GOP Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi says he will resign in April due to health problems. https://t.co/xGkxGTJbxr
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 5, 2018
This cannot be regarded as a real surprise, since Politico was willing to say Cochran was “frail and disoriented… needed a staffer to remind him where the Senate chamber is located” all the way back in October. But it is a disruption, especially to the GOP. Per the Washington Post:
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) will resign from the Senate on April 1, he announced Monday, ending a four-decade congressional career and triggering a fall election that could carve new divisions in the Republican Party and put the GOP Senate majority at greater risk.
Cochran, 80, has been suffering from health problems in recent months. He missed several weeks in the Senate last fall while recuperating from a urinary tract infection. He has appeared frail since his return and has been keeping a low public profile.
“I regret my health has become an ongoing challenge,” Cochran said in a statement. “I intend to fulfill my responsibilities and commitments to the people of Mississippi and the Senate through the completion of the 2018 appropriations cycle, after which I will formally retire from the U.S. Senate.”
First elected to the Senate in 1978 after a stint in the House, Cochran is one of the longest-serving members of Congress in history. He is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a powerful panel with jurisdiction over government spending. When he steps down, the chairmanship is expected to pass to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who is next in the line of seniority…
Shelby, 83, went out of his way to vouch for his own health. “I’ve still got a lot of energy,” he said.
Beyond shaking up the Senate, Cochran’s exit will affect the battle for the Senate majority. It gives Republicans another seat to defend at a moment of great uncertainty about the midterms…
Unlike the regular election this year for Republican Sen. Roger Wicker’s seat, candidates for Cochran’s seat would not compete in a primary, and if no one got more than 50 percent of the vote in November, the top two finishers would compete in a runoff.
Chris McDaniel, a hard-right Republican state senator who lost to Cochran in a nasty 2014 primary, announced last week that he would run against Wicker. But he left the door open to switching to a race for Cochran’s seat if one were to take place…
McDaniel represents perhaps the last best hope for the insurgent wing of the GOP, in which former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and his allies have been plotting to shake up the Republican order by elevating candidates hostile to McConnell…
This is treating McDaniel’s history very, very delicately; CNN referred to his 2014 Cochran challenge as “the nation’s ugliest primary”, with cause. If you don’t think it can get worse than Roy Moore, well…
The 2018 GOP, ladies and gentlemen. pic.twitter.com/quCWpiScDy
— Will Truman (@trumwill) March 6, 2018
cain
If we flip another one, things will definitely move to Defcon 5
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
It is to laugh. Gerontocracy is the operative word?
efgoldman
There must be an anti-Semitic, racist, pedophile, rapist the RWNJs could run. But will s/he ooze to the surface in time?
However, absent a Roy Moore situation, odds are really, really slim.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Roy Moore may be looking up nearest U-Haul outlet as we speak.
cain
Maybe Roy Moore will run for the seat! Yes, I suppose it could be a slim chance.. but we did flip a seat and we should see if we can get people out and flip it and give the Republicans some serious problems.
GregB
@efgoldman:
Have you seen the caliber of these nitwits the GOP is pouring out into the world? Don’t count them out on nominating a serial rapist, wife beating peeping Tom Nazi.
efgoldman
@NotMax:
He’d have to rent a hitch and a horse trailer, too. And make a reservation for his Jew lawyer.
Mary G
Isn’t McDaniel the loon whose supporter filmed Thad Cochran’s wife in the assisted living facility, trying to get her to say Cochran was cheating on her with his aide?
efgoldman
@GregB:
Obligatory
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman:
Hey, read the McDaniels story I linked! That last 2014 run involved breaking into nursing home to take pictures of a patient in the advanced stages of dementia (Thad Cochran’s wife, whom McDaniel accused him of cheating on), the subsequent suicide of the blogger responsible for that break-in, accusations of ratfvckery on both sides, a desperate last-minute bid by Cochran to get African-American Democrats to vote for him (it worked!), and national agitation about thimblerigging from the Wingnut Wurlitzer that went on for more than a month. Didn’t want to waste pixels re-sharing it all on the front page, but if McDaniels *does* decide to jump in (and is there a stronger motivation for such men than vengeance?) it will most surely be a campaign to keep every GOP operative who isn’t already chugging Maalox sending through a bulk order on Amazon Prime…
Doug R
Hmm-looks like a variation on the jungle primary. If Democrats stay disciplined and Republicans run all kinds of nuts, the Dem could end up in position 2, perfect for the run-off.
efgoldman
@Anne Laurie:
Isn’t that pretty much bog standard Ms’ssippi politics, no matter which party was nominally in charge, going back before Faulkner? Dirty, nasty, vile, evil, but i don’t think anybody ever said McDaniel was a pedophile.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
Would sending Levi Sanders as a campaign surrogate or something help Dems win? Perhaps he could bemoan the loss of filling station jobs.
/s
jl
Since it’s an open thread, I heard on the radio news that Nunberg said, after all the fuss he made, that, gosh golly, maybe he would cooperate with the Mueller investigation and respond to the subpoena.
So, maybe the guy was stewed the gills today during his serial TV news freak shows. Or maybe he’s just as feckless as the guy he used to work for and will move on to another theme in an ongoing fugue state tomorrow.
? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:
That should be filling station attendant jobs. D’oh!
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: Don’t make me read Faulkner. Fucking poseur…. “Jewel’s mom is a horse, ” my ass.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito)
A Yankee Jewish (ostensible) Democrat would just wow ’em in the Magnolia State.
:)
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: I think Goku has had a stroke or some other brain injury.
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman:
Dig deeper, journos. Trust me, there’s a serious whacked-out fetish in that creep.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus:
I saw what you did there.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito)
Fuel transfer associates.
:)
efgoldman
@FlyingToaster:
Been waiting for you to be here. Arsenal Street open yet? You don’t live on that side of the Square if I remember correctly.
Corner Stone
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: I am wondering. I have wonders.
efgoldman
@Omnes Omnibus:
Dirty little secret: I never read Faulkner (or Silas Marner, or Moby Dick…..) I was and am really good about grabbing context from discussion, enough to write a credible blue book or short paper.
mike in dc
Just read that Mike Espy is interested in running for the seat. Is he a good candidate, or are there better potential ones in MS? I’m poorly versed in Mississippi Dem politics.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman:
Yeah, but one of the 2014 sub-stories was good ol’ Thad reminiscing about his happy childhood farm days “doing indecent things with barnyard animals, y’all probably know what I mean”. The ‘scandal’ (not so much the bestiality, as the suggestion that talking about it meant Cochran was losing his facilities) couldn’t get traction, with all the other charges & counter-charges being thrown. Probably should’ve regarded it as a prequel to the Trump candidacy…
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Given his age, it’s more likely to be booze. Or the demon weed. Or both together.
hellslittlestangel
McDaniel: Hold my sippy-cup.
efgoldman
@hellslittlestangel:
Thanks for the good late-night laugh.
Anne Laurie
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:
Is he gonna campaign for one of the Republicans? Because I can see that happening, in this Year of Our (Dark) Lord, 2018.
(Been resisting the challenge to write a post about Sanders Jr, because eeugh. Same reason I don’t waste pixels on Eric Trump or Bristol Palin — they can’t help their defective upbringings. Also, he just doesn’t deserve the attention, unless he wins the primary, or flames out in some particularly
amusingnewsworthy fashion.)Yutsano
@mike in dc: Link plz?
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman: It opened at 4; I had tweeted that it was still closed at 2, but it opened up around 4:10 (according to WBZ) and I went through it at 4:30 and tweeted the update to Universal Hub.
Some wags didn’t understand what happened. A pole in front of Lexus (at School & Arsenal) (opposite the Army labs) had gone down ~ 11:40am Friday. About a block outbound is that set of one-story shops (tofu maker, restaurant, tile store) in the 200 block, followed by what used to be wasteland and is now 3 mixed-use apartment blocks, some under construction, all the way to Irving. ALL of the poles in front of the 1-story block went down at 12:02. 8 poles, snapped at between the 2 and 4 ft height. They took with them the brand new metal lally column light poles, again at that height. Some serious 160mph downburst hit one or two of them, and took the rest along.
They had the wooden poles replaced Sunday around 4pm, but the debris was still all over the road. They finally had the wires strung and working at 4. But the 5 streetlight poles are still missing, and there were cherry pickers (5) and cops (3) on both sides of the road when I went through. Plus I saw that the power had gone out over on North Beacon around 8:30. So there’s still a fuckton of work for Neversource to complete.
Mike J
@mike in dc: Espy is a good guy. Don’t know anything about other candidates.
Steve in the ATL
@efgoldman: Silas Marner was god awful. I’m convinced it was written to make eight graders hate reading. There are millions of better choices. No idea why schools still push that garbage.
Though it’s better than Ayn Rand.
FlyingToaster
@efgoldman:
I live in Bemis, right below the old Brown School.
WarriorGirl’s school is opposite the Mt. Auburn Cemetery’s greenhouse. So I usually take Mt. Auburn in the mornings (after circumventing the Squayah), and Arsenal in the afternoon. Except last Friday, and on my way back from lunch today.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
And yet Wilmer won’t leave.
Doug R
@Steve in the ATL: I read Have Space Suit, Will Travel on my own in grade 8.
psycholinguist
@mike in dc: He would be a great candidate. He was a rep for a number of years, agg sec under Clinton, has a very good reputation in the state, his son played for Ole Miss football, and he is networked. If that crazy fucker McDaniels gets in, he could really pull down some of the alt right white vote, and if he ended up with Espy as the last two standing in a runoff…. MS is about 36% AA. that’s about as good as it could get right now i think.
mike in dc
@Yutsano:
http://www.startribune.com/the-latest-mcdaniel-mum-on-run-for-cochran-s-senate-seat/475881703/
(((CassandraLeo)))
@NotMax: @Omnes Omnibus: @Mnemosyne: His comment closed off with “/s”, which I understand to be a marker of sarcasm. So just Poe’s Law in action, I think.
efgoldman
@FlyingToaster:
I knew the area well (we talked about it). i assumed by now the empty spaces and the one-story businesses would have been gone for development, probably condos.
We voted at the Brown school when we lived there. Daughter was 11-ish months old, it was snowing, we pulled her in a toboggan. We lived on Bromfield St. Main St to Evans, Left on Nash, right on Bromfield (I had to look it up)
Ninedragonspot
@Steve in the ATL: I once listened to Silas Marner in audiobook form on a long drive through the Midwest. Seemed fine to me. Maybe it benefits from being read by a sympathetic actor.
efgoldman
@Ninedragonspot:
I don’t believe in either burning or trashing books, but I’d make an exception….
It could benefit from being buried deep on the remainder shelf.
Yutsano
@mike in dc: Neat. I Googled him. He sounds solid.
Achrachno
This is great news, and boosts my already optimistic outlook. Let’s win this one! I’ll bet even many southern repubs have noticed by now that their guys are bums — and may be getting discouraged. Espy sounds good, potential winner.
Mnemosyne
@efgoldman:
Anyone who whines about Silas Marner never had to read The Deerslayer. And I have Mark Twain to back me up on this.
Ninedragonspot
@efgoldman: How about Silas Marner: The Opera
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
I’m with you 100% on James Fenimore Cooper.
joel hanes
@Mnemosyne:
“… saunters along with a complacent, monkey-with-a-parasol air”
Mnemosyne
@joel hanes:
“Bless your heart, Cooper hadn’t any more invention than a horse; and don’t mean a high-class horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse.”
Mnemosyne
@joel hanes:
As I recall (and I may be burnishing the memory to make it a better story), I discovered Twain’s two essays while I was struggling my way through Cooper as a high school sophomore and was able to use them to persuade my teacher that I should not be forced to read any more Cooper.
If I further recall correctly, this was the same teacher who introduced me to the works of P.G. Wodehouse in AP English two years later. Best term paper assignment EVER.
rikyrah
The Dems better seriously run someone
Sab
@Mnemosyne: I kind of liked Cooper, but I understand your POV. Love that your teacher did also.
NotMax
@(((CassandraLeo)))
Just yanking his chain after the whole Stalin contretemps earlier today downstairs.
Aleta
From Vox Jan 11, 2017: “There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Tillerson lied” at his Senate confirmation hearing.
Aimai
@FlyingToaster: ?? What school s that?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Aimai:
Atrium School on Grove Street, probably.
Just one more canuck
@? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: 83 is the new 30
PaulWartenberg
The April 1st retirement date worries me.
Dupe1970
I think there should be a max age requirement for all Federal elected positions. Too many of these politicians are mentally failing in office.
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: I actually read and enjoyed Cooper’s first novel, “Precaution”. Per the ever-useful Wikipedia:
So I guess we have the woman to blame! //
But, yeah…enjoyed “Precaution”, tho’ I don ‘t remember a damn thing about it now, but yow…could *not* get into “The Deerslayer”.