Late Night Open Thread: Picking the GOP Nominee

by 1:42 am. It has 12 Comments.

Speaking of survivors from a distant past…

… Instead of arena rallies, most of Weld’s weeks are filled with little-noticed trips to New Hampshire, the first-in-the-nation primary state, where he stops by diners and living rooms to meet with voters who might remember him from when he was a neighboring governor in the 1990s.

Other weeks are dotted with meetings and television appearances — he was on MSNBC on Sunday morning — where he has won occasional attention for his scathing criticism of Trump, but little else…

The president’s backers have ignored or mocked Weld since he announced his campaign in April, calling the Harvard lawyer — who can trace his family’s roots to the Pilgrims — “nothing more than a delusional elitist.” That view is shared in the West Wing, according to several Trump advisers, with Weld dismissed as a speck of lint on a black-tie tuxedo.

Weld is a particular type of Republican: a New England moderate who once had stable footing in the GOP but has all but disappeared in the party’s upper ranks. He is measured in temperament, advocates for strong ties with traditional U.S. allies, and is socially liberal. Weld supports abortion rights, and he was elected governor in 1990 and 1994 with the support of Republicans like President George H.W. Bush…

Despite the daunting odds and dynamics, Weld nonetheless remains cheery about his cause. At age 73 — and after a long and winding political career that has included a stint as the Libertarian Party’s vice-presidential nominee in 2016 — he is happy these days to provide like-minded Republicans with an option.

And he is hopeful that, perhaps later this year, he’ll somehow find himself in the political spotlight and be given a chance to lift his campaign’s status from quixotic to competitive, at least in New Hampshire, which has given a boost to past challengers of incumbent presidents — and has an open primary where independent voters can vote in party contests.

“When I go around New Hampshire and mention Mr. Trump’s name to people, I get frowns and thumbs down in response, these long faces,” Weld said, calling such exchanges encouraging. “But I know it’s going to be a long haul.”…





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12 replies
  1. 1
    mrmoshpotato says:
    June 18, 2019 at 1:58 am

    Some Texas (wo)man is giving FloriDUH man a run for his money. WTF?

    Best of luck to Bill Weld.

  2. 2
    NotMax says:
    June 18, 2019 at 2:00 am

    Excaliblech.

  3. 3
    guachi says:
    June 18, 2019 at 2:07 am

    Poll out of the first 18 primary states by CBS/YouGov. Biden gets 50% of the black vote (and 35% overall). You can say he’s a bad campaigner and cringey, but 50% means he wins the nomination.

    Warren and Buttigieg disproportionately draw from white people and no one else is drawing the black vote in the primary. I know it’s early, but who can chip into Biden’s lead among black voters? The four strongest candidates in the poll, based on whom people are considering, are Biden, Warren, Harris, and Sanders (in that order).

    If you don’t want Biden as the nominee, who takes his votes?

  4. 4
    James E Powell says:
    June 18, 2019 at 2:14 am

    @guachi:

    If you don’t want Biden as the nominee, who takes his votes?

    Everybody takes a piece. Then once he’s not “clear front-runner” his support collapses. Or not.

  5. 5
    Mnemosyne says:
    June 18, 2019 at 2:35 am

    @guachi:

    Warren and Harris split Biden’s votes once he drops out.

    Democrats have a lot of nostalgia for Crazy Uncle Joe, but he’s a terrible campaigner. He bombed out early both of the previous times he tried to run, and I honestly think he’s going to bomb again. He’ll be good in the cabinet as long as they keep him away from anything banking-related.

  6. 6
    Jay says:
    June 18, 2019 at 2:51 am

    Photo is of Andrew Yang + neo-Nazi William Fears, part of a group of Richard Spencer supporters who opened fire on antifascist protesters in Gainesville, Florida. At Unite the Right, Fears screamed, "Fire the first shot of the race war!" Also arrested for domestic abuse. https://t.co/xfotN32SU3— It's Going Down (@IGD_News) June 18, 2019

  7. 7
    sukabi says:
    June 18, 2019 at 4:02 am

    https://youtu.be/ICnUJl0t0Xw

    Stewart’s response to McConnell on funding First Responder’s fund.

  8. 8
  9. 9
    tobie says:
    June 18, 2019 at 4:53 am

    The White House will be sending its counsel to Hope Hick’s closed-door testimony before the Judiciary Committee to determine on a case by case basis whether Hicks should answer the question. WTF is this hearing closed? It just lets the White House continue to obstruct the House without having to be held accountable for this. Stupid Hicks played supposedly smart Nadler. We need a new chair of the judiciary committee. Nadler’s heart may be in the right place but he’s completely ineffective. I watched as much as I could on C-span of the Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mueller report and the Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian interference. Schiff never let misstatements of fact by the Republican members go unchallenged; Nadler always did.

  10. 10
    OzarkHillbilly says:
    June 18, 2019 at 5:45 am

    Manafort was set to be transferred to Rikers this month to await trial on a separate state case, according to the New York Times. But then Manhattan prosecutors received a letter from Jeffrey Rosen, the top deputy for attorney general William Barr, that indicated that “he was monitoring where Mr. Manafort would be held in New York”.

    And then, on Monday, federal prison officials weighed in, telling the Manhattan district attorney’s office that Mr. Manafort, 70, would not be going to Rikers.

    Instead, he will await his trial at a federal lockup in Manhattan or at the Pennsylvania federal prison where he is serving a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for wide-ranging financial schemes, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

    A senior Justice Department official said that the department believed Mr. Manafort’s treatment was appropriate, but several former and current prosecutors said the decision was highly unusual. Most federal inmates facing state charges are held on Rikers Island.

    The intervention of Mr. Rosen was just the latest twist in the case of Mr. Manafort, whose campaign work for Mr. Trump and political consulting in Ukraine put him in the cross hairs of a two-year investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election.

    He was convicted of financial fraud in two separate federal cases that came out of the investigation, which was led by the former special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

    While that might have been the end of his criminal problems, in March, he was indicted on 16 New York state felonies, including mortgage fraud and falsifying records to obtain millions of dollars in loans. The charges, which are based on some of the same actions in the federal cases, were brought by the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr.

    Mr. Manafort is expected to be arraigned next week in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

  11. 11
    Z says:
    June 18, 2019 at 6:48 am

    @Mnemosyne:

    Democrats have a lot of nostalgia for Crazy Uncle Joe, but he’s a terrible campaigner.

    That’s not fair. He did win a very competitive Senate race as an underdog… 47 years ago.

    Seriously, though, look at the history of people who had a chance to win, lost a national election (primary or general), and ran again. Except for Reagan it’s pretty horrible. Campaigning for President isn’t something you grow into. Maybe you can get the nomination on your second chance (eg McCain, Romney, Clinton in recent years) but it’s not a good sign that people already had a choice and chose against you.

  12. 12
    lumpkin says:
    June 18, 2019 at 9:34 am

    @tobie:
    Nadler keeps negotiating with himself….and losing. Other dems are doing the same. You’d almost think they’re deliberately sandbagging their own investigation if you didn’t already know it’s actually because they’re just afraid someone will say something mean about them. I don’t think at this point there’s any reason to expect Democrats to hold trump accountable.

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