Tag: Jeremy Kauffman

The October Surprise, 44 years on; plus, extremism at home, and more on sponsored content

American hostage Ann Swift shortly after her release in January 1981. Public domain photo by the Department of Defense.

The October Surprise. These days the phrase is often used to describe fears that a political campaign will drop some sort of bombshell in the final weeks before Election Day.

Then-FBI Director James Comey’s reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016 would certainly qualify, though there was no evidence that the Trump campaign was behind it — nor, for that matter, any evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton.

So, too, would the Hunter Biden laptop story of 2020, though the Trumpers who were behind it were hampered by the inconvenient fact that they’d targeted the wrong Biden.

But I don’t think anyone used the phrase October Surprise until 1980, when it was used to describe something that Ronald Reagan and his associates feared would happen but ultimately did not: the release of more than 50 American hostages who had been held by Iran for many months. If President Jimmy Carter brought them home just before the election, it could have given him the boost he needed to win a second term. Continue reading “The October Surprise, 44 years on; plus, extremism at home, and more on sponsored content”

Amid political violence and threats of violence, the NH Libertarians target Harris

Then-Sen. Kamala Harris. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.

No sooner had I uploaded a post about Donald Trump, JD Vance and whether their promotion of lies about pet-eating immigrants amounted to incitement than we were treated to an example of something closer to actual incitement.

On Sunday, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted on Twitter/X: “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.” According to NBC 10 Boston, they took the post down a short time later — not because they had any second thoughts, mind you, but because “we don’t want to break the terms of this website we agreed to. It’s a shame that even on a ‘free speech’ website that libertarians cannot speak freely. Libertarians are truly the most oppressed minority.”

The Boston Globe looked into it as well and reported:

In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for the state’s Libertarian Party said the organization “believes that the journalists at the Boston Globe are as evil as rapists or murderers.”

“A proper society would exclude Globe Journalists from residing within it entirely,” Jeremy Kauffman wrote in an email.

Good Lord. I was actually aware of all this Sunday morning but refrained from writing anything because I couldn’t be sure if the Libertarians’ Twitter account had been hacked. Now we know that they’re proud of their hateful, dangerous rhetoric. It will be interesting to see whether there are any legal repercussions given that the threat against Harris comes closer to the legal definition of incitement than anything Trump or Vance said. Then again, it may still fall short of the imminent-threat language contained in Brandenburg v. Ohio.

Also on Sunday, a would-be assassin was taken into custody at Trump’s Florida golf course just two months after he was shot at during a rally in Pennsylvania.

And, finally, the U.S. Justice Department has charged two alleged neo-Nazis of publishing an assassination “hit list” whose potential targets included former U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins.

We are living through a terrifying moment, and it’s not going to end on Election Day.