This is THE BEST news I've heard this election cycle. THE BEST. https://t.co/AGHmfiQjzr pic.twitter.com/DBWkgz8Npm
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) May 10, 2016
I didn't know a sentence that began with "At a pizza place in Penn Station" could get even sadder from there. pic.twitter.com/PSruBSndCw
— Ned Resnikoff (@resnikoff) May 10, 2016
I'm starting to think #NeverTrump might not pull this off. https://t.co/fvzxeKAyel
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) May 11, 2016
VP Biden: "I feel confident that Hillary will be the nominee, and I feel confident she’ll be the next president." https://t.co/ox9RSwbQOD
— Rick Klein (@rickklein) May 10, 2016
eemom
Good evening. I am on the East Coast and have some serious issues with the day/night thing.
Redshift
@eemom: What’s the issue? ;-p
Arclite
After taking his pizza to go, Bill Kristol proceeded down the stairs to the platform.
Redshift
I’ve always been a night person, and it’s not unusual for me to be up this late. But I’m going to bed now.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Arclite: Dude lost his pizza before he got to the bottom of the stairs.
eemom
eedad and I are both naturally night people, and now that the kids are 17 and 21 and we both work at home we sort of let our freak flag fly. But we also both work in a profession, whose name shall not be uttered, that attracts a disproportionate number of TRUE freaks who awaken at the crack of dawn.
mdblanche
@Arclite: The Rat Anti-Defamation League would like to have a word with you tomorrow.
Damien
@eemom: You guys farm gold on Warcraft?
Joel
@eemom: growing pot is good business I hear.
joel hanes
Nice to see Oliver Willis cited.
amk
Nope, no good news here. Rethugs have never needed coddling to gotv. Bigotry and hatred of left was enough to get them to the polls and every fucking two years too. Coddling and cajoling is the dem province and every fucking four years.
magurakurin
Cole is trying to hide his panic posts on twitter. tsk tsk.
What are we? chopped liver? No panic post here?
amk
@magurakurin:
wow. are the critters giving him a hard time?
chill cole.
Damien
I gotta mention something here, at the risk of starting another flame war in a mercifully non-taunting AL thread:
Hillary Clinton won the Nebraska primary, with triple the turnout of the caucus.
Now, I’ve been reading a lot of people saying that OF COURSE she won in a closed, non-binding primary! Bernie was already on the ballot in the caucus, so why would his supporters turn out for a non-binding event? Well, it sure wasn’t non-binding for the dozens of down-ticket items, including school boards, state reps and bond issues. But Bernie wasn’t on the ticket, so why fucking bother?
I’ve been seeing people who’ve been claiming they’re the future of the party saying OF COURSE Hillary won when it’s just old people voting for their own interests. Youngs won’t come out until they see THEIR interests represented, and THEIR issues catered to. Some have even said that it’s important to get money out of politics first, THEN they’ll really show up. But they’re passionate about Bernie, so that’s what’s important! He’ll get money out of politics for sure!
Christ, what a bleak fucking future this party has if this is the kind of logic we can expect from the revolution. My fellow Millennials really expect to be taken seriously when they can’t get it up to come out a vote downticket? They expect superdelegates to switch to a man who has coattails like a halter top? They want to be Independents, but also to be catered to by the parties, and this is a fair summation of why they won’t be, written in failed turnout in Nebraska. Some on the left are saying the Bernie revolution could be the next Tea Party movement, to which I say bull….shit. The Tea Partiers are out there doing the hard work of democracy; they are ironically doing it for American fascism, but god help me they are fielding the candidates, raising the money, and getting their people to the polls EVERY. SINGLE. ELECTION. That is why they have managed to utterly infect the Republican party from the roots up, and rotted that tree to mulch.
If you want to bitch to me about how Bernie is the more electable candidate, I’d love a variation on that argument explaining how not having his voters actually show up when it counted, in a state that we could take with the right amount of work, is the fucking future face of this fucking electorate, because right now if I have to hear one more twat tell me that Bernie wasn’t on the ballot so why bother, I will pointillist paint you a picture of 2018 failure from the fucking Bernie memes.
ETA: apologies for anger and annoyance, but seriously, welcome to the revolution, grab a piece of cake.
magurakurin
@Damien: I agree completely and thought the same thing about the NE primary. A sad sack revolution if there ever was one.
Frankensteinbeck
@Damien:
The failure of the Revolution will prove itself when Sanders loses the primary. Story over, and quickly forgotten, I promise.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Damien: Agree. There is a tendency on the left to concentrate on the “great leader”(President) that will create and pass and agenda that they like; other offices are forgotten. This leads to lower voter turnout in mid-terms and disillusion with the President they campaigned for once in office. The right may have St. Ronald, but work like hell to get folk elected to do the grunt work, from school board to Congress. As far as age and enthusiasm goes(I’m in my mid-50’s), voting is a habit; it’s either developed via parental example or becomes one over time(local issues are great at making voting a habit).
akryan
I hate to agree with Trump, but I agree with Trump. Micro targeting and data analysis is not going to be that important in this campaign. Free media and social media will far outweigh paid ads. People zone those out anyway. The power of personality is a yooge. He is able to say anything to anyone at the drop of a hat. He doesn’t need to be consistent overall. He just has to convince whomever he’s talking to wherever he’s talking to them. It’s been shown over and over that facts don’t affect people’s views. The only thing that might turn this election is the debates and GOTV. I think we have the advantage in both, but I am not looking forward to going against Trump in the general election. He is a master of media and he’s charismatic. He is going to be very hard to beat in swing states.
bystander
@Frankensteinbeck: Yes, but you’re forgetting the residual effectiveness of Occupy Wall Street.
Just saw that Deadbeat Donald has made a secret deal to name Guiliani head of Homeland Security. If only he names Dumsfeld to Defense and Bernie Kerik to head up the DOJ, TRIFECTA!
BillinGlendaleCA
@akryan: Micro targeting and data analysis are not for ads, it’s for GOTV.
NorthLeft12
Just floating a theory here, is it possible that Kristol was mistaken for being a server and the person(s) asking for the better choice were referring to pizza toppings?
Matt McIrvin
Trump will definitely be the President of West Virginia.
PaulWartenberg2016
@amk:
Cole is living in the middle of West Virginia, where the local voting base is about three levels of crazy angry to the Right of South Carolina for God’s sake.
I’m here in the middle of Florida, surrounded by Chris Christie and Rubio and Jeb signs that people still haven’t taken down from their front yards. I’ve got a crook in the governor’s office and school boards filled with Randian Objectivists literally killing off our kids just so they can convert everything to overpriced charter schools and Christian camps. I know where Cole is speaking from, and it’s terrifying.
PaulWartenberg2016
@akryan:
Trump’s style appeals only to a select group of people. He’s losing – has lost – vast swaths of population blocs – Hispanics and women in particular – that he cannot win back because doing so would mean changing his own narcissistic personality, something he cannot do.
Trump’s mastery of media relies entirely on bullying said media to pay fealty to him. At some point, he’s going to throw one temper tantrum too many and the bullying is going to stop working.
JMG
As long as the ratings hold up, Trump could punch a woman reporter from CNN and the network wouldn’t say boo. He has revealed the essential corruption of our media system more effectively than any leftist ever could.
Just One More Canuck
@Damien: way to go – you’ve probably hurt someone’s feelings with that
FEMA Camp Counselor
@akryan: You do realize that all that microtargeting and data analysis is for GOTV and building enthusiasm, right?
I’m beginning to realize that the reason people have such a hard time emulating the Obama/organizing approach is because they either (a) don’t understand how it works or (b) do understand, but can’t believe that campaigns aren’t won that way (see: Sanders, Bernie and Rubio, Marco).
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@FEMA Camp Counselor:
The only one following his blueprint is winning, who also happens to not be a white male. Black president side effects.
Bobby Thomson
@Damien: preach it.
aimai
@Damien: Hugs. So right. But you sound like you also need a big hug on top of the round of applause. So all the hugs.
aimai
@akryan: Yeah. No. The most vocal political guys on the team rebuilding my house–the guys who loved to talk right wing talking points!–turn out not even to be registered to vote. Trump’s followers are, by and large, not voters either. Without a sophisticated ground game composed of what? Drunken, agressive, white males with poor social skills, low education, and a hysterical fear of women and minorities? trump’s fans aren’t going to get far. I’d love to see those guys out doornocking for their candidate! Who is going to open the door to them?
Dog Dawg Damn
Any bets on Donald just simply refusing to debate for some Made up reason?
Bobby Thomson
@Dog Dawg Damn: not unless he gets a lead. Then, sure, he’s done it before.
Barry
Is anybody else unable to load any links from ‘T.co’ on an iPad?
None of them have worked in a very long time, if ever.
Hillary Rettig
re Trump: GOP disdain for reality + raging megalomania FTW
NorthLeft12
@PaulWartenberg2016: I don’t think anything changes with respect to the Donald’s treatment by most of the media. After his crushing defeat in November, those same panderers and enablers will collectively shrug and move on with their belief in their own sense of fair play completely intact.
Other things that will be intact; their spinelessness, their access to the Donald, their reputation among the other serious people in the media, and finally, their jobs and fat pay cheques.
Ella in New Mexico
@Arclite: Thank you for my first full throated laugh out loud of the day. :-D
Dog Dawg Damn
@NorthLeft12: When I am king, they will be first against the wall.
Ken
@Damien:
I am so totally stealing that.
Mathguy
@Arclite: Thank you. I needed that.
Ian
Hang on just a minute. Rosa’s, in the LIRR part of Penn Station, is perfectly good pizza – nothing to tweet to the world about, but better than the NYC average, let alone the rest of the country.
Don Pepi is also okay. I would assume, therefore, that Bill Kristol was at Pizza Hut.
Elie
@[email protected]akryan:
I think that there is a ceiling for personal appeal and charisma and after that its GOTV. Republicans have been very susceptible to Trump’s message but remember, he just broke 50% of Republicans in the last few primaries — leaving a still sizable minority of Republicans that did not vote for him. We have to GOTV for Democrats which he cannot win (Hispanics, blacks, Asians, etc). I don’t see or get your sense that adulation for this creature is so yuuge as to block out the sun..
Arclite
@Ella in New Mexico: My pleasure!
J R in WV
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Actually John Cole doesn’t live anywhere near the middle of West Virginia. John lives in the middle of the northern panhandle of WV, maybe 12 miles east of Ohio, and maybe6 miles west from PA. It IS part of W Va, but it’s a long ways from the middle of the state. Like 152 miles by Google on I-79, mostly.
I’m another 95 miles south of the middle of the state, which is very near the tiny town of Flatwoods, home of the biggest truck stops on I-79 in central WV.