Let’s take a little break from the Nazis to hear from a prominent Senator:
We’re not going back to the days of being lukewarm on choice.
We’re not going back to the days when universal health care was something Democrats talked about on the campaign trail but were too chicken to fight for after they got elected.
And we’re not going back to the days when a Democrat who wanted to run for a seat in Washington first had to grovel on Wall Street.
Democrats are heading forward. We are looking ahead – and we will not, we shall not, we must not allow anyone to turn back the clock.
To stop the Nazis and their enablers, we need to win elections. To win elections, we need to have a strong message (like this one), strong candidates, money and organization. To counter voter suppression, we need to register more voters and get them to the polls, despite all the efforts to stop us.
At this point in the election cycle, if you want to honor people who were hurt and died in the protest yesterday, register some people to vote, and donate your time, money or both to promising candidates.
Raoul
Yup. We need the biggest MF’ing voter turnout campaign in goddammed history.
donnah
Where can we get a hundred more like Elizabeth Warren? Well, we install backbones and guts into our current representatives and let Warren be the prototype.
We need her, we need people who think like she does. I’m donating to local Democrats running for office, like our mayor who’s running this fall. Start local, go bigger. We have to grow our base.
Raoul
Also, too, an excellent time for the Balloon Juice thermometer. Let’s win all 238 of these seats.
debbie
Everyone has to be willing to move forward, and I don’t get the feeling that everyone is yet.
Kay
We need more good poll workers and more good people on county boards of elections. The Democrats on county boards of elections need to make a lot of noise and hold things up when they try the shit they’re pulling in Indiana where they close Democratic polling stations and limit hours. There are Democrats on every one of those county boards because there have to be. They have to hold up the process until they get fair treatment, which they can do if they learn the procedural rules and get more aggressive in using them. It’s hard to do because the Democrats live and work in these places and there’s this kind of elaborate effort in election process to pretend it’s nonpartisan but they are going to have to make more demands or they will end up with fewer voting locations. We need new people to volunteer to take these positions, people who understand that Republicans intend to limit voting in Democratic counties and precincts.
Chyron HR
Nice try, you neoliberal corpoate shill sex worker, but the REAL progressives will no longer stand for your doughnuts, and we will elect as many white nationalists as it takes to move the country to the left.
Karen
The response from the police should have been as strong as it was when they went after the peaceful protesters of unarmed blacks, as strong as it was when they went after peaceful water protectors. Yesterday, they stood and watched, even those in riot gear stood and watched.
namekarB
@donnah: What donnah said.
Eets a puzzle why other Democrats do not follow in her footsteps
sylvania
Sandernista’s like mistermix still think we need a lecture on winning elections. Because Sandernista’s still think they know something about it that the rest of us don’t.
Starfish
I am going to do some voter registration today.
We need to put money in the hands of people who are central to their community and can build those communities. I am trying to get some people to donate to a friend that I know from high school who is teaching science in a high-poverty area in Dallas. It would mean so much to me if any of you can donate a little to his campaign. It is sad to see it with just three donations.
Baud
That speech is interesting. Warren also condemns people who complain about identity politics, but she attributes that sentiment to Mark Penn!
chris
@debbie: If you wait for everyone you’ll be too late. JMO
Mike J
I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to hate that corporate sellout who showed insufficient purity.
Baud
@namekarB: Because Democrats and democratic leaders are diverse.
Judge Crater
@Karen: Yes, when people show up with shields, clubs and nazi flags, it should be obvious what their mission is. This isn’t rocket science.
Baud
@Karen: While I agree with pointing out the double standard, let’s not forget that most of us thought those other examples involved excessive use of force.
Matt McIrvin
Currently arguing with a vehemently pro-Hillary liberal on G+ who insists that Warren “played a big role” in getting Trump elected, and linked to this article with snark about how Warren’s Trump 2020 check is in the mail.
This is the first I’ve heard of this line. Any ideas what’s going on there? Sure, Draft Warren morphed into the early Bernie campaign, but I never got the sense that Warren in any way bought into the dumb DNC conspiracy theories.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Do you know this person? Are you sure it’s not a troll?
I agree that Warren does not get any blame for Trump. She knows how to push her ideas while being a team player.
Kay
We had the same thing happen in Ohio that is now happening in Indiana. In 2004 Republicans on county boards of elections moved to limit resources going to Democratic polling areas- fewer voting machines, fewer polling places, long lines and inconvenient voting for college students. The Democrats on those boards of elections (there have to be an equal number of Democrats v Republicans on the Board) were caught off guard and were not aggressive enough in ensuring their voters had access. That’s how we ended up with the long lines and chaos in areas with universities and colleges. They have to get up to speed in Indiana. This is a tactic. It’s new in Indiana but it’s not “new” in that it has happened before in other states.
The way to hold up the process is threaten to sue and then sue if necessary. They have to hold elections in Indiana. They will capitulate because they will run out of time. We can’t just go along when they close polling places and limit hours in Democratic areas. We can’t accept that which means a stand-off but Democrats can win the stand-off because there’s only X number of weeks until the election has to be held. The issue has to be resolved and it has to be resolved within a narrow time frame. It’s one of the times it really IS who blinks first.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: He’s not a troll, but he’s definitely something of an outrage addict. Lately, mostly posts tirades about “Donald Chump” or “Donald Dump” several times a day. Has an incandescent hatred of Bernie Sanders too.
A Ghost to Most
@Matt McIrvin: false flag covfefe?
OzarkHillbilly
@Raoul: “Piss off a Republican: Vote.”
Baud
@Matt McIrvin: Bernie is more understandable, as we’ve seen here. This is the first I’ve heard of Warren getting thrown into that mix.
Baud
@Raoul:
@OzarkHillbilly:
I agree with this, but it has not worked in the past. Maybe it’ll be different now because of Trump.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
Much as I despise and blame Bernie and his cult, I have no problem with SPW. That is simply unhinged stupid.
Cheryl Rofer
Donald Trump’s organization just released a new campaign ad.
Yes, really
magurakurin
@Baud: She isn’t my favorite person…but she is good. Very smart. I would proudly vote for her, for sure. And by tying the term identity politics to Mark Penn (and not Sanders) she makes a smart move, I think. Mark Penn is a hated, pencil dick, loser, so this boxes the actual people pushing this in nasty little space. She looks like she wants to take over the wheel. I feel she is a little bit too old, but, what the hell…I’ll be happy to see what she’s got down the road. I’m open to a lot of people at this point. Pretty much anyone but Sanders. Warren is a very strong foil against Bernie. And I don’t think she will take a back seat to him at all. Things are getting interesting.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: That’s my hope. I really don’t have a clue as to how to motivate people to vote.
Baud
@magurakurin: I’m open to not thinking about the presidency until after the 2018 elections. That’s why I’ve personally held off on my media blitz.
Tim C.
@Cheryl Rofer: grifters gonna grift. Seriously, there’s a good chance the boss doesn’t make it a full term. If I were one of the assorted parasites on his payroll, I’d be looking for as much cash as possible before the crash.
magurakurin
@Matt McIrvin: I don’t imagine there are too many of those weeds in the garden. Warren and Sanders are very different, in my opinion. For one, Warren is actually smart and well educated. Let’s face it, Sanders has a very minimal education and, frankly, is kind of dumb. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, that’s for sure.
FlipYrWhig
@Matt McIrvin: Only thing I can think of is that your correspondent thinks Warren’s focus on Wall Street as a hotbed of corruption had a ripple effect that damaged Hillary with “the left.”
A Ghost to Most
Warren or Schiff in 2020? Win-win.
JMG
If I remember correctly, Warren was scrupulously neutral during the primaries, then endorsed Clinton after California ended it. This made some of the more out there Sanders supporters very mad, although not him, at least not publicly.
Kay
@Cheryl Rofer:
If you have a really unpopular President is it a good idea that people see him constantly and he never shuts up? The problem is people haven’t seen Donald Trump enough? MORE of the unpopular person is the solution? I bet his poll numbers would go up if they all just didn’t go to work for a month.
bystander
@Cheryl Rofer:
If Pepe the Frog is featured, the timing will be clear.
magurakurin
@Baud: I think you are correct in that thinking. Let’s hope people get out and vote next year. But damn…that is still so far, far away. So many bad things will happen between now and then. And even if there is a wave that sweeps the Senate and House…the dickhead will still be golfing. We really dropped the ball in November. And I say we, because our team lost, so we all share the blame. We have to do better. much better.
magurakurin
@Matt McIrvin:
the Warren thing sounds like a bridge too far…but I hate me some Bernie Sanders…
SatanicPanic
@Matt McIrvin: are you sure he isn’t a Balloon Juice poster?
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: Good point. I concur, but that may be my Trump fatigue speaking. When they announced yesterday that he would have a press conference Monday, my immediate reaction was that I would like to leave the planet. He loves the attention, which drives him to the improv that threatens nuclear war and endorses white supremacy. I’m not sure his numbers would go up if he just sat in his office watching Fox (no tweeting, though!), but my sanity would certainly improve.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I agree. I’m a Warren fan. I’m not convinced of her broader appeal, but that no-nonsense lady from Oklahoma (by way of Harvard) thing might play very well after four years of trump. I always loved it when she called him “goofy”
tobie
Can we agree that the threat facing this country is so grave that we all need to unite behind the Democrats as the only institutional force capable of checking the Republicans in their rampage against civil rights, the environment, multilateral accords, etc.? Every dollar given to groups like “Our Revolution” or the Greens is a dollar for the GOP. I’m giving all my political contributions to the DCCC, DNC, Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, League of Women Voters, and the NAACP. I can understand giving to individual candidates at the local level or whom you are particularly fond of but donations to splinter groups are at this point counterproductive
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Raoul: <
Absolute truth. Can't have a third of people sitting on their hands because they're not sufficiently tingly about the Democrat at hand. But with that, we abso–FFFing–lutely have to shut down voter suppression.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Same here. We’ll see.
Baud
@tobie: You are preaching to the choir here.
magurakurin
@tobie: I agree.
Kay
Sanders people said Clinton shouldn’t be the nominee because she had too much “baggage”. Now that argument applies to Sanders so they can’t run him.
I used to really like Bernie Sanders but his pettiness and petulance with conceding is a deal-breaker for me. You can’t do that. You can’t lose and just sort of pretend you didn’t based on some theory that you’re the “real” winner. What if everyone did that? It has to END. Jesus Christ, these races are ENDLESS as it is. Admit you lost – there isn’t some alternate set of rules where you REALLY won. Clinton won the popular vote but the rules are “electoral college” so she isn’t running around calling herself the “alt President” or something. If it was Bernie Sanders he’d be running an imaginary administration. I’m particularly impatient with them going back to the pre-primary and the whole “Clinton cleared the field” argument. Closed. That avenue is closed. There’s a limited window to re-litigate.
burnspbesq
@tobie:
May I suggest that you add the Sierra Club and/or the NRDC to your list?
geg6
@tobie:
Yes, this.
Another Scott
We also have to pay attention to other races that don’t get a lot of attention.
Fairfax County At-Large School Board Special Election on August 29. This is a big deal because the person who resigned was a Teabagger and she wants to increase the chance of the Teabaggers winning again. (If she had resigned a few days later, it would have been decided in November.)
Lots of people are trying to turn the race mostly into a proxy over the renaming of JEB Stuart, Lee, and Woodson High Schools. Yes, the names matter a lot (and must be changed), but the Teabaggers are also using it to try to rile up their base and if elected they will try to impose stupid policies (cutting taxes, changing the curriculum, etc.) that will hurt education.
Plus there are the Virginia House of Delegates and Governor races this November.
Every race is important. We have to fight them every single day and not think that we can recharge our batteries until November 2018.
Cheers,
Scott.
chris
@OzarkHillbilly: “People” is too big a word, how about one person? If each of you could take one former nonvoter to the polling place…
Karen
@Baud: yes, they were examples of excessive force, I agree; but that doesn’t justify standing and watching people who show up with shields, clubs, nazi flags and expect they “come in peace”
tobie
@Baud: You’re right.
magurakurin
@Baud: I have that worry, too. The other thing that bugs me about Warren is that she can a bit holier than thought at times…like some recovering alcoholics. Don’t get me wrong, I applaud her leaving the Republican Party and all the work she has done to help people (more than I have ever done.) But I was 17 in 1980 so I couldn’t cast my vote for Jimmy Carter, but I wanted to. And I was one of the 100 or so people who voted for Walter Mondale in ’84. I voted against Papa Bush, too. And I was stunned when Clinton finally won one in ’92. But Warren didn’t vote against the GOP for president until Bob Dole came up to bat. Like I said, I am glad she switched sides and I honor her good works…but I was just a skinny, long haired pot head back in the day…and I knew that Ronald Reagan was a low life sack of shit. Every bit a sack of shit as Trump, really. I didn’t have a fist full of law degrees, but I saw through the Republicans bullshit long before Warren. Sometimes, I think she needs a little more humility at times…like when she was taking digs at Obama. Obama didn’t vote for Reagan….and was just an undergrad at Columbia…
JMG
@Kay: You are absolutely right. All Presidents take vacations in August, and until now, their poll numbers have gone up because when the President is off the stage, people feel things must be in pretty decent shape.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@tobie: @Baud: I sing like a hinge, but I’ll join in that choir. And yes, 2018 should loom larger even in our bloggy wool-gathery balloon juice huffing and puffing.
I’ve never understood how it is the evil Clintons tricked Martin O’Malley into having the charisma of a bowl of yesterday’s oatmeal, but I always thought just his talking point bio should have made him the darling of D-Kos and David Sirota. As I recall, he flamed out while Bernie was still that kind of cute eccentric sideshow.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
Maybe Trump believes that if you ignore the critics, they’ll get tired of criticising you and go away. Maybe he’s just sticking to what he knows how to do, out of a realisation that he’s a lot better at campaigning than he ever will be at presidenting.
ArchTeryx
I have to admit this whole stinking monstrous situation has actually triggered me. I survived being run over by a car once – it was an accident and it was due to my sitting too close to a parking strip. Someone backed over me.
And this brought it all back.
Times like this I really wish I still lived in C’ville. Maybe I would have taken the gun I owned back then to this “rally” and shot the son of a bitch before he could run over those people.
tobie
@burnspbesq: Cool…and Lambda League, too, which was at every protest in support of the ACA in DC when it looked like the GOP was going to pull the plug on it. The League turned out its members.
Baud
@Kay:
Trump still invokes Bernie’s name and the “rigged” primary and I don’t think Bernie has ever called him on it.
Starfish
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She is smart but she is also plain spoken. Her speeches may be explaining things, but they don’t come across as condescending.
Baud
I wonder what the fallout will be when Warren doesn’t sign on to Bernie’s single payer bill.
Kay
@Cheryl Rofer:
It’s funny to me because it’s such a new presidency but they use the tactics that are usually used for a lame duck. Trump isn’t supposed to be riding on bullshit executive orders and agency actions. Those are for powerless second term Presidents who have already lost Congress. They just have really low standards. When he doesn’t meet even those they lower them again. In a way the Trumpsters are the best advertisement for how bad he is at this job. They have to go out and brag about things like “holding a meeting on apprenticeships” – things that would be consigned to a VP in a normally-competent administration. By the end of this they’ll be counting ribbon-cuttings as huge successes.
It gives me great joy to watch because I have been listening to conservatives natter on about “excellence” and “high expectations” for 20 years. That whole nasty theme they had where they claimed “everyone gets a trophy”, scolding people that they weren’t excellent enough. Trump is the definition of low expectations. It’s not “measure this guy as a President”. It’s “measure this guy as a reality tv show star who never should have been President- he’s doing great under that metric! He sits at tables! He stands in front of podiums!”. The standards could not be lower, still, he fails.
magurakurin
@Baud: I think it is well past the time that everyone faces the sad fact that Sanders is a fraud. And it might end up being much worse. Manafort is going to give up everyone in the end….the name Tad Devine whispers in the wind late, late at night. It’s nothing but a gut feeling…but this all could be even more uglier than our worst fears.
Skerry
In addition to donating to the ACLU and SPLC, I have joined the League of Women Voters (men are welcome too) and am focused on voter registration and education. I am also on my state’s LWV’s environmental committee.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I’d love to see her sign on with the one of the Medicare buy-in bills, loudly. I think that’s the best way to get the camel’s nose of Medicare for all under the tent. A Kaiser poll showed that support for single payer drops like a stone when you ask about tax increases, I think buy-in is good cover.
also, OT:
What about the Targaryen Girl and her dragons? What about those hobbits and their wizards and ghost armies?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@magurakurin: We need a strong “progressive”TM in the primary who is 1) a genuine Democrat, and 2) will not run a prolonged butthurt vanity campaign long after (if) she/he loses. I nominate Warren for this role. Presidential primary stuff is fun, what with the personalities and drama. But 2018’s gotta come first.
Baud
@magurakurin: I’m not at a point where I expect that to happen, but if it did, it would be explosive.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: Yes. And he really thinks he is doing something by signing executive orders urging his departments to study the situation, which will deliver precisely nothing. Unfortunately, some executive orders, like the ones on immigration, are making a difference.
Overall, though, it’s a whole lot less than they claim, and probably a whole lot less than what he thinks. Attacking his party’s Senate Majority Leader should slow things down a bit more.
SatanicPanic
@tobie: If the left were smart we’d use the party for our own ends. I try to tell people that. The “this party is corrupt ” narrative doesn’t help anyone
magurakurin
@Baud: If his bill is the same two page Power Point presentation that the last one was, then nobody should sign on. I’m not against single payer by any means. Quite the opposite. That’s why cheesey, half-baked, pie in the sky, proposals turn me into a white hot ball of rage. Charles Gaba is really good on twitter about how the country could move to single payer…and it isn’t going to happen in one hammer blow of a single bill. Shitty, bullshit SP proposals only lessen the likelihood of achieving such a system.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: They only have contempt for those who do really make it on their own without much institutional help or a support system (like millionaire daddies)
Case in point
Bill Clinton
Barack Obama
Immigrants who arrive on these shores without knowing a soul and hardly any bank balance.
Starfish
Guys. I know that the circular firing squad is fun, but can you donate $5 to my friend who is a black teacher in a high poverty area of Texas? He is trying to raise less than $2,000. We can do this. The link is in my first comment up thread.
Baud
@SatanicPanic: It helps white privilege.
@magurakurin: I think he’s had different iterations of his bill over the years.
schrodingers_cat
@magurakurin: BS is full of shit even about his favoritest subject in the world, how to regulate Wall Street.
rikyrah
Khaled Beydoun
✔
@KhaledBeydoun
If #ThisIsNotUs, explain:
-Genocide of Natives
-Slavery
-Jim Crow
-Chinese Exclusion Act
-War on Terror
-Muslim Bans…
I could go on
magurakurin
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
One of my senators signed on, Merkley in Oregon
I think the idea to allow a Medicare buy-in as a public option on the exchanges is an even better idea, though. Gillibrand in New York was talking that up the other day. Lot’s of good people starting to emerge. Sanders is stale bread and he’ll be a soggy pile of green, moldy, mush by 2020.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
If using Penn as a foil (which is perfect, and works on me) isn’t enough to convince the simple-minded bros that she’s “on their side”, Warren could work with Perez to stage a falling out. Make the wicked DNC the “heel” (did I get that right?) in the Warren primary saga, in a genius reverse rat-copulation.
magurakurin
@Baud: I don’t expect it either…but I won’t be surprised…and it would be explosive…and not in a good way at all. The horror, the horror…
rikyrah
@Kay:
tell it, Kay
Kay
@Cheryl Rofer:
This to me is the measure they use for Trump:
I actually think that’s why he returns to the election again and again and again. He WANTS that low standard, where we’re surprised he’s there AT ALL and we never get further than that. Because you know they all won. It’s not like there was a President who lost and somehow surmounted that and so he gets credit for the condition of employment that he met.
I have a friend who got a perfect SAT math score. The problem is he’s 55 and he needs to stop saying it. I give him credit for it but at some point we have to move on. I once saw him check his oil by holding the car hood up with his head. I feel this score has been an actual barrier to him learning anything in the years since.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@magurakurin: I love that we’ve got Jeff. I’ve come to respect Senator Ron more than I used to, but I think that’s more on me than on him. But Jeff’s the real deal.
Bupalos
@Kay:For my money, as betty cracker is to the right kind of whip-smart righteous fire, you are to deep-down dogged sanity.
OHIO AGAINST THE WORLD!!
Baud
@Kay:
Haha. Too funny.
trnc
@Kay: True dat. The longer the campaign went on, the more I became convinced that Hillary’s “baggage” was almost entirely based on right wing BS. The only thing I might ding her for is her tendency toward being somewhat “calculating,” but being ruthlessly attacked for my entire career would probably make me choose what I say pretty carefully, too. But in hindsight, I think she would have been better off speaking more candidly early on instead of waiting until she could unleash on DT.
In any event, I don’t know what Warren means about groveling to Wall St. Hillary wanted to expand the time span for which capital gains taxes were considered short term and she wanted to raise income taxes on the wealthiest. I would have preferred to see CG taxes go up a bit, but I would have been willing to wait and see how her plan worked out.
ETA: Meant to say also that I don’t think getting paid to do speeches amounts to groveling unless someone can show where she was promising them all sorts of crap if she got elected.
Another Scott
@Starfish: Good for you, and good for your friend. Success to you both. Donated.
Cheers,
Scott.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@rikyrah: calling all Hoosiers – find out who your Dems on the election boards are, and lobby them to raise hell over this clearly partisan (and clearly racist) restriction of ballot access!
Baud
@trnc: I don’t think that was necessarily a reference to Hillary.
It was all just red meat for the crowd anyway. The first two items on the list in the post are mythical.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@magurakurin: I have no doubt Willard would vote for such a bill if it came to the Senate floor, but I also have no doubt that he would spend the weeks leading up to that vote bellowing about how its inadequacy represents one more fayl-yuh! of the Democratic Pah-ty
Starfish
@Another Scott: Thank you.
magurakurin
@rikyrah: The way I have come to see it is that the Founders never wanted to open up the entire franchise to any and all. Well, guys like Thomas Paine probably did, but he wasn’t really one of the movers and shakers of the whole enterprise. They wanted to wrest control from the Crown and establish themselves, but a government has to rest on some base of power. The divine right of kings was out, so a republic it would be. In order to get a populace to sign on you have to put forth the illusion that everyone is part of the franchise…all men are created equal…and such. They never really wanted that to happen, but in order to complete the veneer the founding documents had to at least create the possibility that in fact everyone was equal. The story of America then is successive generations that have taken advantage of this loophole. It is similar to the concept in the movie the Matrix in which choice is programmed in even though it isn’t desired. So, America has become a better place, a freer place, a fairer place in spite of itself. It faces set backs and still has severe flaws…but the loophole has remained.
These days though….it’s looking like the divine right of kings is making a comeback…
geg6
@Kay:
LOL! Asshole. As I can attest, a perfect SAT score is more a measure of your test taking skills than it is your ability to do anything else. I got an almost perfect GRE score. I studied for it by using some game theory tricks.
Kay
@Baud:
There’s a million of ’em for this scenario, right? “What do they call the person who is last in his class at med school? Doctor!”
That’s what Trump relies on. They call the worst President “President” so he wants credit for meeting the initial bar and all standards past that must be lowered because WTF! Donald Trump is President!
A Ghost to Not
@tobie:
Yes. No time to waste on splitters.
Another Scott
@magurakurin:
Gotta stick up for my alma mater here. Bernie got an excellent education. What he, (and David Brooks for that matter), did with it isn’t a reflection of the quality of their education.
Cheers,
Scott.
trnc
@ArchTeryx:
That probably would have saved the one person’s life and the others’ injuries, but my guess is that there would have been even more deaths and injuries at the hands of white supremacists, and then they would have the bonus of being able to say they were just defending themselves, and THAT would be the story today. Trust me, you might the right call keeping your gun cool.
Baud
@Kay: But he wants to be seen as the best president (except maybe for Lincoln) while being the worst.
magurakurin
@Another Scott: I didn’t mean to diss his school, just the fact that he doesn’t have any graduate degrees.
ArchTeryx
Ugh. Apologies to the thread…didn’t realize this wasn’t an open thread.
I’m truly hoping that enough of us (outside the blogosphere) get woke to do what we almost did in 2004, and succeeded wildly in doing in 2006. I will never forget Election Night 2006, my first doing fieldwork, when the results came in and we took back Congress against gerrymandering (and a wretched Senate map) nearly as steep as we face now.
Living in Upstate NY my efforts aren’t nearly as impactful as they were in Columbus, OH, back in the naughts, but I plan to be on the front lines.
Someone ought to put up a pic of Woody Guthrie’s old guitar sticker on a voting machine: “This machine kills fascists”.
A Ghost to Not
@burnspbesq:
All that, and Nature Conservancy.
Another Scott
@Cheryl Rofer: Not surprising in the least. He filed to be a candidate on inauguration day. If the people in the organization want to get paid, and you know they do!, they need to do something with the money, so of course some of it is going to be spent on ads. Even right now.
It’s all about the grift.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@magurakurin: We picked up seats in the House and Senate in 2016.
Yes, we need to do better, but don’t buy into the doom and gloom.
Eyes on the prize.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s a funny part of “privilege”, I think. Kushner knew that admittance to Harvard was the thing. That ALONE was worth the price- he could ride on that his entire life.
I saw the leaked speech he gave to the interns and you just want to cry. He’s made mistakes! Yes, sir. The interns can learn from them. They left there vowing NOT to buy a newspaper, I’m sure. Now that is some good and relevant advice for your average recent college graduate. Do NOT use family wealth and buy a newspaper. Duly noted.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: “Sing like a hinge” — LMAO! As a bad but frequent singer, I’m gonna have to steal that one!
trnc
@Baud: You’re probably right, but thanks to the constant chants of other candidates’ supporters, Hillary did become the embodiment of the Wall Street politician even though I don’t think she deserved it. I suspect I’m not the only one who might extrapolate from what Warren said. However, I certainly don’t disagree with Warren’s general sentiment.
Baud
@trnc: Warren was probably being deliberately ambiguous.
Baud
@Kay: I could give them advice on picking bad lottery numbers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trnc: I’m kinda “hmmm”ing about Dems being afraid to fight for UHC, too.
ETA: I know it’s harder to get applause by saying, “we got a good half of a good loaf, and it was hard, but we did it, now let’s get that other half!” but this hits a bit close to the “fayl-yuh!” narrative
ETA, A: also a blown opportunity to talk about the importance of governor’s and state races: NJ, VA, NC, GA…
ArchTeryx
@Kay: That’s hilarious. I got a near-perfect score on the SAT math, but when it came to auto repairs, I let someone who specialized in it teach me some of the basics, and I never could match his physical dexterity. (The fellow is one of the key reasons I got my PhD in the first place: No car, no degree. He kept my junk car running for almost 10 years, with my assistance, and I learned a lot from him).
Sadly, doing well on standardized tests doesn’t preclude good old fashioned pig ignorance.
schrodingers_cat
BTW did you guys see boring Freddie’s defense of Google bro in his Washington Post op-ed. Always a market for “liberals” who bash minorities and women in our MSM.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@ArchTeryx: Love that imagery.
kindness
You can’t really call me Kreskin because I’ve already seen the Honorable Senator Elizabeth Warren described as ‘shrill’ but I suspect that meme is going to be cranked up to 11 by ‘some’.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: Saw the headline and the author. Didn’t bother to read the piece. Freddie will eventually make it to being the Fox News liberal. An accomplishment of sorts.
ArchTeryx
@schrodingers_cat:
FIFY. It’s always open season on liberals in the MSM, and finding a liberal willing to line up at the shooting gallery is all the better for them.
Amir Khalid
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
As in the pretend villain in WWE “wrestling”? Yes, I think you did get it right.
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: I don’t know if you read FDB’s posts he was particularly misogynistic, you just all lives mattered my original comment.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Me neither, just read the blurb under the heading.
Another Scott
@tobie: I support the kinds of groups you mentioned and agree that splintering is a potential problem. But it’s early. Having lots of groups talking about their preferred policy solutions is a good thing. Having fired up people trying to get other people fired up is a good thing, even if we disagree with their policy solutions. We can, and generally will – remember that 90+% of Bernie’s supporters voted for Hillary – come together after the primaries.
2016 was a fluke. We’re not going to have Comey coming out 2x and tanking Hillary’s support among Democratic voters in 2018. (It will be someone else doing something else, but it won’t be as effective when we can point to Trump and what they tried (and are still trying) to do with Trumpcare.) The main thing is to keep working every day on making sure everyone can vote, that we don’t cede the field to the Teabaggers on important cultural issues, and that we push-back on memes that are designed to show that only the GOP can “protect” the country economically and culturally.
“Our Revolution” doesn’t have to be something that damages our prospects. Ala the Internet, we can “route around the damage” if necessary.
Cheers,
Scott.
Schlemazel
@ArchTeryx:
I read TheBore here and never once confused him with a liberal. He can call himself that I suppose butwe should not buy into that shit and call those that do out on it every time
burnspbesq
@magurakurin:
Amen. South Korea showed how it’s done.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@schrodingers_cat: Google bro – yet another man-baby. What kind of parenting and culture is to blame for this terminally arrested development so many grown men seem to be stuck in? As a fellow “man”, I have always been confounded by this. Why is it so hard for so many to understand that 1) other people, even including those who may seem a little different, are real genuine people, and 2) you should treat other people with dignity and respect?!!
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Amir Khalid: Thanks ☺ I incorrectly used the term “face” in its place a while back.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I give them props for getting into very local races, but if Nina Turner and Michael Moore et al can make donuts and water the fetish object that the primary debate schedule (DWS’s original sin, way back when, which no one knew they cared about until the Wilmerites stared harping on it) was last time, they may make it close enough to lose, again. At the big Wilmerite convention last month (or in June?), Nina Turner was the word-of-mouth favorite to carry the Bernie Banner into 2020.
Another Scott
@Baud: She never has before (I don’t think anyone has in the Senate). I don’t think it will matter.
I like Warren too, and contributed early to the draft Warren movement, but she’s a bit of a cypher on everything except economics. I vaguely recall her getting some criticism from some quarters about some (probably conventional fairly anodyne) statement about Israel. She’s very strong on economics, but we really have no idea where she would want to go on lots and lots of other important policies (other than being on the Democratic side of the spectrum, of course).
She’s smart to stay in the Senate, and I think she’ll do that.
I’m keeping the corner of my eye on Gillibrand.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s weird and I think it’s unprecedented. Trump doesn’t compare himself to other Presidents- he compares himself to the imaginary (and very bad!) Clinton Presidency.
Sometimes I feel like they compare him to all other people who were never President. “Are you PRESIDENT? No? Then don’t judge him”. Whoa there! That’s never been the comparison because that’s a really low bar. He is a better President than me because I am not President and he is. He wins that round! But then you’re like “but are those the rules?”
ArchTeryx
@schrodingers_cat: I didn’t mean to. The idea’s not so much to diminish DeBoer’s misogyny then to say that the MSM will take ANYONE who’s willing to punch hippies – yes, even on MSNBC – but they take special delight in getting a so-called liberal to do it.
DeBoer, on the other claw, is a special sort of scum all his own – read enough of his jeremiads that I have a pretty good idea what his latest screed would say. It’s sad that he gets an MSM platform but that’s just what they do. Democrats in Disarray is one of their most evergreen narratives.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She has plenty of appeal in my book. And she won’t back down either. Bonus.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
she’s a pretty bog-standard Dem on I/P, and on FP in general as far as I know. I think the blowback you’re talking about was at the time of Boehner and Netanyahu’s “Fuck You, Obama” speech about the Iran deal. I would’ve liked to see more Dems boycott that speech, but to be perfectly honest I can’t now remember who did and who didn’t.
Frankensteinbeck
@trnc:
Hillary also proposed a transaction tax to stop microtransactions in the stock market. That would destroy one of the most abusive ways the rich get richer without providing any value. I particularly liked it, although it was just one of a swathe of banking and Wall Street regulations on her platform.
Tim C.
@trnc: This 1000 times. We *must* go the full Gahndi here. The total disadvantage we have with the media cannot be understated. They are desperate to bothsides this; every idiot ‘acarchist’ who thinks breaking windows helps, everyonewho thinks matching violence with violence does any good in this situation isn’t helping.
magurakurin
@Another Scott: Me, too. I like Sen. Gillibrand a lot. I especially like that she has voted no on every Trump appointment. also,too the comment “if we’re not helping people we should go the fuck home.”
ArchTeryx
@trnc: Well, I wasn’t there when this all went down. I was a lot younger (grad student fresh out of college) and a crapload more paranoid and hot-blooded when I last lived down there in 1993-1995. I felt surrounded the whole time I lived in C’ville – the city itself seemed safe enough but it was surrounded by the most vile racist crackers imaginable. In the 90s, though, they never got emboldened enough to actually hold a torchlight KKK rally in downtown!
That’s entirely new. I know how my 90s self would have reacted. These days I’m marginally less temperamental, but as my occasional screed here shows, I’m still mad as hell and long past taking it from these monsters.
magurakurin
@Frankensteinbeck: and she proposed it as a way to stop those transactions…not as source of income. This is smart. Sanders proposed a tax on all stock transactions as a funding source for free college. dumb. what happens to your funding source when the micro trading stops. but that is all ancient history now…
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: Truth and I agree.
zhena gogolia
@Raoul:
I am loving Andy Slavitt.
WaterGirl
@ArchTeryx: I read a comment from you on a thread that was too old… but I am sorry that what happened yesterday triggered a return to the trauma of having been run over. That’s horrible.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I have a story about that (almost), but it’s really a “I met Steve Doocy a million years ago and he was a dick even then” story.
debbie
From Southern Poverty Law Center.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin:
I didn’t see Warren as doing anything wrong during the campaign. I felt bad for her when the Wilmerites booed her at the convention — it threw her off.
Omnes Omnibus
@ArchTeryx:
Not helpful.
burnspbesq
@trnc:
I have two major bones to pick with Warren.
(1) Democrats go to “Wall Street” for money for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks. That’s the reality. Dodd-Frank shows that Dems can take their money without kowtowing to their agenda. You can decry it all you want, but until the system changes, not taking their money is unilateral disarmament, and unilateral disarmament is always a losing strategy.
(2) She really lost me when she went after Mary Jo White over the nature of her husband’s law practice. That’s bull. At the time the job came open, White was clearly the best available choice for SEC chair, based on her record as U.S. Attorney for SDNY. Warren is non-rational on issues related to the revolving door.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Another Scott: Yes, 2016 was a fluke. One positive factor that will make 2018 and 2020 different is that no one will have baggage like Hillary’s. (I want to respectfully make this observation, as an enthusiastic Hillary supporter, who’s still rocking the bumper sticker, etc.) Twenty-five years of unfair treatment, hostility, innuendo, etc adds up. It’s not fair, it didn’t make me question supporting her (as her positives outweighed any negatives), but it was real. We can put it behind us. And we can keep it from happening to our next nominee. (…who could be nearly any Democrat, so keep it positive!) And fuck the butthurt bros who piled on and are still happy to bash Democrats today. We’ll make them irrelevant.
Cheryl Rofer
This is very good.
Doug R
@magurakurin: If we go by ACTUAL accomplishments, Warren in ONE term has done more in one term than Sanders in his service since the late Mesozoic.
Baud
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
It’s not wrong, but at some point we should recognize that her baggage was our baggage too.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Freddie wrote a really good (IMO) piece about how people should take part in things instead of cynically (and safely) criticizing things. I liked it. It seemed truly original to me. I liked it enough I gave it to my 14 year old to read because I like that about him- how he’s on board. They feel they have to be sophisticated and say “these classes are dumb and I’m only going along because I’m checking boxes towards my REAL goal” or “I don’t care if people like me” when they do care, a lot, that sort of thing. I hope he stays as open as he is. He’s IN things, you know what I mean? No affected “distance” where he’s observing and criticizing. It’s risky but the alternative is so grim. I took an eastern religions course once and it’s along the lines of “do what you are doing” because what you are doing IS the thing. You know, less inarticulate than that but the general gist :)
I felt disloyal to BJ liking a Freddie piece because I agree he can be insufferable but this was good :)
ArchTeryx
@WaterGirl: Yeah. Mine was at least an accident – the poor teacher that did it never really recovered, even though I survived and recovered for the most part. Someone using a car as a deadly weapon always brings it back, though, and makes me angry like few other things can.
schrodingers_cat
@ArchTeryx: Well not just MSM, boring fucking Freddie gets a FP perch on this blog and rikyrah who brings truth and clarity to the comment section every single day doesn’t.
ETA: Who can forget the other liberation bro with an FP perch, E D Kain.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Now is the first time in my life that I honestly think I could personally do a better job as President than the current occupant. The last several Republicans–they were bad, but this is an inherently difficult job and I don’t have infinite stamina or patience; I’d be better than them on policy preferences, but probably not at executing the office and making the day-to-day decisions. I’d be a disaster.
But, yeah, I could do the President job better than Trump. Most people could.
Suzanne
@magurakurin:
Agreed. By my nature, I am a person who thinks far more about actualization than about ideas. I firmly believe that the best ideas don’t mean shit unless you have a good plan to make them happen. The American people, on both the left and the right, don’t really seem to understand what the president really does all day. Crafting a good policy to fix a problem is infinitely more difficult than identifying said problem. Too much of the Progressive Left seems to think that all it takes is support of a good idea to make the good idea happen. I am more sympathetic to them than I am to the Right, because their goals are better, but they don’t get what they want because they suck at actualizing anything.
Yay, you got people to show up for a protest. But you didn’t get them to show up to vote the right way.
ArchTeryx
@Omnes Omnibus: No argument from me there. It isn’t. But it is cathartic.
zhena gogolia
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
This is why I’m thinking Gillibrand. I know, I know, Wall Street, see burns above.
Another Scott
@burnspbesq: Thanks.
As I said earlier, I like Warren. But Wilmer has shown us how dangerous it is to invest too much in some particular [person] and thinking they are automatically right about everything. Purity kills. Good politicians figure out what voters want and then jump in front. “Now make me do it!” We can’t treat the people we like as if they’re always right- we have to convince them to support policies that we want.
The challenge is, figuring out how to do that without driving other people away…
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
@Bupalos: Re Kay:
Second that! I look forward to your comments. Keep at it.
WaterGirl
@debbie: She had me at (almost) hello when I saw her very early on and they were baiting her to criticize Obama or the democrats for something-or-other, and she said:
A whole lotta people would benefit from learning that one simple thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ll back you up on that. The shit flung at HRC was overwhelmingly bullshit, from the left and the right, but for reasons, misogyny and others, beyond my understanding, she is walking, breathing opposite of Teflon politicians. Everything sticks to her. Including shit her husband did that glides off him. It was amazing and bewildering and enraging to watch.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Stopped clock, analogy? He was anti Obama during his reelection campaign IIRC, I didn’t take anything he wrote seriously after that.
Baud
@Kay: We all have our faults, Kay.
Amaranthine RBG
That was a hell of a speech.
I thought that Warren had done her calculations and decided she would never win the Presidency so she was going to concentrate on being a Senator.
But now, I think that’s no longer the case.
Very exciting. She would make an excellent president and she is clearly not beholden to Wall Street.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: FdB is insufferable, but he is on my list of people I read occasionally to challenge my own thinking and avoid falling into an echo chamber mindset.
ArchTeryx
@schrodingers_cat: Neither of them are FPers any more, though, if I recall correctly. They certainly don’t show up on the FP email list now. Our bloghosts make mistakes from time to time but those mistakes usually rectify themselves and don’t turn into Evergreen Narratives, they way they do in the MSM.
Amaranthine RBG
@zhena gogolia:
Worse than wall street – she made her legal bones representing Phillip Morris and then Altria.
She has no moral core whatsoever.
trnc
@Kay:
Yes and no – he does compare himself to Obama, but has to make up stuff about Obama (or rely on what others have made up about Obama) in order to compare favorably.
Patricia Kayden
@debbie: We’re willing. Let’s do our best to pull others along.
Matt McIrvin
@magurakurin: That’s a general problem with Pigouvian taxes intended to modify behavior: they usually get sold as a source of revenue, and the goal of behavior modification and the goal of raising revenue are at odds with one another. That’s why Al Gore’s proposed carbon tax was revenue-neutral, progressively rebated to the people.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodingers_cat: and Bernard Finel, who I think kept posting under another nym after he got tired of being mocked as a Front Pager.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: IMHO the same thing happened to Al Gore. I still mourn the lost Gore presidency.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: And Kerry. Have we forgotten swiftboating?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
But she’s never won an election before. She was appointed and then ran unopposed. When she tried running for Ohio Sec of State she lost to her opponent by 25 points. Nina Turner has no credibility in my eyes.
trnc
@burnspbesq: Good points.
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
I can’t get it to load — is it my all-time favorite, “Don’t Be A Sucker”?
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Amaranthine RBG:
Everyone deserves legal representation, even the worst murderer. I don’t fault Gillibrand.
Another Scott
@Amaranthine RBG: OMG!! Warren got nearly $650k from Wall Street™ in the 2016 cycle!!
She’s clearly in the Pocket of Wall Street™!!11
:-/
It’s tiresome.
Politicians get donations from people who work in every industry.
Until we have public funding (which I support, but the devil’s in the details (e.g. what are the standards of who qualifies, and what do you do about the independently wealthy?)), politicians have to raise money, and most of it will come from people who are wealthy or at least have high incomes.
Hillary wasn’t in Wall Street’s pocket.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Do you know if she has any interest in having FP keys? Do you know if she has been offered keys?
Betty Cracker
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: She’s also a giant drama llama.
Doug R
So a joke about *anders puts me in moderation?
magurakurin
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
amen.
and I agree with what you said about Clinton. it was unfair, but real. sadly, yes.
trnc
@WaterGirl: That’s great. I hadn’t heard that one.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: When was this, I don’t recall that name.
@ArchTeryx: This blog’s audience is more discerning than the average MSM viewer. Most of the FP choices are pretty darn great. Also too.
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: No idea on either. I just think she would be a great addition, this is just my opinion though. That and she or many other commenters would have been better FPers that Freddie the Bore. They offer a more thoughtful and cogent analysis than the constant whining about “Girls” that FDB used to do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Oh, thank you! I’ve been wishing for a gender-neutral way of calling out the drama junkies.
I guess “drama junkies” would’ve worked. But it doesn’t rhyme.
ETA:
I couldn’t say> The older i get the more time is a flat circle, or something. three or four years ago?
Mnemosyne
@Amaranthine RBG:
Gosh, what a shock — the misogynist who hates all female politicians hates Gillibrand, too.
And, no, holding up your fetish object of Elizabeth Warren doesn’t inoculate you. She’s your
BlackWoman Friend that you wave around to try and prove that you can’t be a misogynist since you like one (1) female politician.Go crawl back under your rock now, asshole.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Also, he manages to pick someone whose behavior indicates that she has little interest in running.
Doug R
Oops my stoopid phone added a “p” to my email address. Is that what happened in that Moscow hotel room?
Baud
I’d like the keys to the blog.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Betty Cracker:
I remember reading here (Kay?) that she had a chip on her shoulder from not getting enough aid from the state Democratic party in her Sec of State Run.
Baud
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: She may have a legitimate grievance but she’s taken it much too far if that’s what’s driving her behavior. We all have grievances.
Cheryl Rofer
@Mnemosyne: An excerpt from “Don’t Be a Sucker.” I wasn’t aware of that. Very much worth watching today.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I believe that is the first sign that you shouldn’t have them.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Baud:
I want to be an FP’er too! If appointed, I promise to be the dictator this blog needs, not the one it wants and will ban all dissident idiots like NR, goblue72, etc.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: Oh, I clearly shouldn’t have them.
trnc
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: I don’t know much about Turner, so I have no idea whether I would ultimately support her, but I still consider it a win to run unopposed because it means that no one who might run against her thought they even had a chance of winning. It at least meets my dream constitutional amendment that a president serve at least 2 years of an elected position in municipal, state or federal govt. to be eligible.
Baud
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
But that’s the dictator we want!
Jeffro
Love this: the Mooch is now available to give president* Trumpov advice!
Can we get a response on that from Steve Bannon, or is his mouth full at the moment?
How about David Duke? What does he think of all this walk-back? Inquiring minds want to know!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: You have my vote, Mahatma Baud.
magurakurin
@Baud: I’d give them to you if I had them…watch you drive off the cliff like Major Kong
FlipYrWhig
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Clearly a few more mailers would have made up the 25 points she lost by.
Mnemosyne
@Cheryl Rofer:
Trivia for movie fans: my favorite character actor of the period, Felix Bressart, has a small role as a dissident professor who gets dragged off by the Nazis in the middle of his anti-Nazi lecture. If you’ve seen any Lubitsch films like Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, or To Be or Not to Be, you’ll recognize Bressart.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Baud:
Yeah. Totally agree. That still doesn’t excuse the morons egging her on to run. It’s the height of hypocrisy to criticize the Democrats of putting up unelectable people to run when doing it for real. Dudes like NR have no right to lecture us about winning elections while supporting Turner.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Baud: I knew it was bullshit. I called it as such from the beginning. But TV and print media ran with it for 25 years and there are a lot of fools out there.
Amaranthine RBG
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
Oh, I absolutely agree that accused murderers deserve representation. I have represented them.
But there is a world of difference between defending people against the legal machinery of the State and making a fortune working for corporations that are engaged in the business of killing their customers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: @? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?: Ohio (with all due respect to the many fine Buckeyes who post here) is a flashpoint for me in the whole narrative of how we need to rebuild the party from Bernie out. You don’t get a much better incarnation of everything Sanders stands against than Rob Portman, and he not only won over those doughty, rusty heartlanders, he did so with the endorsement of the Teamsters (old school hard hats whose votes Obama and Clinton allegedly ‘rejected’, somehow), I’m pretty sure he outpolled trump.
FlipYrWhig
@trnc: OTOH if your big crusade is that running loud-and-proud left excites people and wins elections, it would be nice to see that you’ve walked the walk too, and she had a chance to try it and failed ignominiously. I put her in the Weiner-Grayson category: witty and caustic without a lot of there there. And the two of them at least won a few races along the way before descending into self-parody and becoming cartoon versions of themselves.
sdhays
@Kay:
It’s easy to forget that this is significant part of how Trump got elected. After the Access Hollywood tape and after Bannon took over as campaign chairman, for a good chunk of October they got him to shut up (relatively), sticking to the script, staying off Twitter or not saying anything “interesting” (well, fewer in number). It gave the campaign a surreal sense of somewhat-normalcy (to the extent that was possible), and I don’t think that was an insignificant component of Trump stumbling across the finish line in the electoral college. It gave Republicans that were uncomfortable supporting Trump just enough space to delude themselves into thinking that all of their reservations regarding this guy were overstated.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
My edit didn’t go through:
Turner did win a city council seat, which she had to resign to accept the appointment to the Ohio Senate. Still, state politics is a step above local, let alone national. I don’t believe Turner is ready for that level, regardless (president)
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Portman is such a wan, flavorless nonentity. I don’t understand how he’s ever won anything.
Amaranthine RBG
@Another Scott:
I didn’t mention Clinton.
But since you brought her up – if you think there is no difference between Clinton and Warren’s positions regarding Wall Street, Banking, Consumer Rights, etc. you haven’t been paying attention.
But this doesn’t really matter since Clinton won’t be running again, thank God.
So it’s now a question of which plausible Democratic contenders have the least objectionable positions and who is the least morally compromised.
FlipYrWhig
@sdhays: That’s not how I remember it. I remember that his closing argument was barnstorming the Midwest railing against immigrants.
Kay
@? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?:
There is a long running belief that the state Dems are an “old boy” network and that they marginalize new or different people. There’s truth to it. I have no idea if that’s what happened with her but I would expect it DID happen.
I think it because of this person:
Chandra is really talented. He ran in a primary for AG and the Dems had a dope they had pre-picked and the dope won and then had to resign in disgrace. The establishment Democrats favored the dumber and less talented lawyer, a lawyer who had ethics issues with the Ohio bar when he ran. There are a small percentage of lawyers who run into trouble with the bar. You really have to WORK to find one and run him :)
So Chandra was at the national convention in ’08 and I went to sit next to him because he’s interesting and he’s a truly great election lawyer and I’m interested in election law. He was bitter. Slumped down in his seat, listing his (legit) grievances. So it happens and it seems to happen to candidates who are, oh, of Indian descent or African American, just mysteriously. Chandra got over it. He ran for local office and won and I suspect his law practice is thriving but they did lock him out even when it meant backing a fucking corrupt moron.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Amaranthine RBG: Warren made her name in consumer rights, Hillary made her name in human rights – both are important. Hillary has always supported Warren’s efforts. We can and will work together – playing up (or making up) disagreements is not helpful.
Another Scott
@Amaranthine RBG: Oh well, back in the pie filter.
Cheers,
Scott.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: I mean, I get this, but there’s something a trifle ironic in complaining that your political future is being hampered by your need to win over too many risk-averse sticks in the mud who believe dumb things. That’s kinda what politics IS.
sdhays
@FlipYrWhig: Yes, he was still awful but it was in a more normal campaign way, not the stupid chaos that would typically erupt. There was a more competent focus. For a few weeks, they were able to make him seem like he wasn’t completely the lazy, incompetent boob he actually is (if you were looking for ways to delude your self of that, which a lot of Republicans were).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@sdhays: My recollections match yours. The story was that Conway helped keep him from making any looney, personal attacks in the last weeks, especially at the Obamas, which I just kind of suspect the Obamas might could have been trying to provoke him to do.
Gravenstone
@sylvania: Hi Derf. Too stupid to keep from falling into your old verbal tics, as usual.
FlipYrWhig
@sdhays: They switched from lazy, incompetent, and squabbling (back) to hateful and demagogic — and it was a step up. SMH.
? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?
@Kay:
I know the Democrats in the Ohio Senate unanimously voted to appoint her to the Senate seat
Ksmiami
@Starfish: just kicked in I live in dallas so uplift means a lot
sdhays
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’s still breathtaking that his “campaign manager” said on national television that she controlled his stupid impulses the same way she manipulated her young daughter, and the pundit class chuckled and breathed a sigh of relief and Kellyanne wasn’t sacked for being so publicly insulting to her boss, the man who thought he was fit to be President.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@FlipYrWhig: Ha, that’s why we can’t have nice things. But seriously, I hope some of those barriers will come down with the influx of candidates and activists of all stripes pouring into local party orgs. We need competent leaders with genuine values who can bring people together.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
Right, but there should be SOME quality eval, right? Some merit -based analysis? Imagine being Chandra in this contest:
It’s not just that the promoted the white guy. They promoted from like the bottom 5% of lawyers. It’s insulting. It didin’t even work as politics! 17 “scandal plagued months later” dopey there had to resign because he’s married and he was having these ridiculous pizza parties with female employees he was sexually harrassing. It was SO BAD. He’s Trumpian-level bad.
I just bet there’s a story there w/Turner. I was thinking someone in Clinton-world might have pissed her off because she was initially on some kind of Clinton steering committee. Something happened between 2015 and 2016.
WaterGirl
@Baud: are we airing grievances? Oh, good. I am running low on my snacks for the train. The teeny tiny bottle of rum hats is nearly gone, and I have only two mint meltaways left, and another 3 hours before my second train departs. And I am short on capital letters because I am writing on my iPad.
(Oh,wait, I see that my trusty iPad is supplying caps. Go apple,)
Edit rum hats should be Rumchata. I am now adding autocorrect to my list of grievances.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I see why the intra fights are interesting and I get into them to a certain extent but I’m not really suited to them temperamentally. Where I usually end up is LITERALLY palling around with “both sides” :)
I think people see it as transactional, people who don’t like me, but I honestly am not that strategic. It just doesn’t hold my attention long. I went thru this once already with what I think of as “the Kucinich people”. It bored me that they always felt they had to tell me that he was their dream date, that they were reluctantly compromising. I don’t think he’s that great and I don’t care about their high standards. “Good! Good for you! Gosh, you’re MUCH more principled than I am! Now can I go? I’m nodding off here.”
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Agreed that we all have frustrating stories to tell of unqualified and inferior people climbing in the world and qualified, superior ones being left behind. I just don’t know how to fix it.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
This turned out okay because the person got what was coming to him, right? That story is important- the one that goes where the unqualified person is revealed and disgraced- in a “meritocracy” that has to happen or people will stop trying.
“Stopping trying” is where the far Right and far Left are headed, to me. If the game is rigged then no one should play.
If you think Trump voters are bad wait until they are disappointed Trump voters. This is the high point. They haven’t come down yet. Ugly. It’ll be ugly.
Ruckus
@tobie:
I agree with this. How many of the splinter groups have an electable candidate? I’d bet few of them. They are rebel rousers not worker bees. We need worker bees. Someone who is energized and not just in it to remove republicans from office. There are plenty of people who qualify but it is risky running for office. You spend 1-2 yrs doing so and then find out that you win or lose in one night. If you lose you have to find a full time job. Again. If you win running for the house you have to do it all over again in 2 yrs. It’s not really conductive to what a lot of people think of as a normal life.
Starfish
@Ksmiami: Thank you!
Sab
@FlipYrWhig: Superpacs ran scorching ads against his opponent (Ted Strickland) for six months before the election. Also he (Portman) has never had a public opinion on anything so voters wrongly assume he is some sort of moderate.
J R in WV
@Mnemosyne:
Well said. I’m glad I pied A RBG, but I like to read what others have said about the comments. Like x-rays of the comment, you never see it, but you learn about it.
Daddio7
So you win the vote, how do you go about reeducating us? Do we all have to wear a yellow R and get shoved onto cattle cars?