F**king Mondays: Kamala's Advantage, Trump's Groceries "Plan", Suing Exxon, and Cheney's Big Idea!

It's that time of the week again!

Welcome to another edition of “F**king Mondays”! In the round up today:

Polls, polls, polls

According to FiveThirtyEight’s prediction model, Kamala Harris is now comfortably favored to win the presidency:

The Economist’s model has it by similar margins, and 270towin has Harris ahead 226 Electoral College votes to 219 for Trump (with 93 votes going either way).

There could be trouble for Harris in the sunbelt though, with Trump taking the lead in a New York Times and Siena College poll in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina this week. However, the Harris camp will be buoyed by strong polls coming out of Wisconsin.

The key state for both camps is Pennsylvania however, and Harris has a significant spending advantage and is now ahead in the polls.

The race is still tight, but for now, Democrats should be feeling pretty confident.

Trump’s “plan” to bring grocery bills down

An interaction between Trump and a supporter at a Michigan rally last week should tell you everything you need to know about the former president’s “plan” for the economy should he win in November:

In the clip, Trump is asked how he will bring grocery prices down. Unsurprisingly, he offered no specifics and instead went on a long diatribe about bringing energy prices down, banning imported food so we can “let our farmers go to work”, something about windmills, lowering interest rates, and “common sense”.

In other words, Trump has no plan to lower grocery bills. As many prominent economist have warned, banning imports or applying hefty tariffs would actually raise prices. Given inflation has dropped dramatically and interest rates are steadily going down, Trump’s pledge is basically continue the policies of the Biden administration.

No other candidate would get away with a rambling, nonsensical answer like this, but for some reason Trump is still viewed by the majority of Americans as being better on the economy. This is after he presided over a pretty shoddy economy for four years, and hasn’t presented any sort of coherent plan for the economy in 2025.

Related reading:

The Zombie Myth About Republicans That Just Won't Die

California sues Exxon Mobil

In a groundbreaking lawsuit filed in San Francisco County Superior Court today, the state of California is suing ExxonMobil for lying about the effectiveness of plastics recycling. Reported the Washington Post:

The state of California sued ExxonMobil on Monday, accusing the oil giant of misleading the public about the effectiveness of plastics recycling and contributing to the flood of bottles, bags and wrappers polluting waterways in the state and worldwide.

In the first lawsuit of its kind, California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) alleged that ExxonMobil has engaged “in a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis.” Exxon is a major producer of the synthetic substances used to make plastics.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta is suing for an undisclosed amount told the Post that it was the “first attempt by a U.S. government official to hold an oil and gas company accountable for misleading claims about plastics.”

While recycling plastic makes people feel like they are doing something for the environment, the truth is that recycled plastic can actually be more toxic and far worse for the environment. The solution is simple, but hard for our throwaway culture to come to terms with, and that is to stop using so much plastic in the first place. While changing our behavior on an individual level is helpful, change has to be systemic, so lawsuits against corporations responsible for getting us into this mess in the first place are a very good start. Then we can get around to making truly recyclable or biodegradable alternatives, like bioplastics or even mushrooms.

Liz Cheney wants a new political party

It would be difficult to find a candidate with a more conservative voting record than Liz Cheney. To her immense credit though, she will be voting for Kamala Harris in November because of her fears over Donald Trump. Cheney is now politically homeless, joining a small number of hardcore conservatives who no longer associate themselves with the Trumpified Republican Party.

Cheney certainly won’t enjoy voting for Harris in November, so she is now floating the idea of a new party for true conservatives. From the NYTimes:

Ms. Cheney, who represented Wyoming in Congress and served in the House Republican leadership but recently crossed party lines to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris for president, said that the party she has devoted her life to may not be able to survive as a viable institution after being effectively hijacked by Mr. Trump.

“Whether it’s organizing a new party — look, it’s hard for me to see how the Republican Party, given what it has done, can make the argument convincingly or credibly that people ought to vote for Republican candidates until it really recognizes what it’s done,” Ms. Cheney said at the Cap Times Idea Fest in Madison, Wis.

“There is certainly going to be a big shift, I think, in how our politics work,” she continued. “I don’t know exactly what that will look like. I don’t think it will just simply be, well, the Republican Party is going to put up a new slate of candidates and off to the races. I think far too much has happened that’s too damaging.”

This is an important acknowledgement from a former establishment figure that the traditional Republican party is effectively dead. The GOP can no longer be considered conservative by any meaningful definition of the word. As Liz Cheney — and even her father Dick Cheney — now recognize, it is a reactionary fascist movement obedient to a cult leader.

I wouldn’t hold up much hope for a new conservative party given the extraordinary success of the MAGA movement. The traditional party was destroyed in a matter of months after Trump became the presidential nominee in 2016, so it is hard to see what kind of traction figures like Liz Cheney could get in starting something else. This is why the only way to stop Trumpism is to vote Democrat. The party is the only political organization with enough money, support and infrastructure to take on the MAGA movement, and to engage in any third party politics is to effectively help Trump.

Cheney does appear to understand this, so it seems like a new party is not something she is considering in the immediate future. If Trump loses in November, a new party might be more plausible, but my guess is that the era of Cheney style conservatism is well and truly over. Conservatism in America is Trumpism, and unfortunately for the traditionalists, there is no going back.

Hope everyone has a great week!

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