The Post front page shows how the establishment reacts to the loss of one of their own. Congress is in disarray, you guys. House Whip Kevin McCarthy may have to become the Majority Leader next session, and he was only slated to be that once Cantor became Speaker. How will the republic survive? How will an institution full of ambitious pricks, most of whom would stab their own mother in the back to get a chance at moving up, process their grief over the loss of the head prick in charge? I’m sure over the next few days, establishmentarian extrordinare Chris Cillizza will provide us with acres of text examining the stages of loss felt by Cantor’s many friends, if such mythical creatures exist.
But let’s not forget what really died last night. It wasn’t immigration reform, no matter how much the DC media enjoys performing CPR on that corpse. Win or lose, Cantor had been mau-maued out of even pretending that he’d bring that to the floor. And I’m not convinced that Cantor’s constituents are going to see a big difference between him and the laughable, PhD-toting teanderthal who replaced him. After all, earmarks are dead, and Cantor was focused on leadership, not pork. No, what died in Eric’s arms last night wasn’t the hopes of DREAMers or Virginians, it was the notion that the Tea Party was either a passing fad, or something disconnected from the core of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the Tea Party, and the Tea Party is the Republican Party.
Also, too: Today I learned that “cool” is a synonym for “drunk”.
OzarkHillbilly
Poor poor Eric, his life is over. Whatever will he do?
Cermet
Yes, seismic for all the insiders and other low life sinking piles of shit called journalist and associated other dead heads that talk on radio/TV/cable. As for the real world just an improved congress with more proof the thugs are imploding as amerika sinks further down into the same cesspool that the thugs and their brain dead voters live in normally.
AnonPhenom
From Brat’s website; “Brat presents major problem for liberals”.
Oh yes. Do we send him flowers or chocolate?
Xenos
Thanks, Obama!
Chris
QFT.
I never believed the people who thought the GOP was somehow going to implode or collapse after the rise of the teabaggers. At best, retreat into minority party. The voters weren’t about to leave the crazy train, and anyone who could meaningfully be called a moderate was run out of the party or made his peace with it years ago.
Mustang Bobby
@AnonPhenom: Candy with a stripper.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Dead people voting! New, Improved Black Panther Party! ACORN! Chicago style politics! Obama thugs– Oh, wait, what? Huh? Wha…? You, you mean, uh… Is this going to work this time? What? What? Oh, shit…
Betty Cracker
Yep. The Tea Party is/was a rebranding exercise to insulate GOP, Inc. from the W loser stench.
Alex S.
Democrats in disarray!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Well it was an open primary so my bet is on Obama thugs(aka Democrats).
Schlemizel
I wish I could get as excited about this as you guys all seem to be. Yes, I understand the implications for Congress and for the GOP but I do not think the net result of electing more crazy to the government is a positive. To me that sounds too much like Ralphie in 99 saying that finally after boy blunders election the nation will see how bad they are and look to him as saviour.
We have not seen the bottom of the barrel yet. This crazy will continue to damage us for years to come even if the miracle happens and more people wake up to what is being done to us by the GOP. The continued destruction of the middle class, of workers rights of jobs and of the social contract will go on unabated at best, more rapidly is probable. Cliamte change is a dead issue & it will kill us.
Schlemizel
I wish I could get as excited about this as you guys all seem to be. Yes, I understand the implications for Congress and for the GOP but I do not think the net result of electing more crazy to the government is a positive. To me that sounds too much like Ralphie in 99 saying that finally after boy blunders election the nation will see how bad they are and look to him as saviour.
We have not seen the bottom of the barrel yet. This crazy will continue to damage us for years to come even if the miracle happens and more people wake up to what is being done to us by the GOP. The continued destruction of the middle class, of workers rights of jobs and of the social contract will go on unabated at best, more rapidly is probable. Cliamte change is a dead issue & it will kill us.
Derelict
what died in Eric’s arms last night wasn’t the hopes of DREAMers or Virginians, it was the notion that the Tea Party was either a passing fad, or something disconnected from the core of the Republican Party. The Republican Party is the Tea Party, and the Tea Party is the Republican Party.
More than that, the notion that “mainstream” Republicans will eventually rein in the Teahadists died as well. They spent 20 years building this movement out of the sticks and rags of the Birchers, Klansmen, and Golderwaterites. Now their Golem walks the land, and it is destroying them far more rapidly and effectively than it is damaging their enemies.
It’s eating the establishment first–it will take the rest as they move ever further down the ideological purity slope toward oblivion as they try to escape it.
Linda Featheringill
It looks like an opportunity to me.
I hope that the Democratic Party establishment will rush in with sophisticated and professional help for the Democrat in that district. Are you listening, Nancy?
Waldo
I forget what’s supposed to happen next: Does the monster die in the fire after killing Dr. Frankenstein, or does he go on a rampage, attacking villagers before he’s finally destroyed by a mob. Oh, we’ll, either way.
David Koch
The Decline and Fall of the GOP shown in two articles on one Front Page
Alex S.
@Schlemizel:
I don’t think that Cantor and Brat were far apart on the issues, only that Brat is a true believer while Cantor pretended to be one for his career. But I actually really enjoy that the better financed, better connected guy lost. All the Citizens United money has gone down the drain.
David Koch
Jeb “illegal immigration is an act of love” Bush, you’re office is calling.
Thoughtful David
@Betty Cracker:
This. You ask any one of those Teahadists if they’ve ever heard of Junior Bush, and they’ll say “Who?” Or if they’ve ever heard of him, they’ll say, “But he wasn’t a REAL conservative.” The erasure of Junior Bush from conservative thinking rivals anything that Kim Jung Un could dream of.
They *are* the Republican Party, just with no mention of Bush.
Baud
@David Koch:
Heh.
Baud
@Thoughtful David:
Yep. But they remember Carter.
Linda Featheringill
Jack Trammell is the Democrat’s name from the 7th district in Virginia. Apparently, he was a token candidate, a place saver for the party. He seems to have no campaign apparatus set up.
Boy, has his life suddenly changed!
JPL
@Schlemizel: The crazy has been destroying us since the republicans courted the dixiecrats. The republicans have been running an anti-tax, anti-regulation and anti-immigration platform for years. What their constituents don’t realize is there will be no money left for social security and medicare. What their constituents don’t realize is there will no clean water if you do away with regulations.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Who?
Chris
@Thoughtful David:
To be fair, there is one other context in which they bring up George W. Bush – whenever they want to whine about bias because “you hated Bush for [X] but you don’t care when Obama does [Y, usually completely unrelated], why is that? BIAAAS!”
Baud
I hope the Juicers going to the meet up tonight make a toast to Eric Cantor.
amk
The real losers are the gossipy bw media hacks, bloviating pundtwits and the corrupt pollsters, none of whom saw this shitstorm coming.
Thoughtful David
@Baud:
Indeed. They also remember “President” Hillary Clinton from the 1990s. Their memories are very selective.
Betty Cracker
This came up briefly last night, and it’s kind of a petty point, but again, I am surprised by how awful the websites for both Brat and Trammell are. GeoCities-like design, copy that is riddled with grammatical errors, etc.
There’s just no excuse for that shit, particularly since both men are college professors. They couldn’t get a kid to set up a site with a post-1995 interface and ask someone to proof the content? Mind-boggling.
Chris
@JPL:
Pick your excuse:
1) “It was always that way, these things never existed.”
2) “These things were destroyed because our resources were strained to the breaking point by all These People on welfare.”
I honestly don’t see these people ever waking the fuck up. There is nothing they won’t find a way to blame on These People, and they’ll continue to vote for the people who tell them they’re right to do it.
Baud
Jenna Bush is interviewing Obama on Today show.
I think I now support impeachment.
JMG
Just from seeing him on TV from time to time, it was clear Cantor was the kind of pol even voters who agreed with him didn’t really warm up to (Martha Coakley here in Mass. is an example from the other side. In that case, why not go with the ideologue who excites you? In short, even the Tea Party knows a slimy little weasel when they see one.
geg6
Just saw Frank Luntz on CBS this morning. What a meltdown! It was epic! He was practically crying and raving about the Tea Nuts. His phrase, by the way. Tea Nuts, says Frank Luntz. I almost busted a gut laughing.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel:
The crazy was going to be there anyway. Cantor put a reasonable face on it (as Majority Leader )so that people would think it was all just an honest disagreement over policy, not some racist nut job with a gun screaming,
“TYRANNY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Now the full and complete crazy will be out there for all to see. Not to put too much on one primary result, but I think the GOP just lost 2016.
Woody
I disagree that Mr Cantor and his “friends” would “stab their mother in the back to move up”.
They would stab her in the face. In front of her husband. Live, on the Today show.
Back stabbing is for RINOs.
Oh, and the Post would feature judicious op-eds about how matricide is protecting Americans from Bad People.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: .
With enough seats, especially in state houses, to effectively run the country.
Some minority.
Kay
@amk:
They all might want to reflect on “out of touch”, honestly.
“He didn’t know his district was changing”. I think that pretty much defines “out of touch”. Also, “he spent all his time on fundraising and Washington infighting”.
Chris
@geg6:
They really do think they’re entitled to all these teabagger votes. LOL.
@Davis X. Machina:
Like I said: “at best.” The best possible outcome I foresaw was that they’d retreat into a minority party – but that never even happened and is unlikely to for some time.
Baud
Shorter postmortem: Start minting that platinum coin, Mr. President.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Yes, they should reflect on the out-of-touch charge. I think you made an excellent point last night about the populist groundswell. I hope the Dems are clued in on that.
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL:
They don’t care. They figure they’ll be dead by the time that happens
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: Are they my age? If so, it makes perfect sense.
Botsplainer
@Schlemizel:
I’m with you. It mainstreams the derp, and we’re in a media environment that can no longer support the reach of a Murrow.
raven
@Linda Featheringill: His website went from a mess last night to an Act Blue this morning. I gave!
bemused
@geg6:
Luntz, of all people, must have seen this coming.
C.V. Danes
Roger that. I think people will look back at this moment as when the Republican Party reached critical mass on becoming professionally batsh-t crazy.
JPL
@bemused: Luntz also mentioned that the republicans pollster suck. He didn’t phrase it exactly that way though.
ET
Hoisted by his own petard…..
Cantor tried to pander to his right while looking more moderate/mainstream/establishment. Looks like those voters in his district that bothered to show up weren’t having it. They saw through him and didn’t want him anymore. Looks like the condescending establishment that wants the votes and money from the far right but also wants them to shut up and let their betters “govern” lost – at least in that district.
Donut
46 comments and counting, and no one has mentioned that Cantor’s loss is excellent new for John McCain? Well, let me rectify that.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
I think it’s great that Cantor lost, and he should have expected it after his drubbing at the convention in May. And one shouldn’t forget that internal polls are only released if they are favorable (his “30%+ lead” cited earlier).
But given all that, it’s only going to be a “earthquake” if the Republicans decide to make it one. Brat won by 7,212 votes. Extending it into some kind of Teabagger wave is a bit of a stretch.
The lesson, especially for the Democratic Party in Virginia, should be that every election must be a contested one. Never assume that someone is unbeatable. It’s not money that matters, it’s getting your voters to turnout.
As for what happens next in Congress. I don’t think much will change. It will just reinforce the narrative among the Republicans that the only thing they have to worry about is their Primary. They’ll still say “NO!!!11” to (almost) everything Obama proposes. The only way that will change is by flipping the House – not by changing the particular Republicans who sit in the chairs.
Turnout, Turnout, Turnout!
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Schlemizel
@David Koch:
Seriously? You believe the GOP will take the fall for what they did to Iraq? The story will be “everything we groovy when we left” This will be pinned on Obama, he is after all a weak leader according to them. The morans that elect goopers will buy this & the media narrative will follow.
@Alex S.:
Cantor could have been bought. When the winds of change made it obvious his BS was not moving him his BS would have moved leftward in order to save his seat. I believe had a change come he could have been dealt with because he was a crook not a crazy. Now we have more crazies like King, Gommert, Cruz et. al. They will not be dealt with. While that may (I’m still not convinced) speed to end of the GOP it will certainly speed the destruction of America and the human race.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, thats exactly what Ralphie said in 99. We still have no clue where the bottom of this barrel is & no actual evidence the goopers have reached it yet. We keep thinking “This HAS to be peak wingnut” and they keep proving us wrong.
Schlemizel
@Botsplainer:
I try to keep my eyes level but I know my nickname in Jr High was “Eeyore”. I am not the most optimistic person in the best of times & these are nowhere near the best of times. I hope to Pasta that this really is the end times for the goopers but the promise that this is really it this time has been heard so often . . .
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
yeah, this exactly.
amk
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
THIS. All $ 0.02 worth. Never could understand the preemptive surrender of dems in many red state seats.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
They had a thousand people turn out in Philadelphia two days ago for funding for public schools, and they’re not just mad at Governor Corbett.
Corey Booker’s (and the entire Democratic establishment’s) candidate for mayor of Newark got smoked, and liberals are ready to throw Cuomo out.
Sound familiar? DC loves him. Chicago not so much.
raven
@ET: Turnout was high for a Va primary.
raven
@Schlemizel: You da man!
Elmo
@Schlemizel:
Yep. Rooting for the crazies is like shorting the market. But the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Chris
@ET:
I hate these people so much for having enabled the crazies every step of the way. I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel a little schadenfreude when they’re the ones who get bit in the ass.
@Schlemizel:
Yep. The narrative for Vietnam for as long as I can remember has been “fucking hippies lost it for us,” and that narrative stuck even though a Republican president was unambiguously the one under whom the pullout happened. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that Obama would be blamed for Iraq.
(The best thing is that if Maliki manages to beat the crazies back, they’ll still give the credit to Bush for properly building up the new Iraqi state).
Donut
@David Koch:
It’s long been obvious that Jeb will not be not stupid enough to waste the time and effort to get in for ’16 unless the GOP can get immigration through the House this year. It’s no shock to anyone with a brain what the real fallout is from the collapse of this ridiculous meme that Establishment Republicans are back in charge: in all likelihood, they’ve just put Clinton into the White House (assuming she has no serious Democratic challenger).
Latinos are not monolithic (duh, if you’re not an idiot and not a Villager) and will not flock to the GOP banner regardless, but no immigration reform kills any possibility of organizing them to vote GOP in larger numbers.
Cantor being gone is meaningless outside the Beltway otherwise.
MattF
It’s a small point, but I’m pleased to see ’60 Minutes’ look stupid for its sympathetic profile of Cantor. Worm turns, etc.
ETA: And ‘seismic’ is a word I may find uses for in the future.
geg6
@bemused:
Nope, he obviously didn’t. I’ve never seen him look so unhinged. I’m still cracking up over him calling them the Tea Nuts. He said it several times. Hilarious.
Thoughtful David
@OzarkHillbilly:
FTFY
Schlemizel
I liked this take from Paul Constant over at the SLOG:
Botsplainer
Another lesson here – something subtle and process related, and which guts Chuck Todd:
Quit treating low sample polls as authoritative. Spend the fucking money for bigger samples, because if you’re making campaign decision based on polling, you can’t rely on academic psychographic hoodoo to make 400 people a reliable sample on anything.
Botsplainer
Second thought, and the intuitive reason why Silver’s averaging works is because it washes out the small sample error rate.
Thoughtful David
@Davis X. Machina:
Actually, they are a minority, but with a lot of power and political offices. Sort of like the white parties in South Africa during the apartheid years.
A lot of it is a result of gerrymandering and failure of Democrats to get out and vote.
Brian R.
@geg6:
Oh, I need to see that.
Donut
@Kay:
If you live anywhere near Chicagoland, it’s pretty damn obvious that the city is a fucking mess. Some of it is leftover stank that Daley the Younger left behind, as well as others: the schools are a disaster (thanks, Arne Duncan); the pension system for city workers is completely fucked; property taxes and sales taxes are painful; and worst of all, Rahm has largely been ineffective at dealing with gun and gang violence (and the economic causes of same) in the city’s poorest and most desperate neighborhoods.
MattF
@Botsplainer: There’s actually a sort of technical point here. Participation in polls is at a rediculously low point, but they still seem to have predictive power. The interesting question is what the failure mode will be– slowly incrasing systemic error, or unpredictable catastrophic error? Looks like the latter.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel: Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think we are anywhere near peak wingnut. These people are not troubled by reality. Remember what happened after 2012? All the soul searching? The “we have to stop being stupid”?
And then they turned around and doubled down on being stupid? And because it is an off year election, and Dems don’t vote in off year elections, the Repubs will probably win 2014. But unaligned moderates can’t be bothered to even pay attention UNTIL the wheels fall off the wagon, and it starts hitting them in their pocket books.
Sure it will be painful, sure it is gonna hurt, but it will get people’s attention. And when the Repubs double down again, and they will, GOTV will just get easier and easier.
Or at least, that is the silver lining I like to see in all those black ominous storm clouds on the horizon.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Botsplainer: It was an internal poll. It might have been a “push-poll” for all we know. Internal polls are usually worthless, especially if they’re released with the intention of swaying the vote.
Of course, if Cantor didn’t have any better polling as part of his $5M spending on the campaign, well.. Hmm. That would fit with his actions and statements over the past 6 years, wouldn’t it… ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Patrick
@Thoughtful David:
Yup, many Democrats only seem to think that elections take place every four years, which is how we end up with a Republican House.
bemused
@geg6:
They are always so shocked when things turn out different than what they convinced themselves would happen.
Judge Crater
@JPL: Exactly. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”. Now evolved into the Rural American strategy.
The rubes really do believe that they “built all that”, the modern technological America that big government mid-wifed into existence. Not only do they not want to pay taxes to maintain and extend it, they don’t want “immigrants” to steal it from them.
Thanks, Tricky Dick.
Schlemizel
@OzarkHillbilly:
From your lips to His Noodley Appendage.
But heres the deal. These assholes have been sowing the wind for 40 years now, they have fertilized it well and the whirlwind crop is going to be huge I fear. They have created a substantial number of very angry, very well armed nut jobs. Folks like the 2 in Las Vegas. They could be the tip of the iceberg. When it is obvious to those whack jobs that they cannot destroy the nation at the ballot box they have told us for years they are only too happy to resort to the bullet box. We could easily have a generation of major events, much larger and more deadly than LV,NV and small echos for a generation after that. We could easily fall into the hands of a demagog who uses the hate and the fear of that hate to finish the job St. Reagan started45 years ago when he identified the government as the problem.
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly: If he’s crying, he’s crying all the way to the bank.
Cervantes
@Schlemizel:
I see the modern Republican Party not as a barrel but as a sort of Möbius strip.
Frankensteinbeck
I have only one major concern about this election. The Teabaggers were feeling powerless and despairing after Obamacare succeeded. That means low motivation and low voter turnout in the midterms. I’m hoping such a high profile scalp won’t give them a sense of purpose again.
@Waldo:
First the monster reviews Paradise Lost, and links it to his rage against his own uncaring creator. Then he demands a female of his species, or he’ll go on committing murders and setting Frankenstein up to take the blame. It’s a weird book.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Baud:
Oh, we will. All I need to know is where to go and when.
rikyrah
They were never going to pass Immigration Reform. Anyone who thought they were going to do it, get out of fairytale land.
Davis X. Machina
@Schlemizel:
They lack organization. For now. Give them a proper leader, who knows what happens?
PaulW
When I was going to bed last night, I suddenly remembered that earthquake hitting Virginia a few years back. It was in Eric Cantor’s district. Foreshadow much, O Smitey Smiter?
rikyrah
David Plouffe @davidplouffe 2m
Caesar outlives Brutus because of a Brat. Think this is interesting? Wait for IA caucuses and SC primary in ’16
PaulW
@rikyrah:
Well, the GOP wanted to pass something that tasted like immigration reform, if only to trick enough Hispanics to not vote Democrat. But even that, considering how Cantor went down in flames last night, will be too much to rile up the GOP wingnut base.
On the bright side… Cantor wasn’t brought down over Obamacare. It was immigration. On the brighter side, this should speed up the demographic earthquake of Hispanics voting in droves against Republicans… which does of course bring up the downer point of all that GOP Voter Suppression effort…
Frankensteinbeck
@Davis X. Machina:
Still nothing but the occasional nutcase. The copycat effect may even be burning out all of those right now. They aren’t organized because they’re paranoid assholes who hate each other and all want to be in charge. Still, that pales before the major cause: The movement is defined by its chickenhawk status. Everyone mad enough to supposedly rebel is hiding in a basement stroking their guns. Actually, I retract that. Most of them can’t get down the stairs to the basement due to obesity and advanced arthritis.
Jose Padilla
Number of Jewish Republicans in the House now equals zero. Cantor was always an outlier in this regard.
gene108
@rikyrah:
Congressional Republicans killed immigration reform, when Republican President George W. Bush wanted to do it. They did not do it for one of their own, they are not going to do it for a Democratic President.
@Davis X. Machina:
I really wish these racist fuckers would die off. There has been militant White Supremacist shit going on since the 1980’s, but hopefully the government can step up their enforcement and break these groups up like they have done before.
Kay
@Donut:
My son lives in Chicago and he bailed on Emanuel after the public transportation payment system mess. He does electronic payment systems for a living and uses public transportation.
He thinks they tested the system using the unpaid time of the people who ride it. He’s not their R and D volunteer, is his attitude. I was with him once and I was watching people try to use those cards. “Tap it and pull it away!” “No, leave it there longer!” “Start over”. That’s what he’s talking about. He thinks it’s the job of the contractor to test it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemizel:
And then maybe we can finally have the long overdue sensible regulation of guns? Maybe? Here’s the deal as I see it (then I gotta go):
Americans by and large will only take things seriously when things get serious. Until then they are too busy to pay attention. Sure it is painful and full of unnecessary blood and tears and loss, but that is what it takes to get this country to do anything.
Which is why when it comes to climate change, I figure we are doomed. By the time this country wakes up to how serious that problem is, it will be too late. Probably already is.
Davis X. Machina
@gene108: So long as the pie is shrinking, the racist fuckers will never die off.
The only thing I see the US is manufacturing more of than ever before is grievances. And maybe solar panels — maybe.
Botsplainer
@MattF:
Stated another way, how many cell users pick up unknown calls? I don’t, and wouldn’t give a pollster the sweat off my balls if he left a voicemail.
Michael Bersin
Bingo.
Woodrowfan
I’m going to go Galt here. In the early 30s the German conservatives thought they could control the uber-rightwing populist movement, but then it took over. I’m a pessimist, but I think “peak wingnut” involves violence on a scale we have not seen in the US since Appomattox. And yes, I am very aware of how violent the South was in Reconstruction and later. I think it will be WORSE. The teahadists HATE us, and they want us dead. The MSM ignores it because it’s so unpleasant, but the teahadists a’re not just a few rightwingers who like 1776 cosplay.
Eric U.
@amk: the more Republicans are like this kook, the harder it is for the bloviating class to pretend that the republicans are the grownup party.
srv
Pat Lang links to an old post during the budget crises about how that odd lawyer guy from Richmond wasn’t a good fit for the Whiteyville 7th DIstrict. Also lectured us that:
OzarkHillbilly
@Davis X. Machina: Don’t forget GUNS!!!
Matt McIrvin
@Schlemizel: Climate change is not a dead issue; Ezra Klein can write all the jeremiads he wants but Obama’s actually acting on it. The EPA just issued carbon limits on power plants for the first time ever and the CAFE standards just went way up. You can argue that all this is inadequate, and in the long term it is; we’ll need more, but it’s not as if the administration is running away.
And they’ve got public opinion on their side. There were a lot of doomy articles a few months ago about how support for regulating carbon emission was shrinking, but they were comparisons to pre-2008 and most of what’s going on is that opposition has hardened into a tribal shibboleth for True Conservatives, who are not a majority. Everyone else basically agrees that something has to be done.
While all this is going on, solar power is getting really cheap and installation is quietly exploding almost everywhere. There are issues with how you get reliable baseload power out of this, but a large fraction of carbon emissions can get replaced without even dealing with that by changing patterns of use, and people are working on it. US carbon emissions are actually decreasing, for a variety of reasons, not all of them recession-driven.
I think there’s going to be a point where the emissions curve bends over worldwide and most people won’t even have seen it coming. Like the demographic transition, most people may not ever realize it happened.
Will we keep the temperature rise under 2C? I really doubt it. There are going to be big problems to deal with. But I don’t think we’re going to ride the 4.5C business-as-usual curve all the way there either.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: I hope your right Matt, there is still room for hope, but when it comes time to pay the piper, everyone wants. “Him! Make him pay for it!”
Schlemizel
@Woodrowfan:
That is exactly what I think is possible. These Koch whores think they can control their little Brown Shirts. It did not go well that last time & we are no better so we should not expect it to go well this time either.
Godwin!
FeudalismNow!
Here is the upside of no more Cantor: the House leadership will shift to the south and west. It will become more like the ravening horde that is the GOP. The votes will be the same. The BS bills will be just as inane. We need to support some tea party challengers to primary Collins and there will be unvarnished Teahadi from sea to shining sea. Moderate republicans are a myth, they are the kabuki to present a reasonable face to the ratf*****ing. The crazies from southern Virginia just did the world a favor. The mask is crumbling faster, the results will be the same, no legislation to improve the US, more impeachment talk and possible default. If Cantor had won, the same thing would have happened but there would be the ‘serious’ wrangling for votes. Not delivery of votes, but serious wrangling. Now we skip that part.
Schlemizel
@Matt McIrvin:
You hope.
Every time the results come in things are a bit worse than predicted. What is being proposed is too little too late.
I full expect people to start believing in climate change in another 10-20 years. These same people will then demand a simple, quick, “painless” solution. We will be railroaded into something spectacularly stupid. That is what will kill us.
Schlemizel
@FeudalismNow!:
Yeah, look what a boon it has been to Obama to have Cruz in the Senate. A couple more like him would just be peachy wouldn’t it?
BruinKid
Charlie Pierce is, as usual, a must read.
The Ron Paul fans I know seem to be loving themselves some Brat right now, mainly because he claims to be a “trenchant” critic of the NSA. Of course, they also think a full-on default of the United States would be no big deal at all.
rk
I just made the mistake of reading some of the comments on Cantor’s loss in the Washington Post. Someone had written
“demographics is destiny, this is a majority white, European country”.
Amazing! I just learned that we’re in Europe.
rk
I just made the mistake of reading some of the comments on Cantor’s loss in the Washington Post. Someone had written
“demographics is destiny, this is a majority white, European country”.
Amazing! I just learned that we’re in Europe.
negative 1
@Matt McIrvin: Here in RI the energy consumption in the southern part of the state (where new home construction took off in the 90s and early 00s) doubled and almost all of it came from air conditioning. So, by deduction, even having enough solar panels to offset central air energy usage would cut it in half. Plus, there’s no worry about consumption patterns because when it is sunny enough to need the A/C you will be getting the free energy.
I am a firm believer that just getting panels on every roof would help tremendously. Sometimes the small answers aren’t really exciting but they may all but solve a problem.
Comrade Dread
I think the Republican Party, if it isn’t there already, is quickly becoming the Neo-Confederate party.
CaseyL
…and the Party of dead cops, slain students, and shotgunned toddlers.
srv
@Comrade Dread:
You know, there’s a solution here. We just re-legalize endentured servitude – Mexican kids can come here as long as they work for 7 years for some southern white family. Then they can get a green card.
Southerners can demonstrate to fine points of slavery, and how it wasn’t so bad.
Win-win.
Emma
@Chris: Who cares what they believe? Really, honestly, haven’t we gotten the idea yet that there’s a certain percentage of the population that will cling to their bigotry and their guns no matter what? The job of the Democratic party is to win over the silent ones. The ones that are appalled at the takeover by the super-rich and the loony. You don’t hear much from them, but they’re the ones that put Obama over the top.
The Democratic party needs a plan. Oh. Good luck to that.
Trinity
I can’t stop laughing. Couldn’t have happened to a better person.
D58826
@Schlemizel: There has been so little joy in Mudville recently, let the folks have a good laugh. Then we can get back to the depressing topics that you outlined. Even if the democrats hold the Senate in 2014 and win the WH in 2016, the ‘starve the beast’ tax rates and the GOP filibuster will continue for years to come. And that doesn’t include whatever mischief the Supremes can dream up. The result will be more decaying infrastructure, continued cut backs in science and research, refusal to discuss climate change and the list goes on.
And that is just at the federal level. Over half the state governments are controlled or action blocked by the GOP. 700,000 teachers have been laid off since 2008 yet there are more schools kids, so class size has grown. Of course as we privatize education maybe it won’t matter. Ignorance is best
Comrade Dread
@srv: Maybe. They’d have to kill and make sure the Civil Rights Act was completely dead though, so they could keep the new citizens from voting or challenging their power.
Suffern ACE
So the moderates (hah!) needed to win every race. That was their plan to reassert control. They either got everything they desired or feel cheated. I can’t believe they were ever very powerful.
FeudalismNow!
@Schlemizel: I forgot the moderate voice running for Cruz seat? The problem is not Cruz, the problem is the Susan Collinses who have a false face of normalcy, but who legislate and support the Teahadi crazy. But, both sides do it, amiright?
If only we had more republicans who hide behind a veneer, but deliver for the Koch shirts, Obama would have it easy.
Unless we replace the R with a solid blue D, the result is the same. The more repugnant the R, the better chance for a D and real change.
Punchy
So do impeachment proceedings start this afternoon or do they wait until tomorrow?
Egypt Steve
And so you die, kyiptin, and we all move up in rank. No one will question the assassination of a captain who has disobeyed prime orders of the Empire.
Morzer
Apparently Brat faltered under the laser-like gaze of Chuck Toddler:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/david-brat-chuck-todd-minimum-wage-syria
LAC
@Matt McIrvin: in other words, progress is moving forward. Done sometimes by inches, sometimes by miles. But we do not give up and become pouting eyores because we wanted done yesterday.
Fair Economist
The big problem for the Republicans is that they are not going to be able to keep sly, politically savvy operators in office. Their office holders will be as nuts as their base. And that’s going to make them a permanent minority party, because they’re going to keep doing really stupid things that infuriate the populace, like the shutdown or impeachment.
Frankensteinbeck
@Morzer:
So, a tea party candidate pushed through despite the establishment GOP’s desires is a bumbling moron? NO ONE COULD HAVE PREDICTED!
Morzer
Also too, Lil’ Ricky Cantor is as suave and charming as ever:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/cantor-phone-call-david-brat
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
Joni Ernst might just make Brat look like an intellectual.
raven
@Frankensteinbeck: A bumbling moron would have tried to answer a question that he (think she) couldn’t.
jonas
I really don’t get this Brat guy’s schizophrenic schtick — he rails against immigration reform because it’s supposedly a sop to “big business” and “Wall Street”; he ran an explicitly populist campaign, promising to stand up for the little guy against big government and big business. And yet he’s supposedly a devoted Randian, and if there’s one takeaway from Ayn Rand’s work, it’s that billionaires and big business are incredibly wealthy and powerful because they deserve it, so if you feel powerless, you can sit your pitiful, whiny ass down and have a nice big cup of STFU. Also, he claims to be a Christian, and Ayn Rand was a rabidly anti-Christian atheist whose Objectivist Philosophy was designed to destroy what remained of any kind of Christian values in current economic thought (justice, charity, etc.). So how he squares that one is also a bit of a mystery.
Frankensteinbeck
@Morzer:
The complete lack of class in the current Republican Party is weird. They were always assholes, but they’re even abandoning harmless formalities. I guess it’s inevitable when the platform is screaming ‘Fuck you, I do what I want!’
LAC
@D58826: Thank you! Can we enjoy this a little bit? Is is always the pathology of some balloon juicers to begin the rending of garments at any provocation? It reminds me of that Gary shandling bit where he talks about a girlfriend so pessimistic and cynical that when she is asleep and dreaming he hears her go “yeah…right…”
Frankensteinbeck
@raven:
Good point. This isn’t ‘Rick Perry’ level stupid.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@D58826:
Point taken and thank you for making it. My reaction to Cantor’s defeat was much in accordance with that of Schlemizel @12 until I read your comment.
Weighty issues aside, it is delicious to see a Republican asshole get neck-punched even if the puncher is another Republican asshole.
So, party on! Laughter diminishes Republicans.
Morzer
@jonas:
Expecting consistency from a libertarian is probably the most futile activity known to the human race. Well, apart from waiting for the Bills to reach the playoffs.
MattF
@Morzer: Um, uh-oh. He’s an economics perfessor.
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
The funny thing is that they were (and are) always the first to scream about anything they could present to the media as a Democrat lacking “class”.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@LAC:
The long ago Great Love of My Life was a brilliant young woman whose pessimism and skepticism were astonishing to me. When I finally asked her why she was so down on things she answered, “Because I’m almost always right.”
Belafon
@jonas: Only those of us on the left think you have to reconcile those things. “I don’t worship Mammon. I go to church at least once a week, and extra for Christmas and Easter.” “When Jesus said take care of the poor, he was talking about those poor souls who make more than $1 Million per year.”
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think Ricky Cantor done refudiated hisself. Brat doesn’t seem like the sharpest tool in the shed either, but Cantor’s whole schtick was to paint him as a liberal perfesser, while refusing to rule out immigration reform completely. Brat just kept denouncing Cantor as wanting to flood the country with dem ebil brown people – and Cantor assumed that no-one was taking that seriously. It’s Gresham’s Law of Teabaggery: utter hateful moron drives out slightly less utter hateful moron.
MattF
@jonas: Goes into the ‘inscrutable Gentiles’ folder.
D58826
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: And the real world will intrude soon enough. With all that is going on we really didn’t need Iraq to implode, but GW’s mission accomplished seems to have come undone.
Morzer
@D58826:
Funny how people revert to their long-standing quarrels when you aren’t paying their leaders to tamp them down, isn’t it? That’s how the surge succeeded, to the extent it did, not because of the military genius of Slightly Adulterated Petraeus.
Someguy
One wonders if the Tea Party etched a swastika into the corpse of Cantor’s political career before they wrapped it up in a Gadsden flag and buried it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Schlemizel:
Good lord, Cantor was part of the damn government shut down mess. Don’t you people possibly consider that the real reason he was primaried out was because the GOP’s base in his district lost jobs from it and immigration reform is merely the excuse?
It’s not like the House can get any more dysfunctional.
gene108
@Fair Economist:
Thanks to the MSM buying everything Republicans say as gospel truth, Republicans will not pay any serious price for intransigence.
They did not get into serious trouble by blocking Obama’s policy agenda in 2009. The media asked, in February 2009, a couple of times about why they should take Republicans seriously about their interest in lower debt given their run from 2001-2007, but then accepted the deficit is a huge problem.
Even after the shutdown, the Republicans are not in any worse shape with regards to the shutdown being a point that could be used against Republicans. It has gone down the memory hole to be forgotten.
The problem the Democrats have is they are not all on board with getting behind a populist agenda. Hopefully the minimum wage bill will get through to people.
phoebes-in-santa fe
Do you think John Boehner did a little dance of joy last night when he heard the news? He always looked very uncomfortable standing in front of that little shit at a lectern, like the little shit was going to shiv him in the back at the first opportunity.
Morzer
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
No, because Cantor never quite had the balls to put the knife in and Boehner knew it. The teabaggers won’t be so merciful.
Betsy
@C.V. Danes: oh. You mean like, peak wingnut?
D58826
@Morzer: AL Qaeda over played it’s hand in 2007 . And Petraeous simply used the age old tactic of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Part II of the surge was to buy time for a political settlement between the Shiite and the Sunni factions. Obviously Part II never happened. So the local Sunni adopting that age old tactic are making common cause with ISIS against the Shiite government in Bagdad.
I’m just surprised it took this long
Higgs Boson's Mate
@D58826:
Yeah, I am a reader of Juan Cole’s estimable web site. The carnage in Iraq is a struggle for power, pure and simple. That the struggle is between people who have a common religion, but argue to the literal death over who is legitimately entitled to head up their church renders me unable to put myself in either side’s shoes.
Mike in NC
@Morzer: The moron spouted some Free Market horseshit that wouldn’t have earned a C- on an Economics 101 exam. Refused to say if he supported a minimum wage. Then had to dodge foreign policy questions since he’d never heard of Syria or Iraq.
The only foreign policy response from an honest teabagger is, “Kill them all and let God sort them out”.
Eric U.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I suspect that the house can actually get more dysfunctional. I suppose it’s possible that some of the tea partiers will get religion when the business types that fund the republicans do something drastic. but the business types aren’t too smart either, so who knows?
In any event, I’m glad Cantor lost. I don’t think I knew that “Ricky” was a nickname for Eric before
D58826
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: Think the religious wars between protestant and catholic in Europe. The violence in Northern Ireland in the 78-90s was just the last gasp of that period. Take away the common enemy of Assid in Syria and that country will come apart at the religious seams as well Not much new under the sun.
Morzer
@Eric U.:
His real name is Ricky Bob, but he goes by Eric in Washington.
The Moar You Know
@jonas: President David Brat was elected in the relatively smooth 2024 elections on the somewhat specious promise that he would be “all things to all people.” His first and only act as president was the calling in of a nuclear strike on the city of Washington D.C.
Origuy
@rk:
I await the ubiquitous public transit and socialist health care.
Matt McIrvin
@LAC: I’m reminded of the Population Bomb. I still see people write about population growth as if it were an unstoppable exponential process driven by inexorable human instinct and barreling toward Malthusian catastrophe, when even many relatively poor countries now have fertility rates comparable to the First World, and the problem today is more the already existing population wanting to consume more, and how they’ll do it without fouling everything like the United States did.
(The still-exploding exceptions are the poorest of the poor: a bunch of countries in Africa, and a few other outliers like (surprise!) Afghanistan and Iraq. I see no reason to think they won’t come around, though Nigeria is going to get pretty crowded.)
Don’t get me wrong, we lost a lot of time on global warming; the physics doesn’t wait for us. It’s frustrating seeing progress on this about where it should have been twenty years ago, on the basis of what was already well-known at the time. But I’ve been seeing a lot of recent writing on this that reads kind of like an extended suicide note, and we need happy warriors.
Chris
@jonas:
Actually, I’ve never read Ayn Rand, but I understand there are examples of evil businessmen in her books – the ones who steal the inventions of the true Galtian Ubermenschen, usually with government help, I believe.
Otherwise – for one thing, the basic premise of conservatism is “It’s all about me.” Thus, it’s not impossible for middle class conservatives to feel like they’re being screwed by big business and thus decide that big business is rigging the game – even if they are far more likely to blame black people, liberals, etc.
For another thing, there’s always been some sneaking suspicion on the part of the base for the Republican establishment – there would have to be, since they don’t work nearly as hard to deliver on social issues or things like impeaching Obama – usually translated into “these people are RINOs.” To the extent that big business is tied to the establishment, that can make big business suspect too – especially since IIRC there’s often been tension between the big business/megacorporate establishment based in New York, and the smaller, regional, more conservative businesses based in the other parts of the country.
Or maybe it’s simply that when he says “big business,” it’s implied to mean George Soros, Warren Buffet, etc. Those kinds of rich people.
danimal
I’ve been part of the “conventional wisdom” that the GOP will have a good 2014 setting up an Epic Fail in 2016. Cantor’s loss may help the GOP unleash teh cahrazeee in 2014 and they could wind up nursing their wounds this November.
It’s time to rethink conventional wisdom. But that requires thinking, which is in short supply in Washington (and the VA suburbs!). Nobody outside the conservative enclaves really likes the Tea Party.
VOR
@negative 1: Germany has a huge solar power program, despite being well north of RI. You do not need Mojave Desert type of sunshine for solar to make economic sense and the costs just keep coming down over time.
FlipYrWhig
@jonas: His professorship is entirely underwritten by a bank: BB&T. Of course it makes no sense. The common thread is that he’s ready and willing to stick it to Those People and stand up for People Like You. In other words, a Republican.
Elie
In general I think that the racist and right wing fears are all over the western world right now — even more prominently in Europe. Yes, the big world pie not just the US pie is shrinking and the distribution of the slices is making the folks who think that they should be on top, nervous. This will become more and more (IMHO), a time when the ultra rich plutocrats had better watch it… Of course, they will play the righties for a time, but it won’t work forever. All over, even in the Arab world, the old order is being rocked. Not all outcomes can be known, but its a time of great foment and instability. We will all have to hold onto our hats as power elites and options change…”may you live in interesting times” both a blessing and curse….
CindyH
@Schlemizel: @Davis X. Machina:
Exactly.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chris:
The problem there is priorities. Conservatism is the philosophy of assholery, not selfishness. They’re very similar, usually line up, but they’re not quite the same. The cultural/business conservative coalition has always depended on this. Liberals want to regulate business, so fuck that. Rich businessmen want to be assholes to their employees, and poor assholes can empathize, even though they themselves are on the receiving end. They don’t like and never liked big business, but voting to fuck over everyone is more important than protecting themselves.
If this is falling apart, it’s because there’s so much crazy some rich folks are being pushed over the line of how much they’re in danger, and some poor folks have decided they can have their cake and eat it too, fucking over everyone, rich and poor, at the same time. They’ll just blow up the whole system, which will teach those negros a lesson.
@VOR:
This is massively important. Even at the time Obama was elected, the cost of a solar panel was roughly equal to the electricity it produced over its expected lifetime. He slipped a bunch of green energy research investments and incentives into the stimulus, and technology was just coming around to where that produced a big boom in lower initial cost, less polluting (solar panel disposal was an environmental nightmare), more efficient, longer lasting panels. I was working for Japanese network news at the time and had to research this stuff. It really surprised me.
Suffern ACE
@Eric U.: I think the freak out is that the candidate with 200K beat the candidate with the business money. You can’t even blame this one on Koch ratfucking. So what if the saavy businessmen pull their support. They may not be able to control much of anything.
That said, I’ll enjoy the freakout of the well heeled. This reminds me of the shock, shock, shock, that handpicked Christine Quinn couldn’t make it out of the primaries in New York.
Belafon
@danimal: They are going to have to lose a few consecutive elections in order for them to decide crazy is no longer the way to go. This won’t happen, really, until 2020. What’s going to hurt them, in part, is the thinking that they can legislate their way to electoral victory by restricting voting. This might buy them one more election, but, unless Democratic voting whites decide they want some of what Republicans are offering, this will fail, and national Republicans will start to look like California Republicans.
Morzer
@Belafon:
I don’t think they can buy a presidential contest by vote suppression – the Democrats have a pretty solid built-in Electoral College advantage. What they can achieve is to narrowly hold on to the House for most of the next decade and nullify any and all aspects of the president’s agenda, while rooting for the economy to falter badly enough that enough independent idiots decide to trust the GOP to undo its own work.
Eric U.
I hope that restricting voting backfires on the republicans
raven
Hagel is fighting back against these fucking goobers.
Morzer
@raven:
Not bad going for a dead German philosopher.
Schlemizel
@FeudalismNow!:
A career R who would be willing to “look the other way” once and a while would be a better choice. We had them for a time, until Newt thought unleashing the crazy was a way to power. Sure, there will not be a D sitting in that seat for years yet but an R that would not block every little thing, one that could be bought with a couple of highway projects now and again would actually be better for the country today.
As I said, Ralphie promised that after 2000 no R could get elected because of the crazy W would bring. Here we are 15 years later & it is only getting worse. I have seen no demonstration that the crazy is tipping election toward sanity yet. Until I do I will expect no miracles.
raven
@Morzer: Whatever do you mean” :)
Tone In DC
@Frankensteinbeck:
Good one.
Villago Delenda Est
@Donut:
Rahm is far too busy sucking CEO cock to worry about that shit.
Morzer
@raven:
I see what you did there, you sneaky corvid, you!
raven
@Morzer: I was amazed the edit window was still open!
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
There’s a reason why teabagger households keep a can of grease by the front door.
raven
@Morzer: Not bad for an old enlisted grunt either.
GregB
@Suffern ACE:
The freakout of well-heeled goys.
Belafon
@Morzer: I suspect I’m being optimistic, but I think demographics are going to start costing them in the House and in the states as well. They have the representation they do because they have built barely majority Republican districts. It won’t take that much for these to flip which is why I think it’s going to bite them in the not too distant future.
LAC
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: but was she happy?
Morzer
@raven:
I think Obama did well in picking him. I don’t know that it will help the Bergdahls much, but it might just make some people think again about the teabagger unilluminati.
Morzer
@Belafon:
I agree with you about the demographics grinding down the GOP over time. Georgia is getting closer to flipping every cycle – and it might even flip next time around for Clinton, once you factor in the 3-5% of the vote that Obama “lost” because of his imperfectly white skin color. The other factor is the ageing of the Fox audience – which is now older, whiter and smaller than ever. I could see a collapse of that key demographic coming down the pike in 5-6 years time.
GxB
@Morzer:
Oh Ricky yo so fine!
Yo so fine you lost to swine!
Hey Ricky! Hey Ricky!
Oh Ricky yo so fine!
Now go an’ hit the fuckin’ pine!
Hey Ricky! Hey Ricky!
Oh Ricky what a pity, can’t you understand, the party is all batshit, and a Jew ain’t in the plan….
[…this thing writes itself…]
GregB
@Elie:
Also, the people who make things happen must understand that they can’t write history no matter how hard they try.
Turkey was right on board with the Saudi funded Sunni jihadi ass-bags in Syria and now they have an embassy in Mosul that has been taken over by these religious absolutists and it may not end well for those in custody.
Same with Pakistan and their hedging with their insane radicals against India. Now they suffer more attacks from their own than from India.
The GOP should take note.
Morzer
@Higgs Boson’s Mate:
I used to argue that a pessimist could be pleasantly surprised, while an optimist could only be unpleasantly disappointed.
Then I realized, after some years of growing up, that constant pessimism was just too exhausting and depressing to be a viable life strategy.
RaflW
@Schlemizel:
Yep, the nuclear power industry awaits.
Frankensteinbeck
@Belafon: and @Morzer:
The thing about gerrymandering is that it creates a disproportionate number of ‘leaning Republican’ districts at the expense of ‘completely Democratic’ districts. That means that in general Republican Representatives are at a big risk of demographic change… but that’s in general. When things get close enough for that strategy to cost them is a question of numbers I don’t know.
It does mean that turnout is crucial right now.
beltane
@Eric U.: The long term backlash against voting restrictions could end up being brutal and severe, the realization of every teabagger’s nightmares. A government that has been co-opted by a white supremacist minority will be widely regarded as illegitimate by the majority. Though such a government can, through the use of violence, cling to power for a period of time, the implosion, when it comes, will tend to be sudden and nasty in the extreme with calls for vengeance winning the day. It’s only a matter of time before some political force arises (not the Democratic party) that seeks to blame the country’s problems on the redneck cabal that is the GOP. Rural white Americans would be a very easy target for caricature for anyone brave enough to go there, so don’t be surprised to see this happen somewhere down the line.
beltane
@Morzer: Yeah, I don’t see the GOP’s power gradually declining. I see it remaining the same or even solidifying until some tipping point is reached, at which time it collapses before our eyes in a catastrophic rout. History is weird in that way.
Morzer
@Frankensteinbeck:
My guess would be that roughly 6 years from now is going to be the GOP moment of truth, once enough Hispanic voters come down the pipeline and enough of the old white hateriots have died off or become incapacitated that their advantage vanishes in the GOP +4-5% districts. Turnout is crucial though, as you say – and the Democrats have got to learn to get their base off its well-meaning ass for local and state elections consistently. Their failure to do that is arguably the worst feature of the party’s approach to politics over the last 30 years.
Goblue72
@VOR: Yup. Germany has about the same # of annual sunshine hours as Western Washington state (think Seattle grey)
Goblue72
@amk: Some guy named Howard Dean pushed that idea as DNC chair (the 50 State Strategy). Then Rahmn Emmanuel and the Dem Eatablishment pushed him out.
amk
@Goblue72: True. Obama not using Dean properly after 2008 was one of his rare fuck-ups.
RaflW
@Fair Economist:
A significant question is, where does the corporate money go? Not the Kotch money, but the multi-nationals that want stability and a predictable economic system to operate in?
They were scared shitless by the shutdowns. They know the Democrats are, at this point, the only sane and reasonably competent party. Do they increase the buy-a-Dem effort? Do they fold on Obamacare and climate change in a deal to get a predictable tax regime and budgets that don’t implode?
How long will CEOs delude themselves that the GOP is their party? Aren’t the wheels obviously coming off now?
FeudalismNow!
@Schlemizel: But this is the thing, the ‘moderate’ republicans haven’t gone our way to pass a bill. They negotiate to water down bills that they ultimately will not support. We don’t get them to play ball so why waste time negotiating with a GOP who never bargains in good faith. Better to have the obstinacy out in front so we can at least cut the horse race bs.
Gin & Tonic
@Morzer: 2020, the next census/redistricting year, is a Presidential election year, pretty much guaranteeing better turnout than the disastrous 2010.
ranchandsyrup
Congress is in disarray is the closest that the village could come to saying DEMOCRATS IN DISARRAY in this scenario. It’s low-broderism.
Omnes Omnibus
@FeudalismNow!: Exactly. If Brat wins, his voting record will be precisely the same a Cantor’s would have been. At the same time, Brat will have less power and less of voice in the Village. This was at best a major whiff by the GOP and possibly an own goal (to mix my sporting metaphors).
Frankensteinbeck
@RaflW:
MBA culture is a culture of ego over results, so… I’m not holding my breath.
Morzer
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, but when you combine that with some old white racist die-off and 6 years worth of young Hispanic voters who have grown up hearing the white-ass GOP shit out hatred of them, their families and their ancestors, I think there’s the makings of quite political storm*. That said, the Democrats have got, got, got to raise their game at state and local level. That’s where the GOP are going to fight to the bitter end – and they can do an awful lot of damage by militant obstructionism at state level.
*If we get lucky, Scalia’s blend of hatred for humanity plus his own lard might just give us a chance at taking back SCOTUS for the decency and competence side of the equation. Or maybe Anthony Kennedy will finally decide that being the fake moderate on the court isn’t much fun any longer and retire.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@RaflW: They buy Dems who are, like Obama, the functional equivalent of the moderate/liberal Republicans of the 60s, like Rockefeller and Nixon (whose political machinations were odious, but whose actual policies were centrist.) Everything is shifting to the right; you won’t find many mainstream Dems nowadays who would have supported the New Deal or the Great Society. The Tea Party is a convenient tool for this shift; people who are increasingly turned off by the Tea Nuts but who aren’t libs will have a place to go. The losers are those of us who think that the Great Society and the New Deal were good starts.
Clinton, who I will support over any GOP candidate, is still the face of the New Model Democrat, best typified by the other Clinton.
Morzer
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
I am not sure that everything is shifting to the right. There are signs that people are more willing to try relatively radical left wing solutions – and that they like left wing populists like Warren more than they like Ye Olde Centrists of yore. I’d agree that the GOP has shifted hard right, but polling is pretty consistent in showing that Americans overall prefer liberal policies.
Brandon
I don’t know why everyone is compelled to find greater meaning in this when the simplest answer is right in front of our faces, being: Cantor lost sight of his constituents as he grasped for the golden ring of leadership. The fact that DC is commuting distance from his district and he barely spends any time there is all you need to know. Plus, apparently his campaign was laughable and he didn’t take it or his opponent seriously. I think of this when considering that his campaign spent $168k at steakhouses when his opponent spent $200k total. The campaign was a joke for Cantor and he considered himself too important for the little people he served, too important to even do the bare minimum of glad handing and baby kissing every two years, and the people noticed and booted him out. Democracy in action.
Woodrowfan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
No, because they think it’s President Obama’s fault..
Woodrowfan
@GregB:
I think i love you.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: There’s still the basic problem that solar energy is inherently intermittent, modern batteries aren’t as good as modern solar collectors are, and the existing electric grid isn’t really built to deal with the intermittency beyond a certain fraction of power.
But, again, I think these are soluble problems either through engineering or by changing the way power is used where we can. Some industrial processes absolutely require uninterrupted baseload power, but not everything does.
I think a lot of people, when they think about this, are using intuitions developed in the 1970s or ’80s, when people first started hyping solar power, but PV panels were incredibly expensive per watt, and only really made sense for low-power applications where other power sources were impractical. There’s been progress comparable to the explosion in microprocessors.
J R in WV
I vary between optimistic and pessimistic almost like a sine wave, that is regularly and evenly, up and down. But I find it hard to believe that it’s good for the country to have more crazy right wing nuts in positions of power.
I hope they F up in a big but mostly harmless way over the next few months, leading to at least a small Dem improvement in November… then maybe do it again in prep for the 2016 elections.
Between the bad news here and the worse news abroad, let’s see, what could make me be a feel good optimist? Hmm. That’ll take a while. Like Brat, let me think about that for a while.
Omnes Omnibus
@Brandon: @raven: Well, it is the first time a House Majority Leader has ever been defeated in a primary.
Matt McIrvin
@J R in WV: My main focus of pessimism right now is political violence. Racist white people are realizing correctly that they’re actually losing political power, and reacting violently. We seem to be heading into another period of politically charged whackaloon killings like we had in the ’90s, maybe worse. To some extent it’s self-discrediting, though; the militias actually did have to quiet down for a while after Oklahoma City.
Absolute worst case, we have some serious nationwide breakdown like a civil war or military coup, like I was fretting about in another thread. But I actually doubt it. The craziest folk skew old, which helps–not to say they’re all old; there are some young ones and they’re the ones who do most of the violence.
Karen in GA
At a music retreat/workshop thing and not following this too closely, so forgive me if this has been asked and answered — but what are the odds that Cantor’s campaign suppressed turnout of their own supporters by releasing the stupidly optimistic results of that internal poll? “Oh, my guy’s already a million points ahead? No need for me to vote, then.”
Morzer
@Karen in GA:
It’s possible, but I doubt that it made 11 points worth of difference, even in a low turnout primary.
Generally, I believe that campaigns release their “good” polls to motivate supporters and depress the opponent’s turnout. Voters like to back winners, if they are going to invest their time. It’s one reason why there are rules in various countries about what you can show in the way of exit polls.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Woodrowfan:
and they labeled Cantor a secret ally of Obama.
Conservative Logic
1. Conservationism can only be failed, it can never fail
2. The shut down will end socialism and stop those people (as in urban, of color, liberal) from stealing from real Americans(as in not doing all the Federal spending in red states).
The shut down didn’t end socialism and hurt REAL Americans (as in white, rural, conservative)
The only way to a conservative this could happen is if the leaders of the House were secret Democrats.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Morzer: I’d like to agree with you, but when it comes down to the nut-cutting, how many old-school liberal social initiatives have actually been implemented since 1992? Even the ACA had a Republican blueprint at it’s inception, and it still relies on private insurers rather than being based on a perfectly good single-payer model that has worked well in this country for decades. On the other hand, how many corporation-friendly initiatives have we seen, signed into law by Clinton? Bankruptcy “Reform”; Gramm-Leach, the Commodities Future Modernization Act, and damn near everything else that the DLC touched.
This days, “liberal” just means “not as bug-fuck crazy as the Teabaggers.” It will be a long time before the US comes around to considering people before profits.
elm
It seems that Cantor is stepping down as Majority Leader in July.
The clowns in the house will be backstabbing, facestabbing, gutstabbing, shooting, poisoning, and slandering each other during the runup to midterms.
If this continues, I’ll overdose on schadenfreude by October.
Someguy
@Morzer: once enough Hispanic voters come down the pipeline
Aaaand this is why losing Cantor does sort of suck. The Chamber of Commerce had pretty much talked him into a backing an amnesty deal. That might not have happened before the election but post-election, 50 or 60 House Republicans, the Boehner Backers, might have been talked into joining with the Dems in passing a comprehensive reform bill.
I have no doubt that demographic change is what will kill the Republicans, and that it will happen sooner or later. But the sword to strike the killing blow was within reach. Damn.
Davis X. Machina
@Comrade Scrutinizer
That’s the status quo now. You don’t see more than a few David Boren types calling for it to go away, now do you?
And in the last five years?
Ratchets work both ways.
Morzer
@Someguy:
You have to remember that in quite a few areas in the south high schools are absolutely dominated by actual, legally American Hispanic kids, with whites as a minority. Fast forward that 6 years and, even allowing for indifferent turnout rates, you have the makings of a pretty big electoral shift.
Bob In Portland
-Jim Garrison, 1967
Does anyone else here think that Congress has been reduced to a debating society? Then the question is how this process came about and why Jim Garrison saw it so many years before you did.
James E. Powell
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Clinton, who I will support over any GOP candidate, is still the face of the New Model Democrat, best typified by the other Clinton.
I take a backseat to no one in castigating the corporate Clintons, but let’s not forget the congressional Democrats.
We could elect the equivalent of Olof Palme to the White House and it would change very little so long as corporate money dominates the congress or, as Dick Durbin put it, “they frankly own the place.”
James E. Powell
@Bob In Portland:
Well, Bob, I was only 12 years old in 1967. It was an awkward age. I had a hard time focusing on constitutional concerns.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Davis X. Machina: Something happened in the last five years to change that trend? Pray tell. Not the ACA, for sure. That’s a plan that had its genesis in a Republican administration, and is full of Corporate Goodness. Better for those without health care than nothing, but a far cry from single-payer.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@James E. Powell: Oh, absolutely. The Clintons were the tip of that iceberg. My point is that corporate interests, which were the financial anchor of the old GOP, will just continue to pivot to conservative Democrats while the Tea Nuts push the whole country to the right.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Kay,
just waiting for a credible candidate against Emanuel.
Literally ANYONE.
helping hand
I wouldn’t have taken that bet last night, and sure wouldn’t take it after this:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/11/1306207/-Eric-Cantor-press-conference
There isn’t enough popcorn…