In statement, Brazile says "I know I'm going to get criticized from my friends in the progressive movement" pic.twitter.com/VBP4ouQUy5
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) March 18, 2019
Is that what we learned from the 2016 election? I thought we learned that Fox pumped up bullshit that hurt Democrats and hid anything that could hurt Trump. But I’m not getting a six figure check from them. Perhaps that would alter my perspective.
matt
Well now, I think that should make things clear for everyone, she’s following the Caddell and Schoen Vichy Democrat career track.
brantl
If she presents any reasonable defense of Democrats they will muzzle/yank her.
Keith P.
@brantl: Or book her to get talked over on Tucker
germy
Her friends in the progressive community?
In her book she takes credit for suggesting Joe Lieberman as a running mate for Gore.
Salty Sam
Ummm, Donna, Alan Colmes would like to have a word with you…
Baud
She lost me when she wrote her book. No surprise here. She’s chasing the money.
germy
Gin & Tonic
Can I say “it’s all about the Benjamins” – or is that no longer allowed?
JR
The lesson learned (vis-a-vis Brazile and her fellow travelers) is that the party needed to trim the fat.
WereBear
Color me unsurprised, as my assessment of Ms. Brazile’s advocacy was not stellar.
I also must take issue with her ship-jumping timing. It looks like a lifeboat from her railing. I’m sure she will make more in a month that I do in a year.
But I have never seen a token who does not suffer from crippling anxiety or some other form of devil’s bargain.
Brickley Paiste
Yes, just like the Colmes of Colmes and Hannity brought a “progressive voice” to Fox.
JFC
Oh, and I’m sure since her motivation is solely to bring a “progressive voice” to Fox, I’m sure that she is doing this pro-bono? Right???
Jeffro
@germy: it’d odd – but entirely appropriate – to think of Fox News as merely a ‘gateway drug’ to the harder stuff
p.a.
She’s irrelevant to progressivism. Now she’s just a puppet for Murdoch presenting her as representative of ‘the left’.
$$$
Brachiator
It’s a dirty job, but nobody has to do it.
The right wing lunatic fringe apparently wants to clutch harder to the crazy.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: A couple of months ago I was having my car fixed, and the waiting room in the shop had its TV tuned to OANN (One America News Network.) It was genuinely frightening. There was nobody else there, and they left the remote someplace reachable, so I changed the channel, but man, that station is whack.
Renie
I guess no other network would hire her. What a sell-out.
germy
@Gin & Tonic: I wonder if another customer had selected that channel. Or was it the management?
FlipYrWhig
By “with just as much New Orleans hot sauce as folks expect” does she mean with none?
Raoul Paste
“my friends in the progressive movement…”
Who might that be? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
kindness
If Donna said that then I will surmise Donna has no real friends. Real friends don’t let friends work at Fox News.
MattF
Every con job involves a ‘relationship’ between a con artist and a victim. The best con artists (e.g., Trump) have figured out how to get their victims to stand up, wave their arms and announce ‘I’m a victim’.
dmbeaster
Frankly, if FOX wanted to pay me money to punch them in the eye every night on their own show, great. But she will not do that, and her track records suggests she is willing to compromise her marginal liberalism for money. Did she ever explain why she thought it was a good idea to recommend Lieberman to Gore?
danielx
OT, but: is it sexist to refer to the president as a whiny little bitch?
brantl
@WereBear:
What about Clarence Thomas?
WereBear
@dmbeaster: A covert agent all this time?
Barbara
I don’t watch FoxNews so I will keep my powder dry, but one might say that hiring Donna Brazile is some evidence that the pressure being brought to bear on Roger Ailes’ jewel in the crown is having a certain amount of success. This might be a total phantom and Brazile just a token, but still, keep the pressure up!
enplaned
Apparently she needed a job. Or the attention. For some people, not being ignored is the overriding priority.
She’s already totally blown her credibility. This is more of the same, but she’ll collect some bucks in exchange for the last tattered shreds of her dignity.
Keith P.
@Gin & Tonic: “Benjamin’s” – yes
“Benyamin’s” – no
“Shekels” – no
guachi
Great pick up for Fox. They get a commentator that every viewer can dismiss out of hand. Has to be intentional.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
There’s a reason why I’ve called her Donna “Fucking” Brazille for the better part of two decades.
WereBear
He is NOT a happy man.
I saw him years ago in a 60 Minutes profile. He acts like someone under tremendous pressure. In unguarded moments, of course.
laura
@danielx: it fits the current incumbent….
Re Donna Brazile, she should have left it at “I’m thrilled to join fox news.” No one should doubt who someone is when they tell you who they are.
By their actions, we should Judge them.
Mandalay
Brazile always was a vile piece of work. Dumber than Louie Gohmert, an anvil around the neck of the Democratic Party, and a complete fraud.
Folks here who rant about how Sanders caused Clinton to lose the last election might ask themselves how many votes were lost by Brazile’s “Fuck you – I’m glad I did it!” response after she was caught feeding CNN debate questions to Clinton’s team.
She surely has enemies galore within the DNC, she was fired from CNN and MSNBC won’t touch her with a pole, so it’s off to Fox News?
There is no more odious DINO alive than Brazile. Good riddance.
Ohio Mom
Hey Brazile, we’re not your friends, and I don’t know if “criticize” is the right word. I think “condemn” is closer.
geg6
Since I was unaware of Ms. Brazile ever espousing anything progressive, I think she overstates how many people will be disappointed, let alone surprised, by this.
BruceFromOhio
Things to consider –
– As mentioned elsewhere, if Fox Propaganda would pay me to jab a nice pointy stick up the collective ass of the viewership on a daily basis, sign me up pronto and let’s get rolling;
– If her participation drives the lunatic fringe to loonier pastures and hurts ratings, bonus;
– How much she gains from this devils bargain depends on how much time passes until she either gets explicitly muzzled (“Ms. Brazile, we know it’s a story you want to follow, but you’re doing this other story instead,”) or insults the dumpster fire into a twatterstorm and loses the contract;
– Let’s see what she does with it: could be interesting, could be a train-wreck, could be a sell-out, won’t know till she tries. She starts taking potshots at the Dem women running for the presidential nomination, it will be clearly obvious.
One thing is absolutely certain, no fucking way in hell am I watching it first-hand. I don’t care if it’s an interview with Gaia, Mohammed, and the Dalai Lama sitting down for tea, these eyes do not see Fox Propaganda.
No One of Consequence
Wow.
That Juan Williams must be a helluva salesperson…
Good luck Donna, and save your money. Whatever self-worth you had before you made you most recent goof, will most assuredly be entirely dispersed by the time the Network realizes what it has done.
Invest in tattoo removal and diabetes care.
(Upon further consideration, I suppose I should be happy about this, because now no other network will have her on, and thus I should never encounter her again. So, win-win?)
– NOoC
Dog Mom
Good for me – My TV doesn’t get those channels – less risk I have to happen upon her noise.
matt
@Barbara: Nope. She helped the Republicans elect Trump last cycle and is seen as reliable enough to work in their propaganda shop is what this means.
trollhattan
No shit, Sherlock. If you think that innocculates you Donna, you’re sadly mistaken and your appalled “friends” are correct.
Looking forward to a thousand “Even the Liberal Democrat Donna Brazile…” quotes, and I hope you choke on each bitter paycheck.
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: That late into her career? Hell, she lost me when she “worked” for the Dems. She’s a bit of dim bulb, but just greedy enough to use her two functioning brain cells to default to throwing Dems under the bus while “earnestly attempting to understand the perspective of people across the aisle.” I’m saddened to read on this thread that so many still hold her in any esteem at all.
At least this latest stupidity should highlight what Brazile is all about. She’s all about Donna Brazile and Donna Brazile’s paycheck.
trollhattan
@Mandalay:
She’s not dumber than Gohmert because that’s literally not possible. She’s also glib and quick on her feet on camera, which is utterly un-Gohmertish. Hopefully this removes whatever last shred of legitimacy she’s proffered the last couple of years and the scales are removed from her remaining fans’ eyes. Remains to be seen how Fox packages her–I doubt she’s replacing Colmes at Hannity’s side. I might actually watch that.
chopper
she has friends in the progressive movement? when did this happen?!
gene108
A lot of older Dems, like Brazile, came up in a political culture, where “liberal” was literally a dirty word that you never wanted to be associated with and that could end up killing your electoral chances. Kerry moved away from it in 2004. Obama was careful to avoid the label in 2008.
I remember, when Air America was still a thing, and they came up with the term Progressive for someone, who supported liberal values, but it wasn’t the actual dirty word, so people could use it in public, without shame or killing their political careers.
Brazile is the old guard, which is witnessing a major rapid shift of their Democratic Party and the American electorate, and I don’t think they really know how to react. Their old conventional wisdom has grown stale. But they can’t let it go.
She’ll probably be just fine on Fox News, as that way they can say they are “Fair and Balanced”, while she can cling to the old ways of thinking that we shouldn’t do anything that can lead to being labeled as a liberal.
Jeffro
Donna B is a complete waste of time.
So is this, but as long as we’re talking about Fox ‘Gateway Drug’ News, at least you’ll get a chuckle out of the complete lack of self(ok, party) awareness here from a GOP hack: Why Beto O’Rourke is a Real Danger to American and Must Not Be Allowed Near the White House.
Seriously!
All right, let’s all pick our jaws up off the floor…
So y’all heard it here first from Steve Hilton of Fox ‘Gateway Drug’ News: Beto is corrupt, vain, and narcissistic, and he’d be DANGEROUS in the White Ho…LOLOL
How do these guys DO this, day in and day out?!?
joel hanes
@brantl:
What about Clarence Thomas?
Crippled by resentment. Oozes from every word of every public utterance.
Ryan
FOX News was created to be a safe space JFC!
joel hanes
@trollhattan:
not dumber than Gohmert because that’s literally not possible
Marsha Blackburn
Virginia Foxx
Matt Gaetz
Dan Patrick
Sid Miller
MattF
@Jeffro:
But he’s now on record saying that being corrupt, vain, and narcissistic is not a good thing.
Mandalay
@trollhattan:
I have to respectfully disagree. I find her slow and plodding on camera, and she comes across (to me) as being dumber than pigshit. Her TV interviews after she got caught feeding questions to the Clinton campaign were total train wrecks. She could have said nothing and just held up a cardboard sign saying “I’m obviously a liar and a hypocrite” and it would have been less damaging.
But what to expect of a corrupt grifter who oozes loser stink from every pore?
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Very good line.
Sewer work does pay rather well. The stench is horrendous though. And the rats and turds are really disgusting.
joel hanes
@gene108:
A lot of older Dems, like Brazile, came up in a political culture, where “liberal” was literally a dirty word
Some of us are even older, and wear “liberal” as the proud claim that it is.
Almost everything good about America is the result of the slow boring of hard boards by liberals.
https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/liberal-party-nomination-nyc-19600914
dww44
@danielx: Yes, yes it is. He’s more of a whiny pudgy bastard.
Who
@Jeffro: Not odd at all. The comments on their first article about the NZ massacre were filled with the same sense of celebration as on the 8chan board the terrorist had announced….minus the ‘chans pretend fig-leaf of fake meta-ironic ‘detachment’.
jc
What I’ve learned is, good riddance Donna. Please don’t pretend to your friends at Fox that you speak for Dems. The party is growing and moving on, and you’re old baggage best left behind at the last station.
dww44
@WereBear: You’re right. I’ve never thought about this before, but he really is an unhappy person. Why do you think that is? Is it because he inhabits a world that in many respects supports views that should be anathema to him as a Black person? Certainly a possibility given the reactionary views and activism of his wife.
Raoul
As I said the other day on Twitter, what we learned from PBS giving Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson (cough =toffee nosed prat= cough) a show back in 2004 was that when you platform people who traffic in bad faith argument, you increase their reach.
Brazille is increasing Fox’s reach. And that’s flat out wrong. So yeah, I’m criticizing her. She’s being an enabler.
Joe Biden has similar, terribly naive (or stupid) ideas. It’s almost like there’s something that happens when your career took off in the B. Clinton triangulation years.
Gravenstone
Now playing the role of Alan Colmes … Donna Brazile.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@joel hanes:
The above may be more ideologically rigid, venal, and corrupt than Gohmert, but they haven’t proven to be dumber.
Yet.
trollhattan
@joel hanes:
See and raise.
Gravenstone
@germy: Mister Irrelevant says what?
Although I do look forward to the day the appropriate authorities come calling re. Russia and his ties with the NRA.
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Wait. Shouldn’t this be Why Trump is a Real Danger and Must Not Be Allowed Near the White House?
Salty Sam
@Jeffro:
Projection, again.
Who
@p.a.: Given the fact that fox news already markets her as a boogeyman, her choice as contributor is straight-up meant to inspire more hate and dehumanization of Democrats by fox’s audience while also avoiding doing any favors to Democrats with some ocasional accidental outreach.
Baud
@Raoul:
Yeah, like this guy.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/bernie-sanders-would-not-use-word-enemies-describe-republicans
trollhattan
@Salty Sam:
And it’s so weird to misspell Donald as Beto continuously.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Because of Warren’s presence in the primary field he is going to be buried in NH.
Mandalay
Since mm made this an “Assholes” thread, Amy Klobuchar surely deserves a mention. The other day she was asked about the allegations of her being a psycho-boss-from-hell to work for, and she came up with this doozy of an argument:
Well that’s one way of looking at it. Another interpretation is that any boss who repeatedly treats their staff like shit is probably a piece of shit themselves, and anyone who loses it over a missing plastic lunch fork is very unlikely to win a confrontation with Putin.
Several flaws are already emerging with our candidates, but hers seems the most serious of all since I don’t think it’s fixable – there are real issues with Klobuchar’s character:
– She treats her staff like shit on multiple occasions.
– She doesn’t acknowledge that as a problem, insisting that she is blameless and she demands high standards.
– When that shit doesn’t fly she back pedals to “we can all do better”, and now her spinmeisters conjure up this absurd twaddle that treating your staff like shit means you’ll own Putin like a boss.
Klobuchar needs to stop spouting this nonsense and openly acknowledge that she mistreated her staff on multiple occasions. If she can’t bring herself to do that she’s doomed, and deservedly so.
Mike in NC
Maybe even Bernie Sanders wanted nothing to do with Donna B given her terrible track record.
Gravenstone
@Barbara: Except that all the putative Democrats on Fox are either tokens or pushovers there simply to enrage the viewing audience while being talked over or otherwise belittled by the various hosts.
rikyrah
I told you that I have no use for anyone Black who goes on Fox News, let alone a Black person that gets a check from them.
CANCELLED.
Jeffro
@Brachiator: Yes – that’s why I posted it. It’s projection all the way down.
cokane
it’s one thing for progressive folks to appear on Fox News as a guest or whatever, but taking a regular paycheck just shows where one’s true loyalties reside. Ha, the funny thing is that Brazile got fired from CNN for passing debate questions to the Clinton campaign, as as the Jane Mayer story on Fox showed, that network did the same thing with Trump. So, she’ll fit right in.
Mandalay
@Mike in NC:
Maybe so. Here is Brazile’s track record in all its glory:
– Worked on the presidential campaign for Jesse Jackson in 1984
– Worked on the presidential campaign for Walter Mondale–Geraldine Ferraro in 1984
– Worked on the presidential campaign for Dick Gephardt in 1988
– Worked on the presidential campaign for Michael Dukakis in 1988
– Worked on the presidential campaign for Al Gore in 2000
It’s fashionable to say how everything Trump touches dies, but Brazile was way ahead of him on that.
Bill K
@germy: ROTFLMAO. Hey look! It’s Mister All Hat and No Cattle.
Mandalay
@rikyrah:
I’d go further; I have no use for any Democrat who goes on Fox News.
Rep. Eric Swalwell thinks he’s a cool kid because he does it all the time, but he’s just making himself part of the problem by being a useful idiot. He needs to stop doing it.
SenyorDave
Online Dictionary
Token – A black woman who is giving commentary on the same network that features Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham. They seem to cover all the bases of hate, with Carlson’s misogyny, Ingraham’s rabid Islamophobia, and Lumpy’s all-around hatred of anything that pro-Trump. Never thought of Brazille as particularly progressive, but this is money-grubbing at its worst.
VeniceRiley
IDK, this is the perfect place for her as it means I will never have to see her. Unless they make her a debate moderator for the general. OMG.
WaterGirl
It is all about the benjamins.
rikyrah
@brantl:
What about Clarence Thomas?
The self-hatred oozes from every pore.
Belafon
I suspect she’s about to have less friends in the progressive movement.
janesays
@matt: I highly doubt she’s following the Schoen/Caddell track because I can’t possibly ever imagine her shitting on Democrats to the extent that those two asshats do, but I do still think she deserves to be criticized for selling out and helping to give that evil propaganda machine a veneer of legitimacy. A more apt comparison would be to Bob Beckel, James Carville, or Juan Williams (all of whom have worked for Fox News in the past few years).
Shalimar
No point in criticizing. i never thought Brazile was an ally before this.
janesays
@germy: I’m sure that tweet has absolutely nothing to do with Fox News dropping Sheriff Clarke as a paid contributor last year.
Bill Arnold
@germy:
Exactly. Fox is taking heat finally for being a Republican propaganda outlet. This is a symptom and may end up contributing to a weakening of them in that role.
janesays
@Gin & Tonic: OANN actually makes Fox News appear to be moderate. As hard as it is to imagine that.
laura
Please release me, let me go….from moderation for linking to the impending passing of Thich Nhah Hahn.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
I think we shouldn’t judge people by the color of their skin but by the content of their character, so we should discount anyone of any race, creed, or color who goes on Fox.
germy
Here’s one positive I can think of:
Donna is not thick skinned. And she holds a grudge. It’s inevitable that when she arrives at Fox, the other on-air staff will disrespect her in a million ways. Not just political disagreements, but weird racist shout-out-to-their-racist-base microaggressions (like when Steve Doocy asked that classy black co-host Harris Faulkner who was sharing a recipe if she made Kool-Aid to serve with it). After a few months of that stuff, Donna will be ready to spill all sorts of behind the scenes secrets about the producers and talent. She’s bound to embarrass them all after they piss her off. And they WILL piss her off.
Just One More Canuck
@janesays: Fox isn’t crazy and unhinged enough for him
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
I agree with you completely.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Jeffro:
Are any of the allegations in that article even true?
patrick II
@Brickley Paiste:
Comes started as a milquetoast but got more assertive towards the end — so they fired him. A similar thing happened on Bill O’Reilly. Bill had an African-American professor (I’m sorry I don’t remember his name) to discuss issues with for awhile. He was very eloquent in his presentation of liberal views — so he got fired too. Donna is clever, and personally ambitious, so I am sure she won’t step over the line of actually presenting the Democratic or liberal policy views, but do mostly horse-race analysis and keep her new well-paying job.
pat
I read this somewhere else already. Shocking if true.
janesays
@BruceFromOhio:
She’s coming on as a contributor, which means she’ll have absolutely zero say in what stories they cover. She’ll only be there to give nominally leftish commentary on the stories that their anchors are covering.
Plato
Donna who?
janesays
@joel hanes: What the hell did the ESPN SportsCenter guy ever do to you? ;)
Bill Arnold
@germy:
Yeah, counting on this as a strong possibility.
janesays
@trollhattan: She’s likely to serve the same role that James Carville did when he was a contributor there for a little while during the Obama years.
Mandalay
@Baud: From your link:
By all means have a poke at Sanders for his comments if they bother you, but if you choose to go down that path then Biden deserves the same treatment for saying the same thing.
JustRuss
I’ll predict that we’ll see a lot of “Even the liberal and female Donna Brazile thinks these Democrat candidates are just too extreme and divisive!” Nice work if you can get it.
satby
@pat: you read it somewhere else that you could blockquote from, but didn’t want to provide the source link?
Hmm… how disingenuous.
satby
@Mandalay: Biden isn’t a declared candidate at the moment.
janesays
@schrodingers_cat: I desperately hope you’re right, because if his campaign is still legitimately viable after Super Tuesday (meaning he’s in the top 4 in delegate total), things are going to get really messy.
Jerzy Russian
@satby:
See the linked piece at comment #45.
janesays
@satby: Not officially, but… he unintentionally all but announced his candidacy at a fundraiser this weekend.
rikyrah
There are really Beto fundraising truthers out here huh. Bernie Bros not handling this well at all. Still a year out
— Marcus H. Johnson (@marcushjohnson) March 18, 2019
germy
@janesays:
His first in what will be a series of blunders from him this campaign cycle. He’s from the Mr. Magoo school of strategy.
satby
@janesays: @germy: but he didn’t announce, bottom line. And I like Joe as a retired person, so I hope he stays out.
janesays
@Mike in NC: Pretty certain Sanders actively despises Brazile, given that she was busted giving debate questions to Clinton’s campaign during the 2016 primaries.
Mandalay
@satby:
No; the bottom line is that Biden is obviously considering running, but has not announced his decision yet. Like you, I hope he stays out.
catclub
@rikyrah: T
getting the opening day total funds number up may have struck a nerve.
rikyrah
We’re getting close to DNC rigging it territory again. I just don’t get the reaction in Sandersworld to Beto fundraising. Why does it matter? https://t.co/i6ogApRJZl
— Tom Watson (@tomwatson) March 18, 2019
Immanentize
OT — Just an interesting development, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Lee Boyd Malvo case. He was the kid who was with the DC sniper, John Allen Mohammed. It is a life without parole case, with a federal retroactivity issue. This is my bread and butter, so woot!
rikyrah
Scott Dworkin (@funder) Tweeted:
Trump’s tweeted 5 times in the last 2 hours. He’s bullying GM & UAW labor union, bragged about fake poll numbers, attacked Biden/Dems saying they’re low IQ & attacked the press saying they’re blaming him for the NZ attack. He made it about him. Sick. In other words, it’s Monday. https://twitter.com/funder/status/1107655418933927938?s=17
janesays
@satby: He’s running. I wish he weren’t, but I think pretending like it’s not gonna happen at this point is just whistling in the wind.
Aleta
@Immanentize: That’s wonderful news. Thank you for what you do and for teaching it.
Aleta
I read this at the Daily Beast about Malvo:
Chyron HR
@Mandalay:
She defected to Bernie’s Revolution back in 2017, sweetie. She’s on YOUR team now.
pat
@satby:
It was a couple of days ago and frankly I don’t remember where it was. But it really made me see him in a different light if it is true.
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
Whatever makes you happy…LOL
Barbara
@catclub: Beto isn’t my first choice and Sanders probably isn’t even my seventh but if there is one thing to learn from 2016 it’s that fund raising advantage (and this is a pretty transient advantage right now) is not determinative of much of anything, especially this far out. The answer to a boss first day of fund raising isn’t to whine about a conspiracy but to double down on why your guy is better. Not. Ready. For. Prime. Time.
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
Who disagrees with you about that. I have no time for bullshyt like what Biden said.
Immanentize
@Aleta:
I was one of the attorneys on that case. Retroactivity is my jam!
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
A big chunk of Sanders’s appeal to his followers is that he’s able to raise lots of money from the grassroots, which is supposed to prove that he isn’t being corrupted by wicked special interest money. If somebody else can raise more money, it calls that advantage into question. Since the answer must always be that Bernie is the best, anything that calls his fund raising prowess into question must be a trick.
Immanentize
@Chyron HR: Also, remember that the Brazile emails were another product of one of the Wikileaks thefts.
pat
I honestly do not understand the appeal of that cranky old fart (wilmer, of course). If god forbid he ends up the nominee, I will not be knocking on a single door for him.
And I am also skeptical of a woman, any woman, being elected president. Although I would love to see a President Harris!! Go Kamala!!
Baud
@Mandalay: Yes, Biden is bad on this too.
J R in WV
@Jeffro:
So Faux personality Stve Hilton said, among many other incorrect things, that:
There is no person in non-Republican politics in America less sincere than Senator Bernard Sanders (I – Russia). This one claim shows us how stupid and wrong this person is. Plus he lies about O’Roarke’s campaign contributions, which were not from all those companies he lists, but were small donations from employees of those companies or business sectors.
Grrrr.
Eta: The “state” Sanders represents in the Senate.
Immanentize
Hmmm, Josh Marshall is taking a break from TPM — cryptic post that suggests more than a scheduled vacation.
BUT! Good news — Jeet Heer will be filling in as Editor.
Uncle Cosmo
@WereBear: Someone (I’m trying to remember who) who joined the Nixon Administration in his ill-fated second term, prompted the comment of some wag that it was the first time he’d ever seen a rat climbing onboard a sinking ship. Seems to apply here.
germy
Heh heh heh wait what?
Fair Economist
@germy:
It might be interesting to try to make a “greatest hits” collection of times Fox has tossed gratuitous insults at Brazile. There are a lot!
Baud
@germy: Man, he had kind of been getting some good press too. That’s just dumb.
janesays
@Chyron HR: I Googled “Donna Brazile + Our Revolution” and got absolutely nothing (same for “Donna Brazile + Bernie’s Revolution”)… I can’t possibly imagine that’s true, given the DNC history and the fact that her politics don’t exactly align with that of democratic socialists.
Fair Economist
@Mandalay:
I hope Biden doesn’t get the nomination; but Biden running might further split the low-information vote which could be good for IMO higher quality candidates like Harris and Warren. So, I’m not sure him running is a bad thing.
Uncle Cosmo
@janesays: It’s not hard to imagine at all. Try “StinkLair Broadcasting.”
trollhattan
@Barbara:
Absolutely.
We seem to put everything to the value=price test and it’s just wrong. A bad metric to gauge somebody’s fitness or chances for office.
In a more prosaic vein, box office receipts=quality of film. Yeah, about that….
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
Uhhh, wut?!?
“I sincerely am never showing you assholes my tax returns. Now vote for me before I yell at you again.”
Baud
Vox
Any reporter who uses “establishment” in their writing instantly loses credibility points, but the policy issue is worth noting.
Uncle Cosmo
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: In all probability no, but when has that ever stopped the Thugs? In an all-too-familiar accusation-is-confession reprise, the Greedy Oligarchy Promoters embody the sneer they mendaciously lobbed at Bill Clinton (& probably every Dem back to FDR): “Never told the truth when a lie would do.”
chopper
@Baud:
*note: ignores gun votes as well as other stuff.
Mary G
@Immanentize: Congratulations! It’s like winning the lottery. Do you think there is any chance the Supremes will do the right thing?
Kathleen
@J R in WV: I find it suspicious that Fox and the Mainslime Mediarati keep pimping Slanders. Very telling.
Brachiator
@rikyrah:
All right. I want to see Trump’s tax returns, his college grades, his IQ test and a psychiatric evaluation.
Citizen Alan
@dww44:
I think Clarence Thomas showers with a wire brush in the hope that the blackness will come off. I also think he is deeply ashamed of the fact that, as a conservative, he has a visceral hatred of affirmative action and yet he is the most high-profile beneficiary of affirmative action in American history. He knows perfectly well that when he was nominated, there were hundreds of judges more qualified than him and scores of African-American judges more qualified than him. It was only within the niche of ultra-conservative AA judges in 1991 that he rose to the top. And between that and the public revelation of what a perv he was/is, bitterness has eaten him alive.
germy
@Fair Economist: Well, I meant the positive is not that they’ll insult her. The positive is that she’ll air their dirty laundry after she gets fed up with them.
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize: nice!
So what’s it like to win a case? Uh, asking for Bella Q. I totally win all the time.
rikyrah
@Citizen Alan:
Niche of slave catching bootlickers…
Yes, there were many more BLACK REPUBLICAN JUDGES who were infinitely more qualified than Unca Clarence.
Fair Economist
@germy: I got that you were predicting Brazile would turn on them; I was making a suggestion to speed up the whole process. I should have included something about that in my quote.
rikyrah
@Immanentize:
I hope that it’s not health issues :(
JPL
@Immanentize: How’d did your son enjoy his Houston vacay?
Citizen Alan
@Mandalay:
Agreed on all counts. Literally the number one thing I look for in a Dem candidate now is whether they understand that the GOP is the enemy and should be treated as such.
Gin & Tonic
@chopper: You know he can’t vote against the NRA, Wayne LaPierre put him in office.
Just One More Canuck
@Baud: How much does a soul go for these days?
Mo MacArbie
Can someone help me out here? The only reporting about the Zombie Debate Question thing I read at the time mentioned one remark about “there will be someone asking about the water” before the debate in Flint, MI. This seems about as revelatory as saying there will be a question about coal in West Virginia or corn in Iowa. Can anyone point to an actual second question that was shared that would justify the use of the plural? Thanks.
Fair Economist
@Baud: Actually Sanders is not the most progressive member, according to VoteView. He is tied for fourth with Tammy Baldwin, behind Warren and Harris, and Booker. Warren is the actual most progressive.
Citizen Alan
@janesays:
That was such idiocy on her part. She gave the HRC campaign a question about Flint MI … when the debate was held in Flint MI. If Hillary’s adviser’s hadn’t prepped her about the Flint water situation, they deserved to be fired for incompetence.
Citizen Alan
@Chyron HR:
Wait, so after sandbagging Hillary (and so many others before her), Brazile went to Sanders and hence to Faux News? That’s actually great — I love it when all the people I hate are on the same side.
Death Panel Truck
@Salty Sam:
We can’t dig him up just for that.
notoriousJRT
@satby: Oh, but its shocking if true!
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: You’re gonna have to tell us non-legal-eagles a little bit more than that in order for us to understand what’s going on. :-)
MisterForkbeard
@Mo MacArbie: Supposedly she told them before one other debate that there would be a question about Hillary’s capital punishment stance. They responded “We were pretty sure that would happen so we already have a response, thank you.”
So it was doubly stupid: Brazile opened herself AND Hillary to charges of “rigging” but didn’t actually do anything to give Hillary an advantage.
Gravenstone
Ooohhh, Bernie is apparently taking it personally that Beto out-raised him on day one. Fuck off and die, you old wannabe. Go back to being the no account, no accomplishments finger wagging back bencher that you’ve been your entire career, and let the adults talk among themselves.
Barbara
@satby:
@notoriousJRT:
https://www.texastribune.org/2019/03/15/beto-orourke-drew-donations-pro-gop-political-establishment/
It’s not a direct quote but it seems to be a knowledgeable run down of O’Rourke’s career. Anyway, you can evaluate the source.
Baud
@Gravenstone: He’s not taking it personally. He’s just grifting off of it.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Someone (on one of the two BJ threads today) linked to the details of his response. Beto’s answer in long form made perfect sense to me.
WaterGirl
@Barbara: Obama got a lot of donations from republicans in 2007/2008 and there was a Republicans for Obama group — isn’t getting donations a sign that a candidate might have some appeal to rational people on the other side?
It feels like we are starting to fall for all the stupid press that’s out there.
janesays
@Citizen Alan: I haven’t actually seen any evidence that Brazile has ever worked for the Sanders camp or his offshoot organization. I tried Googling it and got nothing. There are plenty of things about which to criticize both Sanders and Brazile, but I’ve seen no evidence that the two have ever had any professional relationship whatsoever.
MisterForkbeard
@Gravenstone: I dislike Sanders, but I’ll give him this one. The “bad news” quote is pretty clearly within the context of ‘this is bad news for our campaign and someone outraised more than us, so please donate more’. Fairly standard for any campaign – I’ve gotten some similar (but not directly naming competitors) e-mails from the Kamala campaign as well, and I remember these from Hillary’s 2016 run,
WaterGirl
@Baud: @WaterGirl: Okay, I found the link:
https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1107053548204904448
It’s not very long, and it’s worth reading because it’s a transcript of what Beto said, not someone’s interpretation of what he said.
WaterGirl
I thought this was interesting from Pete Buttigieg’s twitter:
In response to:
Baud
@WaterGirl: Thanks.
@WaterGirl: Good.
brantl
@germy: So, who is David A. Clarke, junior putz, anyway?
WaterGirl
Nice takedown of Donna Brazille taking the job at FOX and of her justification for taking the job. It’s BooMan, but don’t let that stop you. There have been several posts lately where he is starting to sound like the old BooMan I followed for a long time.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/18/donna-brazile-will-not-save-the-world-at-fox-news/
oldgold
@Plato:
Phil
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
I like what he says. And I love Rosa De Lauro!
Immanentize
@JPL: He slept a LOT! he enjoyed the vacation fine. :-)
He also got his first hat — a Stetson Skyline
Immanentize
@Steve in the ATL: Winning is good. Even not losing is good.
oldgold
@Plato:
Phil
brantl
@WereBear: I think that’s because no one recognizes his “genius”, even him
J R in WV
@trollhattan:
Can you read, or not! Here’s the quote you cherry-picked in context, clearly typed by a Republican RWNJ:
I said “There is no person in non-Republican politics in America less sincere than Senator Bernard Sanders (I – Russia).”
Again, can you read? Including punctuation marks?
hueyplong
Arguably, Brazille can do less damage at FoxNews than she’d do working on a Democrat’s campaign, where some unsuspecting, potential Democratic voters might accidentally take seriously something she says.
Immanentize
@Mary G: @WaterGirl:
I’ve been running around a bit today (first day back) I will try to write up a summary of the case for later (I am not representing Mr. Malvo, but I will probably be co-writing an amicus in the case)
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
I wouldn’t bet on it. I would guess it’s more likely they’ll use it as an excuse to overturn the precedent and say it’s fine to give children life without parole or even death.
MisterForkbeard
@janesays: My understanding is that she never worked for Our Revolution, but DID pretty clearly start thinking that was where the money was. She wrote her book and did a bunch of interviews talking about the “rigging” of the primary but had to eventually make clear that she was talking about things like…. scheduling the debates on a Sunday.
Basically, she decided to hit the Democrats out of a chance of getting money from people who really hated Hillary, like the Bros and FoxNews. Up until that point I largely thought of her as fine but somewhat incompetent.
Aaron
Brazille has joined fox as a turncoat democrat and a token.
Immanentize
@Roger Moore: That is even more cynical than I am! They could use it to take away a piece of Kennedy’s progressive juvie jurisprudence, but the death penalty is, I am certain, permanently off the table for kids.
trollhattan
@J R in WV:
Chill, dude, I’m quoting and replying to your quoted material.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Coming from IL, I am familiar with Jan S. but not Rosa.
J R in WV
@brantl:
“who is David A. Clarke, junior putz, anyway?”
I think he was the former High Sheriff of Milwaukee County, responsible nearly solely for the jail, as the Milwaukee City Police were in charge of most of the rest of the county. Black Republican with funny badges and stickers on his jacket, cowboy hat, odd in every way.
Roger Moore
@Immanentize:
I don’t know that they’ll reinstate capital punishment for juveniles, but I expect them to try rolling back life without parole.
WaterGirl
@trollhattan: For what it’s worth, I read your comment in the same way that JR in WV did. One of my favorite quotes:
jl
Not sure how big a deal it is. If she makes a difference her spots will be buried and she’ll be shown out the door asap. If she just plays the game, she’ll end up with the profile and influence of the other Fox News house liberals. Who are they? Mark Shields(?) and some other guy no one ever listens to. We’ll see.
Edit: Shields is the PBS stiff who gargles contentless duos on air with Brooks. So, she’ll have even a lower profile than Shields.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I’d say this is sad, only it’s too predictable for that.
Uncle Cosmo
What bothers me most about Beto is his “bromance” with Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX 23). Hurd retained his seat last November over the Democratic challenger Gina Ortiz Jones by 926 votes out of over 200,000 cast – & IIRC has already said that he’d vote for Trump over Beto.
Don’t care if he’s your best buddy, Beto – Democrats don’t leave a seat in Rethuglican hands when even a minimal effort might have flipped it. Not when the fucking nation is at stake!
Of course if he wins the nomination I’d support him – but I’d need to hear a pretty goddamned persuasive explanation for this before I’d toss him a cent or a vote in the primaries.
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl:
She’s one of those rock-solid, hard-working Democrats who don’t get a lot of publicity but always vote the right way.
MisterForkbeard
@Uncle Cosmo: This one isn’t a dealbreaker for me. While I think it was stupid, I also don’t *really* hold it against him for not directly campaigning against someone who’s a friend of yours. I don’t think Beto ever did it with the expectation that Hurd would vote for a Democrat.
That said, it was dumb and I’m having a hard time maintaining friendships with dedicated Trumpists myself. But it’s not disqualifying. :/
jl
@Uncle Cosmo: Biden and Beto. Not sure why Hurd attracts that kind of attention. That kind of thing is a symptom of a centrist syndrome that will cause problems for both, IMHO.
Immanentize
@Roger Moore: Right now, juveniles who murder can still get LWOP, after an appropriate hearing.
The case is mostly about non-LWOP cases and what hearing, if any, is required. Or it is about what constitutes a de facto life sentence. Or it is about habeas corpus rules. Or it is about retroactivity and what constitutes “new rules.”.
The state is arguing it is about the last thing, Malvo is arguing it should be about the first.
catclub
@germy:
huh? what exactly is proportional electoral votes? I guess it is not the present system, which is just, electoral college votes.
Maybe by congressional district? Of course, when the congressional districts in many states are pretty badly gerrymandered,
that does not seem optimal. Doug Jones won the popular vote in Alabama, but he lost 6 of seven congressional districts.
Uncle Cosmo
@MisterForkbeard: What was that old E. M. Forster line? “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
Um, no.
And make no mistake – leaving any seat in the hands of the GOP when they have consistently demonstrated their willingness – their eagerness – to sell this country down the river for the benefit of their paymasters is prima facie betrayal of it.
NotMax
@catclub
What Maine and Nebraska have.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
I miss that BooMan :(
Uncle Cosmo
@catclub: Yeah, Yang’s on my shitlist too for that remarkably stupid comment. Especially considering we suffer under a tinpot Hitler-wannabe because the votes of 80,000 Trumpanzees in 3 “crucial” states outweighed over 3,000,000 HRC voters nationwide. Just outrageously stupid!
Salty Sam
@Uncle Cosmo:
Agree with the “don’t leave a seat in R hands”, and I don’t understand Beto’s withholding support for Ortiz-Jones. OTOH, Hurd is one of the few R’s who has a clear take on The Wall, and the non-necessity of it. I’ve dealt with cognitive dissonance listening to him expound on that subject, and agreeing with him, and thinking, “Wait, this is a REPUG?!”
But yeah, at the end of the day, that IS what he is, and no matter how much of a buddy he is, Beto could have done a lot better there. In fact, Hurd clearly came out and said he would vote against Beto for any R. So much for bromance…
KithKanan
@NotMax: It could mean assign by congressional district like ME and NE, or it could mean “assign share of the electoral college votes for a state proportional to the share of the popular vote in that state.”
The latter is at least less subject to partisan gerrymandering than the former, but still suffers from inherent bias toward smaller, more rural states (though I suspect the only people in favor of it consider that a good thing and one of what they see as the benefits of the electoral college over the popular vote).
jl
@Uncle Cosmo: I don’t know whether outrageously stupid or not thought out.
I think the threshold for most of the proposed state laws for allocating proportional electoral votes is less than 100 percent, so a few of the small states that crave attention might be hold outs while the rest of the country does the sensible thing. Small states have a bonus due to the two Senate votes added to Congressional districts, so for some, that might be enough for whatever extra attention they receive.
I think the electoral college is so bad, need to take all avenues to effectively get rid of it. The current effort at interstate compact laws in many states (that as of now would account for far less than the 270 votes needed to elect) split each state’s vote by the national popular vote. Maybe people should introduce the same idea but with each state splitting their electoral vote by Congressional district, as Main does. After threshold of states is reached, that would face fewer Constitutional challenges.
sharl
Another link for anyone seeking background on Beto, followed by a blockquote of the final two paragraphs:
Beto Versus The Barrio: The rock-star Democrat Beto O’Rourke, a candidate for president, once supported the bulldozing of a low-income neighborhood in his hometown of El Paso—a project spearheaded by his father-in-law.
The author of this piece is a Texas political reporter, Christopher Hooks. I’ve followed him on twitter long enough to have an idea of his personal politics (he doesn’t take many pains to hide his views) as well as his views on Beto, who he covered during the 2018 Senate campaign to unseat Ted Cruz. Hooks thinks Beto made a major contribution to partially reviving Texas Democrats’ prospects in local and state races, and he kinda hoped that Beto would stick around in Texas to challenge John Cornyn in 2020. Hooks doesn’t know what to make of Beto’s run for President.
I have no strong feelings myself at the time. I like Liz Warren, but I’ll vote for whomever the Dems nominate. This is a contribution for folks looking for background material, and not an endorsement for Beto’s El Paso City Council history being a critical issue for a Presidential campaign.
NotMax
@jl
Gonna be a doozy of a court case should that come into effect as to whether it butts up against Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution (relevant portions bolded).
Citizen Alan
@MisterForkbeard:
To be fair, one of my biggest and early pet peeves about Obama was his unwillingness to campaign against his former mentor Joe Lieberman when he ran independent against Lamont, a decision that objectively resulted in the ACA not being as good as it could have been.
LivinginExile
@Uncle Cosmo: Rolling Stone had a good interview with Will Hurd about the wall. I was shock.
jl
@NotMax:Seems like it depends on how ‘compact’ is defined. Is a state law that says something will go into effect at the moment so many electoral votes are governed by same or similar laws a compact?
But, now that you reminded me of the Constitutional issue, looks like measures to split vote by national popular vote or by Congressional district results would face the same issue. So, I am corrected and sobered on that point. Thanks.
matt
I just shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Sure, I’m going to be criticized by my friends in the progressive movement.
hervevillechaizelounge
Am late as always, but just chiming in to remind folks that her book pushed both the Bernie-was-robbed bullshit AND the Seth Rich wikileaks conspiracy.
Fuck her.
Barbara
@WaterGirl: I was just linking to an article because someone noted that the apparently negative information was provided without context or attribution, which is a silly complaint given how easy it is to find stuff. So I looked for it and found the context.
Procopius
Funny, I thought that was MSNBC. Or CNN. “It’s bad for the country but it’s great for CBS.” OK, OK, Fox was just as bad, and I never watch Fox anyway, but what I learned in 2016 is that the five corporations who [sic] own the media think Trump is good for them.
NB: I use the pronoun for people because “corporations are people, my friend.”
Michael
@joel hanes: Jim Jordan
Michael
@Citizen Alan:
“I think Clarence Thomas showers with a wire brush in the hope that the blackness will come off. I also think he is deeply ashamed of the fact that, as a conservative, he has a visceral hatred of affirmative action and yet he is the most high-profile beneficiary of affirmative action in American history. He knows perfectly well that when he was nominated, there were hundreds of judges more qualified than him and scores of African-American judges more qualified than him. It was only within the niche of ultra-conservative AA judges in 1991 that he rose to the top. And between that and the public revelation of what a perv he was/is, bitterness has eaten him alive.”
Clarence Thomas also knew that everything Anita Hill said was true, and that for example the black guy who said things against her in the hearing was batshit. I don’t know if he or some Bush I speechwriter or lawyer came up with “high tech lynching”, but Thomas said it and knew what a cynical construction of faux outrage it was.
I remember that a lot of time in the Anita Hill hearing Thomas was moving or sort of wiggling from slightly side to side. This was because he was constantly wiggling a foot or leg because he was nervous about being exposed for all the lying he was doing.
He’s a twisted human being.
joel hanes
@Michael:
Jim Jordan
good one