics is big business, whether you like it or not. Most Americans have no idea what K-Street consultants earn for a living. OTOH, donors deserve to know where their money went. Transparency? Let's see where this goes. Rick Wilson is a terrible actor. Ordinary spin isn't going to work on this one.

[Guest]

 BUT......HER EMAILS !!!!!!

[DXR]

I'm not giving any of them any of my money ever again. They get my vote. That's it. No charge.

[JKane]

17 hours ago, DXR said:

I'm not giving any of them any of my money ever again. They get my vote. That's it. No charge.

 

If I ever felt like donating again, I think it'd only be to Stacy Abrams's project.  She worked miracles with $5M and most other political causes blow at least $5M begging for ever MORE money! 

[RoyThree]

We need Stacy Abrams here in Florida ASAP.

 

[azdr0710]

disenchanted Lincoln Project followers may be interested in Adam Kinzinger's new group country1st.com .....many here will remember Rep. Kinzinger is the anti-Trump Republican from Illinois

https://www.country1st.com/

 

 

[flguywest]

It seems like the Lincoln Project had a lot of upheaval and infighting amongst the creators in the recent past.