I haven’t paid a whole helluva lot of attention to primaries this season, but the one in Delaware seems like a pretty big deal. If O’Donnell wins for the GOP, I will throw up an actblue page for the Democrat.
Primary Day
by John Cole| 43 Comments
This post is in: Election 2010
General Stuck
Primary day. But this made me laugh out loud.
Horse gone. Barn door closed.
Napoleon
It may be a waste of money spending on her Dem challenger if he looks like he is going to cruise to victory.
NonyNony
@Napoleon: Never get too complacent. This is a weird election cycle, and even if the challenger looks like a sure thing, he may not be.
Even if the teabagger candidates are nuts, GOTV is going to be crucial in November. Because the ‘bagger nuts will show up to vote.
Cacti
@General Stuck:
The country club decided it’s time for some tokens.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Better safe than sorry I suppose, but if O’Donnell wins, Coons will coast to office. O’Donnell will blow up in the general.
Frankly, O’Donnell has pretty much blown up already. The only reason the primary is so close is that, being such a liberal state, the crazy is especially concentrated in it’s GOP base.
I would think you’d want to give Coons more help if Castle wins – to make sure Coons stays competitive in case Castle loses support from the right, as seems likely.
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General Stuck
Throw up several, and maybe coax TimF out of semi blogging retirement to duplicate his direct action effort during the HC debate. Or, I swear, the gloom, doom and despair of liberals will be the end of us all. They need something positive to focus on, so as to not pre declare complete democratic fail before the game even starts.
It is so hard caucusing with democrats, bless their gloomy hearts.
Bulworth
Or Castle will opt out of his party (can you say Charlie Crist?) and become the “Democratic” candidate.
aimai
The whole post makes plenty of sense if you just stop after “I will throw up.”
aimai
David
It’s a knock-down-drag-out fight between the RINOs and the T-baggers.
Go forth and ratfuck.
jibeaux
I know that political donations are not considered charitable, but I really do feel that contributing money to keep teatards from inflicting their horrifying version of governance on all of us is a public service that really should be tax-deductible.
JGabriel
So they’re hoping to mix Darjeeling White with Lapsang Souchong Black, and end up with Earl Grey?
I don’t think it quite works that way.
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New Yorker
I went to vote in the primary only to be confronted by a gang of AK-47 wielding ACORN members who threatened to kill me until I agreed to vote for their candidate Elijah Muhammad X, whose main campaign pledge is to bring in gay, atheist heroin-smuggling Mexicans with pregnant wives to help them destroy the Statue of Liberty and build a mosque in its place. This is Obama’s America! Rush Limbaugh was right!!!!
4tehlulz
>Coons will coast to office.
Just like Richard Blumenthal.
Or not:
Quinnipiac Poll: Blumenthal Only Ahead Of McMahon By 6 Points In CT-SEN Race
gypsy howell
I wouldn’t count out an O’Donnell win in the general. We’re in the first big Citizens United election cycle. She’s going to have big, big bucks behind her.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
@4tehlulz: McMahon has said she’s willing to throw away $50 million to try and win it.
General Stuck
@gypsy howell: I hear she not only disapproves of sex, but also sexual desire. The good ole boys down on C street can maybe help her out with that. In a godly way, of course. The GOP, one big happy repressed, but horny family.
4tehlulz
@Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle: She might want to spend a bit more; another former employee has dropped dead.
Sentient Puddle
@Napoleon: I tend to think you’re right, but if I wake up one morning in 2011 and find out that masturbation is illegal, you’re going to be up on the wall in the coming revolution.
Napoleon
@Sentient Puddle:
Viva la Revolution.
Cacti
I like how Dick Armey starts out his minority outreach by suggesting that minorities are all a bunch of liberal dupes.
Insulting people of color has been their bread and butter for so long, they can’t help doing it even when “reaching out”.
pandora
I wouldn’t advise complacency if O’Donnell wins. Several months ago the thought (here in Delaware) was Castle will coast to office.
What is interesting is how Delaware has become the battle ground for the Republican/Tea Party civil. They are destroying each other.
No matter who wins, do not count on the losing side coming together to elect the winner. Word is… if O’Donnell wins, expect resignations from the New Castle County GOP leadership at the State, Regional, and RD levels. We’ll see.
geg6
@General Stuck:
Yup. Don’t even masturbate according to this frigid nutcase.
valdivia
So I became a naturalized american citizen too late to vote for Obama in 2008, today is my first time voting in a US election. I can’t tell you guys how great it felt. I voted for Mayor and council members in DC in the dem primary.
I know this is totally corny but I love being an American. I loved exercising my rights today, even if being a DC resident means I really don’t have much representation.
jibeaux
@valdivia:
Yay! Isn’t it ironic how much better a country we’d be — have more of the true pride that comes from civic responsibility rather than bumper flags — if we had more for’ners?
valdivia
@jibeaux:
yeah I guess the nativists don’t get that a lot (or most) of us foreign immigrants come here because we want to be part of what we think is great about the US. Or maybe they get it but it freaks them out.
gypsy howell
@pandora:
The big money prefers the teatards, because they will be much easier to manipulate once in office. So for the primaries, the big money is behind teatard people like O’Donnell and that guy who just beat Murkowski in AK.
If the “mainstream” republican wins the primary, the big money will immediately shift to their campaign in the general election. The republicans have been a very reliable vote in congress for the oligarchs, and a republican is still better, for the time being, than a democrat.
So it’s a “win big – win bigger” scenario for the money behind the right wing oligarchy.
Counting on 51% of the voting public to see through the tsunami of rightwing propaganda even AFTER the republicans/teatards destroy the economy and the middle class is dangerous wishful thinking at this point. I’m not optimistic about the future.
kay
@General Stuck:
It’s gratifying, though. It’s an admission. The Tea Party has a PR problem. I think they have a more fundamental problem than an appearance of bigotry, but in any event, it matters, or they wouldn’t be desperately rushing to distance themselves from their own signs and statements.
Did you notice how Palin and Gingrich fell silent on the anti-Muslim bigotry they whipped up as soon as it went viral with the lunatic from Florida? How both Palin and Gingrich whipped up the hysteria and then ran away, leaving Obama and Gates to deal with the practical real-world ramifications of their political tactic? They have a problem, too.
At the end of the day, conservatives aren’t convinced blatant bigotry is marketable. I think that’s an important admission.
kay
@General Stuck:
Despite all the belligerent denials, despite months and months of claiming they were the victims, and Breitbart and others trying to sell the idea that the bigoted signs and statements didn’t matter, because most Americans are like Tea Partiers, it’s an admission that most Americans aren’t, and most Americans think that’s fringe and repellent.
It’s a small victory. They lost the argument.
They’re trying to join the mainstream by jettisoning everything we’ve seen and heard them say the last two years, after telling us they were the mainstream.
They’re not, and blatant appeals to bigotry aren’t, after all, acceptable to most people.
General Stuck
@kay: And Of course they won’t pay a price. wingnuts rarely do for their hateful bullshit. They will get Fox and others to launder their racism, at least the surface layer, and we will go as before, viewing a tea tard rally full of “Don’t tread on me signs” and Obama witch doctored ones, and Candy Crowley will crow that tea party central command tells her these are just isolated incidents from a few nuts, and they are all really just concerned with the deficit.
ricky
You probably missed Goundhog Day as well.
Bill Murray has done better work.
ricky
Freedom Works better check the men’s room for log cabineers. That damn political correctness is a disease, I’m telling you man.
WE WANT OUR TEA PARTY BACK!
Linda Featheringill
@valdivia:
Hooray! [release the balloons]
It is fun, isn’t it?
kay
@General Stuck:
I think they did pay a price. The Tea Party are losing support in polls, not gaining. We know they have big-money backers and we know they’re the activist arm of the GOP. The professionals who fund and direct them, like Armey, believe the bigoted signs and statements damage that brand.
That isn’t what they were selling 6 months ago. Six months ago they were telling us most Americans thought this was acceptable, and it was just a matter of Breitbart freeing America’s inner bigot and releasing us all from “political correctness”.
It didn’t happen. It’s a defeat. What’s sort of wonderful about it is media played along, media pretended those signs and statements were ordinary, mainstream politicking, and Americans somehow “got” the repellent aspects despite media apologists. I personally think it’s because there were pictures. We saw the signs over and over again.
They didn’t “move the Overton window” on bigotry, Stuck :)
It ain’t 1956, and we’re not going back there.
Linda Featheringill
@kay:
Damn right. Once was enough, thank you very much.
[more than enough?]
valdivia
@Linda Featheringill:
yes! felt really great and I am officially today the dorkiest corniest Ballooner evah for saying it no? ;)
General Stuck
@kay:
maybe not, but bigotry is still alive and well in this country, and is always just benieth the surface, so no Overton Window need be moved, just awakened.
I really don’t think Armey and company care that much about being pinned as bigots, so much as they care about electoral viability at this point, and it just may have dawned on them that there is a ceiling to overtly racist white voters, and so made a clumsy and comical stab at adding a room or two to their puptent of hate and white superiority.
I am on record here expecting not only a stalling of the tea tard movement, but a retraction into the hateful bowels of the south from other parts of the country. Where they will remain a limited player, but a devoted one with plenty of piss and vinegar.
kay
@Linda Featheringill:
If Candy Crowley was right, with her repulsive indulgent chuckling and dismissal of what we saw with our own eyes, and her volunteering to offer the “few bad apples” defense to Tea Partiers, why are they now expending all this time and money to deny the statements they made on those signs?
I mean, they made a new batch of bigoted statements 4 days ago. They haven’t had a change of heart. They’ve changed their minds on trying to package and sell this shit as anything other than bigotry.
Crowley and the rest were wrong, wrong, wrong on the “heartland”.
I think media may be fringe, on race, because they seemed to swallow those signs whole. Most of the rest of us were repelled.
kay
@General Stuck:
No. It’s a complete capitulation.
This is hysterical:
They’re going to be running away from their bigoted past, which, was, what? Four days ago?
I can’t imagine what happened. Must have been a hell of a poll they’re looking at.
I don’t take it seriously. Too well do I remember the last round of conservative apologies for bigotry and hatefulness, (remember Melhman, practically weeping in 2004?) still I thoroughly enjoy watching them backpedal.
JGabriel
@kay:
They did though. Not so much on anti-black or anti-gay bigotry, thank FSM, but anti-Muslim and anti-Hispanic bigotry are way more prevalent than at anytime in the past deacde.
.
gypsy howell
@kay:
How exactly is this a problem for them? This seems like a huge win for them. Stir up crazy shit, pretend you weren’t there when the ultra-lunatics latch on to your crazy shit and make it even crazier, let someone else deal with it.
kay
@JGabriel:
But it’s been carefully planned series of attacks on all these groups (what amazes me is the regularity: it’s like they calender this shit) and the first two have now failed.
Perhaps they’ll be issuing heart-felt apologies to Hispanics and Muslims in 6 months, when the polling on that comes in.
Jim Greer, the head of the Florida GOP is right now apologizing for race-based attacks on Obama, and calling Republicans bigots.
On some level, this isn’t working for them politically, or they wouldn’t be apologizing.
kay
@gypsy howell:
I don’t think that worked, in this instance, particularly for Gingrich, who is (still, amazingly, portrayed as a ‘serious person’).
Obama (and Gates), once again, looked like the only grown ups in the room.
I think they’re way the hell out there, now. And they can’t claim it’s Limbaugh and Beck. It’s the freaking brain trust.
asiangrrlMN
@General Stuck: OK. I just have to say, if they are going to use such a stupid name, it should be “DiversiTea”. DiverseTea? WTF? DiversiTea makes much more sense, as it were. No imagination. Does the Asian chick gotta do all the thinking for them?