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72Comments

  3. 3.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    The good, long-term news in this is that it’ll keep the seat in Dem hands until Manchin dies. And that’s important since in any other circumstance, the Repups could actually compete for this seat given how WV has changed to a state with a decidedly “what’s the matter with KS” red tinge to it.

    Dunno how Manchin will be as a Senator. I suppose anything to the left of the Nelsons, Lincolns and Landrieus of the Senate would be a bonus.

  6. 6.

    balconesfault

    What’s up with this:

    Republicans … won a key concession allowing Capito, the party’s favored potential Senate candidate, to run at the same time in both the special election and for reelection in her 2nd district House district.

    Are Dems too weak to go for the jugular, or is there a feel that leaving Capito the guaranteed House seat will actually make it less likely for people to vote for her for Senate?

  7. 7.

    Corner Stone

    @Corner Stone: I can never remember. Are we “on the left” or “of the left”?
    Maybe peons like me are “on the left” but really powerfully evil people like someone I won’t name is “of the left”.

  8. 8.

    Roger Moore

    @Corner Stone:

    Maybe peons like me are “on the left” but really powerfully evil people like someone I won’t name is “of the left”.

    Why aren’t you allowed to say George Soros’s name? Is it some kind of condition for taking Soros money?

  9. 9.

    RolloTomasi

    Why is WV such a reliable democratic state, except for presidential elections? Does anyone have an insight?

  10. 10.

    El Cid

    O/T: My most recent favorite @Shakespalin tweet:

    A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life
    Do with their death panels pull the plug on grandpa and his wife…

  11. 11.

    Zifnab

    @RolloTomasi: For one thing, they’ve got some really old-ass politicians. Senator Byrd was the ultimate incumbent. Senator Rockefeller isn’t much younger. Even after the Nixon/Reagen Era white flight, you’ve still got enclaves of Democrats in Republican territory that held on, and WV is one of those places.

    That said, I doubt it will last another generation, unless Dems can get more reliable wins in state level offices.

  12. 12.

    merrinc

    @RolloTomasi:

    Because the NRA and other hysterical wingnut groups have managed to convince the voters that a Dem president will take away their guns, Bibles, and force the women who don’t become lesbians to have repeated abortions.

  13. 13.

    El Cid

    @RolloTomasi: The very strong presence of mine worker unions (well, up until the peak of the early 20th century unionization push, declining after widespread corporate & government massacres & bombings, and then again under FDR).

    In addition, W Va was Unionist (mainly anti-Confederate) in the Civil War — people in the Appalachians generally had no slaves (none of those sorts of high labor cash crops there) and no love for the planter elites who kept them and wished others to die to preserve them. (That’s why it split from Virginia.)

  15. 15.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    If you want to really understand WV, read “Deer Hunting with Jesus” by Joe Bageant. Sure, he’s talking about people in Winchester VA but they’re the same people.

    And while you’re at it, read Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas”. Or reread it. Combined, those two books can tell you *everything* about how the Democratic Party has “lost” formerly reliable states like WV.

    As for why Capito would run in the face of a probable loss, it sets her up to go after Rockefeller’s seat sometime in the future when he dies off. As was mentioned above, he’s no spring chicken I mean I remember voting for him during his first Senate run so that gives you an idea of how long ago I was there. This deal is simply a short-term bonus for the Dems because of their shrinking chances down the line in statewide Federal elections.

  16. 16.

    RolloTomasi

    Interesting stuff-thanks. My feeling was the coal miners weren’t on board with cap and trade/green agenda.

  17. 17.

    QuaintIrene

    Can we “on the left” officially start pre-complaining about him now?

    Yes! I hear you can do that on Amazon now.

  19. 19.

    Svensker

    OT — there’s something wonky about mistermix’s post on the NAACP. Can’t reply, all the stuff that should be on the right is on the left except BIG. Firefox user, not having problems elsewhere.

    (And I had something AMAZINGLY clever to say, too!)

  20. 20.

    NonyNony

    OT: Did anyone else know that politicians are allowed to invest their campaign donations in the fucking stock market ? I didn’t realize this but WTF? Isn’t this an incredibly huge conflict of interest? Isn’t this begging for trouble?

    Rep. Joe Barton lost more than $154,000 on investments of his campaign funds during the last three months, according to a CQ MoneyLine study of campaign finance reports. The Texas Republican’s campaign fund losses are due in part to drops in energy company stocks, including BP. … Turbulence in the financial markets has taken its toll on several House campaigns, which lost in total more than a quarter of a million dollars in campaign funds since March because they invested in the stock market, but Barton’s losses make up the largest chunk of that.

    I mean, it’s nice to see Barton’s finances smacked around by his penchant for kissing BP’s ass, but why the fuck is this even legal? No wonder companies like BP can buy politicians for chump change if they can multiply their effects through their stock price.

  21. 21.

    James Hare

    @El Cid:
    I’ve been reading about the Civil War lately and I think it’s interesting that the Appalachian region that gave Obama so much trouble was a hotbed of anti-slavery sentiment during the lead-up to the war.

  24. 24.

    Punchy

    Speaking of politics….you should see the kerfuffle being played out in KS between 2 increasing tea-baggish assholes, one aptly named “Moran” and the other also aptly named “Tiahart” (as in, “tea-heart”).

    For a week, everything’s been escalating. We’re not far removed from one just openly admitting he hates n#ggers and wants to execute all hispanics on the spot. It’s the ugliest, most xenophobic, anti-Dem/Obama/Pelosi-everything I’ve ever seen.

  25. 25.

    Corner Stone

    @James Hare:

    I’ve been reading about the Civil War lately and I think it’s interesting that the Appalachian region that gave Obama so much trouble was a hotbed of anti-slavery sentiment during the lead-up to the war.

    They were too poor to own any. Doesn’t mean they wanted to associate with them in any event.
    IMO, with zero factual basis to back it up, I believe it goes back to the apocryphal, “who are you better than?”.

  28. 28.

    Punchy

    @Greenhouse Guy: Here’s a link to an article about it today, but you cant fully appreciate it until you actually hear the radio and TV spots. They’re unreal.

    By the way, the article discusses “misinformation” and “character assissination”….as if that’s news to Republican candidates.

  29. 29.

    MikeJ

    @Punchy: Was just reading up on them. One voted for the DREAM act, allowing undocumented workers to have in state tuition at universities, the other voted for S-CHIP. Heheheh. Now each one has to prove he’s more insane than the other.

  30. 30.

    TaMara (BHF)

    @Svensker: I just went and checked it – messed up on Chrome. Too. Also.

    El Cid #10 : And whoever is tweeting as @Shakespalin almost makes me want to join twitter. I said almost.

  31. 31.

    Davis X. Machina

    Apropos of Punchy’s ad find, an interesting pair of posts at Drum’s today.

    In what political scientists may well dub the ‘Run away from the crazy people!’ phenomenon, in polls Republican voter intensity correlates with independents planning to vote Democratic….

  32. 32.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    @Punchy:

    For a week, everything’s been escalating. We’re not far removed from one just openly admitting he hates n#ggers and wants to execute all hispanics on the spot. It’s the ugliest, most xenophobic, anti-Dem/Obama/Pelosi-everything I’ve ever seen.

    Nothing like hankering for the good ol’ does when white men (like myself) were in charge and the rest of country knew their place. I know some of these guys might actually win in the general, but do they really see this as a long term strategy to win a majority in either house of the Congress? I’d love to be a fly on the wall in some of the GOP Caucus meetings.

  34. 34.

    Bill H

    I can’t find it now, but didn’t Lawrence O’Donnell or Chris Matthews or somebody just say that unemployment extension was now going to pass because Byrd’s replacement was sworn in yesterday and gave Dems the 60th vote they needed? Am I going crazy or something?

  35. 35.

    Michael

    @r€nato:

    Of course he will win… WITH THE HELP OF ACORN AND THE NEW BLACK PANTHERS!

    Inadequate number of exclamation points to be a true conservative post.

  37. 37.

    Chris G.

    @comrade scott’s agenda of rage: I find it increasingly strange as I get older that the old guard in Congress consists of people elected not just in my lifetime but in my memory. Rockefeller was elected in, what, 1984? That’s just not right.

  38. 38.

    stuckinred

    So he lit up the CHP!

    Williams’ mother Janice Williams told the San Francisco Chronicle that her son, who lives next door to her, was angry that as an ex-felon he could not get a job, and upset at “the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items.”

    “He hasn’t been able to get a job because he’s an ex-felon and nobody will hire him,” his mother also told the Chronicle, saying that he was unhappy with his continued unemployment and “what’s happening to our country.”

  41. 41.

    stuckinred

    @Bill H: cnn says it is done

    Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins joined Democrats in breaking the filibuster; Ben Nelson stuck with the GOP.

  42. 42.

    peach flavored shampoo

    “He hasn’t been able to get a job because he’s an ex-felon and nobody will hire him,”

    I now believe he’s completely unhire-able, except maybe for license plates and as someone’s jailhouse bitch.

  44. 44.

    Nick

    @James Hare:

    I’ve been reading about the Civil War lately and I think it’s interesting that the Appalachian region that gave Obama so much trouble was a hotbed of anti-slavery sentiment during the lead-up to the war.

    anti-slavery did not mean pro-civil rights. A lot of white abolitionists had opposition to slavery as a whole, but wanted blacks to go back to Africa, not stay in America.

  45. 45.

    eemom

    @James Hare:

    driving around WV today one often sees Confedrut flags in front yards and on the backs of pickup trucks. Iffen I din know better I’d reckon them thar folks is ignrunt of they’s own histry.

  46. 46.

    MikeJ

    @Nick:

    A lot of white abolitionists had opposition to slavery as a whole, but wanted blacks to go back to Africa, not stay in America.

    Which is indirectly why the capital of Liberia is Monrovia.

  48. 48.

    NonyNony

    @stuckinred:

    You missed the part where the guns he used were his mother’s. Who had them because “she someday expected some sort of revolution”.

  51. 51.

    Martin

    @stuckinred: Fuck, with his credentials and penchant for uncovering the truth about America, Fox News would have given him his own show. How many fucknut felons have either TV or radio shows with them now?

  52. 52.

    Tom Q

    To add to all the stuff people have been saying about WV, my favorite yellow-dog Democrat story:

    My father was working for the government (IRS) in WV at the time of the 1952 election (I was in fact born there that year). The day after Eisenhower won, my dad and co-workers were on line to receive their paychecks. He kiddingly asked one fellow, with the glorious name Orville Dent, if, since the GOP had won for the first time since the Great Depression, he was sure they’d actually be paid. Orville said, dead serious, Russ, I wouldn’t be surprised if we never got paid again.

    West Virginians were seriously devoted New Dealers, hanging on long after Southern and border states abandoned the Dems — even Dukakis carried the state, and Clinton did with ease. But, as was said above, the culture wars — esp. guns — finally persuaded the state to move in the direction opposite the rest of the Dem coalition states. Their local reps can hold on with good constituent service — as many Southern Reps & Sens. did through Reagan’s era — but the movement is toward them joining the rural coalition that will soon be all the GOP has left.

  53. 53.

    Corner Stone

    @Roger Moore:

    Why aren’t you allowed to say George Soros’s name?

    It is not our holy visage St. George, but rather his archangel. His Michael, his enforcer of discipline for peons “on the left”.
    Lady Jane of Hamsher. Jane Hamshers Of The Left.

    {whimpering in fear} “May She be praised!”

  54. 54.

    Michael

    My big question – after elections, do couches get burned in the street like they do after football wins?

  55. 55.

    ET

    This is from Peppermint on Jezebel. This is a hypothetical Obama speech a la the Old Spice commercials.

    Hello voters. Look at your congressman. Now back to me. Now back at your congressman. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me, but if you stopped voting Republican and switched to the Democratic party, he could be from the same party as me. Look down. Now up. Where are you? You’re in a voting booth with the man whose party your congressman could be from. Look at your hand. I have it. Back at me. It’s ballot that voted for Democratic candidates. Look again. The ballot is now the money Democratic tax cuts saved 95 percent of Americans this year. Anything is possible when you vote for the Democratic party. I’m on a horse.

  57. 57.

    Corner Stone

    @KG:

    I would donate to a politician for the first time in my life if Obama gave that speech.

    There is simply no end to the goodness that would occur if this were to happen.

  59. 59.

    Donald G

    driving around WV today one often sees Confedrut flags in front yards and on the backs of pickup trucks. Iffen I din know better I’d reckon them thar folks is ignrunt of they’s own histry.

    In Southern WV counties like Raleigh, it was known for people to sign up with the one side’s army, take their money, desert and then sign up with the other side’s army, take their money, desert again and sign back up with the first side’s army. Rinse and repeat.

  61. 61.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Chris G.:

    Inouye, who is now the senior member of the Senate, was sworn in in 1963, the year I became old enough to vote (which in those days was 21). If that’s not enough to make a person feel old . . . .

  63. 63.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @jeffreyw: Wow! jeffreyw, that may possibly be the most amazing photo you’ve ever posted. Not necessarily the cutest, or tastiest, but the most amazing for sure.

  65. 65.

    Luthe

    OT, but I’m pissed enough to post about it:

    I just got a letter from the National Pro-Life Alliance. Only it didn’t *look* like a letter from pro-life loonies; it looked like a letter from a US Senator.

    On the front, in the corner where the return address would be, there was a scrawled signature with the word “Senator” underneath. The letter inside the envelope was printed on paper with the header “United States Senate.” And it was signed by Roger Wicker, the Senator from the leader in US poverty statistics great state of Mississippi. The only way to tell who really sent it was the address printed in tiny type on the back of the envelope.

    Also enclosed in the envelope was a petition to Chris Dodd asking him to support legislation to declare a fetus a person in an end-run around Roe v. Wade. I’m so mad I could spit.

  67. 67.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne: Oh, thanks so much for that! You’re right, I am not aware of all, or even most, or even some Internet traditions. Great commercial, which I had not seen (what a good-looking man that is! Mmmmm) and yes, the Obama speech now is very clever and funny! Thanks for helping get me through another day of Old Fartedness.

  68. 68.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Luthe: I get shit like that every now and then. I suppose in the narrowest technical sense they are within the letter of the law. But to me, it always come across as fraudulent in the extreme. Don’t blame you for being pissed off.

  71. 71.

    liberty60

    Way off topic, but Alan Grayson gave another truthtelling speech yesterday, telling the GOP “May God have mercy on their souls” for witholding unemployment benefits from hungry people.

    Today a wingnut was prompted to offer $100 to anyone who punched Grayson.

    Grayson told HuffPost: “I think he’s overlooking something important: I punch back.”

    I lubs dis guy.

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