Via the comments, there was a big upset in the New York State assembly race in Long Island tonight:
Democrat Christine Pellegrino has defeated Republican Thomas Gargiulo in the District 9 State Assembly special election.
With all election districts reporting, unofficial results have Pellegrino ahead of Gargiulo by margins of 3,338-2,282 in Suffolk County and 2,252-1,767.
Trump won 60 percent of the vote in this district in 2016, and it’s a longtime Republican stronghold:
Typically, Democrats would hardly compete in the 9th, a horseshoe-shaped district on the Nassau-Suffolk county line that includes Massapequa, West Babylon, Babylon Village, West Islip and West Bay Shore.
More evidence that Dems need to compete EVERYWHERE over the next few years.
Yutsano
I’m cautiously optimistic about the Quist election, especially since his opponent just decided to do a nice illegal thing. Robocalls are illegal in Montana and Pence decided to record one for him. OOPS…
Morzer
Andrew Cuomo, tonight we drink your bitter salt tears – and find them delicious!
Morzer
@Yutsano:
Is this another entry in the category of Things Of Which 57 Year Old Mike Pence Mysteriously Had No Knowledge?
efgoldman
Also the Wolfeboro NH special election, which Republiklowns have won since the War of Southern Treason, went to a Dem by a good margin
efgoldman
@Yutsano:
Is it illegal to record them, or just to use them? Although somebody should have known
Big R
@efgoldman: Also, is it possible that that law is preempted?
Felanius Kootea
Nice Bob Marley reference. “One bright morning when my work is over, man will fly away home.”
I hope this is a sign of good things to come in Georgia and in ’18.
magurakurin
I wonder what will happen in Montana and Georgia?
Doug!
@Felanius Kootea:
My favorite Bob Marley/Wailers song
Another Scott
@Yutsano: Obama Derangement Syndrome really is destroying them, isn’t it?
More, please.
Cheers,
Scott.
David Spikes
OT-Fuck fucking fuckhead Cillizza-CNN opinion piece”Clinton emails more serious” new survey shows emails key to voters perceptions of Clinton(is that really news?). But media in no way responsible, because Clinton refused to take it seriously-no mention of the 60+ columns Chris wrote obsessing about them.
But jeebus h., what did they want her to do.commit seppuku to show how serious she was?
This past political year has made me wish more people dead than in all the rest of my life.
??? Martin
@efgoldman: They do a live call and ask if the person would like to hear from VP Pence, then they play the recording. Legal when done that way.
ruemara
I thought you were referring to the travesty of a recipe in the NYT that profanes the beloved Jamaican patty. Heathens.
Another Scott
BBC News: Sinkhole opens up in road just outside gates of
XanaduMar-a-lago (short autoplay video)Maybe a bigger one will take the whole place sooner rather than later…
Cheers,
Scott.
randy khan
@David Spikes:
Yes.
SATSQ.
SatanicPanic
Emphasis mine. And yeah, I’m totally trolling
Greg C
This district is more or less Congressman Peter King’s district, so maybe we can be rid of him too in 2018.
randy khan
@Big R:
I don’t know for sure, but federal law probably does not preempt the Montana robocall law. The federal law specifically lets states adopt stricter laws of their own. I think there are some limits, but not too many.
randy khan
@SatanicPanic:
Honestly, I see that as good news. She’s participating actively in the party and obviously was accepted enough to get the nomination. Kumbaya!
SatanicPanic
@randy khan: I agree. My beef with Bernie fans is 95% about them not voting. If they vote for Democrats and encourage others too, then great, I applaud their efforts.
Mary G
I keep checking for Adam’s post on Twitler’s visit to Israel, but he’s probably still wrestling with all the profanity that makes its way in.
MisterForkbeard
@SatanicPanic: So long as she wasn’t booing Hillary at the DNC, good for her. :)
Steve in the ATL
@SatanicPanic: she is the first Wilmerite to win an election, no?
RSR
yup, this is good. also, too:
trigger warning – dkos link
26 Year Old H.S. Teacher Wins Primary Against Democratic PA. Mayor Who Backed Trump.
26-year-old assistant band director at the local high school beat him in a Democratic primary.
RSR
@SatanicPanic: Yup. Also an #optout proponent. (Opt Out is well known and influential on Long Island, for good reasons.)
efgoldman
@RSR:
You don’t screw with the band!
SatanicPanic
@Steve in the ATL: beats me. Honestly if they win, great. If they lose, then booooooo and I blame Wilmer.
dmsilev
@Another Scott: When I heard about that, I started to wonder whether we were all just living through a grand-scale performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and we had just reached the point where the Devil came to claim him.
burnspbesq
Does anyone who has adopted that name for that person worry about being sued for defamation by New York Mets reserve infielder Wilmer Flores? Asking for a friend.
Peale
@David Spikes: knowing our lazy ass media, what Chris means is that she was supposed to put out more scandalous emails than the ones that were leaked and point their beady eyes to them so they didn’t have to rely so much on GOP talking points to understand them.
eclare
@RSR: Awesome news!
jl
@efgoldman: And don’t mess with band directors, assistant or not. They regulate.
efgoldman
@Peale:
If this were a just world, Cilizza would spend every day sitting on the sidewalk in front of the Treasury building trying to sell pencils or apples.
Mike in NC
So many of the worst people I’ve ever met live on fucking Long Island, New York. Coincidence?
Morzer
@efgoldman:
Would you really trust Cilizza with a pointed implement like a pencil?
Peale
@jl: let’s hope he can get those voters to march to the polls in the general
Morzer
@Mike in NC:
Nice Iced Teas, though. Commute their sentences from execution to 20 years without parole.
efgoldman
@Morzer:
If you buy them in bulk, they’re not sharpened.
Morzer
@efgoldman:
But would Cilizza have enough business sense to do that? I see him as the sort of person who thinks that now is the right to time to corner the market in sealing wax, because, you know… edginess!
Sly
I live in this district, but I’m moving away in a few weeks. Didn’t realize my vote for Pellegrino would be my last “fuck you” to my dipshit future ex-neighbors, but, hey, I’ll take it as a nice going away present.
Raoul
@RSR: Ohhh, that’s excellent.
Morzer
If even Chunky Altarbro can see it….
efgoldman
@Morzer:
Depends. Does CNN issue signet rings? WaPo doesn’t
Morzer
Kinda sums up Donny Bumblefuck’s whole modus operandi.
hellslittlestangel
@efgoldman: @efgoldman: Somebody should have known.
This should be our new national motto.
mai naem mobile
I know I am being overly optimistic but I actually think the media would/will do a better job on general election coverage because of Dolt 45. I think he’s scared the shit out of pretty much everybody except his his cult followers. I am not saying it will be permanent because there will always be a new generation who has to learn the same lesson.
Mnemosyne
@SatanicPanic:
Huh. Pretty much everyone I know who’s vocally anti-Common Core is a dipshit, so that worries me a bit.
Peale
@Morzer: did Ross have his head up his ass in 2010 and 2014 when Republicans ratcheted up anti-Mexican sentiment to 11, complained about ground zero mosques, mosques in Tennessee, went nuts about anchor babies, locked up nurses who didn’t have Ebola, and cried about unemployment extensions during a severe recession? Of course they’re ditching the economic populism. They won without it big time in mid terms before.
Mike J
@Yutsano:
Fun fact: congressional Republicans are pushing a law that allows campaigns to use robocalls that automatically go to your voice mail without ever ringing the phone.
Johannes
@Mike in NC: No. trust a former native.
Sly
@Mnemosyne:
There are criticisms of CC from the left, mostly having to do with state roll-outs and local support from state governments. This is especially true in New York State, where Cuomo rushed implementation and blamed teachers for not being able to accommodate all the changes so rapidly.
FWIW, Pellegrino herself was an elementary school teacher for 25 years and got most of her major backing from NYSUT, our state union affiliated with the AFT.
Emerald
@Yutsano:
I am worried about Quist. As Al Giordano pointed out today, he recently campaigned with Wilmer four times. Possibly not a smart move in Montana.
Could be the kiss of death.
Morzer
@Emerald:
Sanders won the Montana primary pretty handily. Bringing him in seems like a reasonable move for Quist to make.
Morzer
@Peale:
Douthat’s point relates to Trump, not the GOP as a whole. He may be wrong about what Trump is doing here in terms of his popularity, but there have been some signs that part, at least, of Trump’s voters do feel betrayed. Admittedly, some of them seem not to know that Obamacare = the ACA, so…
Cookie monster
With apologies if I’m stating the bleedin’ obvious:
[TRIGGER WARNING: FTFNYT] Montana Primary results and Presidentia resultsl
Bernie wins by 8K out of a little over 123K for all Dems in the primary, which translates to a little over Bernie +6%. Trump gets over 114K in the primary and almost 280K in the General, winning by just over 20%.
Thompson-Estes in Kansas was ~20% swing…
??? Martin
@Emerald: Bernie played very well in states like Montana.
fuckwit
The tide is turning.
35+ years of right-wing dominance in this country has finally started reversing itself.
Elizabelle
Good to hear. Rock on, Democrats.
Not clicking on it (yet), but WaPost headline: Kathleen Parker column:
Um, wouldn’t Hillary be an even better display of “feminine power?”
Election “results” totally ruined Moana for me.
Chet Murthy
@Elizabelle: That Kathleen Parker. I need some of what -she’s- smokin’. Melania has no power at all. Ivanka? What she has, she has via her daddy. Without Daddy, she’d be another Paris Hilton. Crrrrikey. Teh stupid.
Hillz. Nancy Smash! DAG Yates. Rachel Maddow. -These- are powerful women.
Morzer
Interesting interview with the editor of The Montana Standard on the Quist race:
wbur.org/hereandnow/2017/05/22/montana-house-race
Patricia Kayden
@David Spikes: Save your brain cells. Lower your blood pressure. Don’t read Cillizza.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Parker has occasionally made sense post-Trumpocalypse, but wow, what a deeply stupid, retrograde column that was! Basically, she’s saying their “power” emanates from their appearance and fashion sense. Pretty much the opposite of feminism.
Caught a few minutes of video of the Trump entourage’s meeting with the Pope. Poor Hippie Pope. You could tell he’d rather be just about anywhere else than surrounded by those tacky grift-mavens.
piratedan
@Cookie monster: tbf If Bernie acolytes and supporters gain a majority and steer the party further left, then they will have done so by convincing others of the merits of their arguments. If they keep stating that the party is corrupt and they have to kill it in order to save it, well then they are certainly welcome to build their own party because who would want to saddle them with the taint of the current party….
If Bernie supported Democrats win, well good for them, that’s awesome and we’re glad that you took the time to offer your services to the country. Not all Bernie supporters are crazed with CDS, I know that, you know that… the problem with our media is that they keep finding these folks and shoving mikes in their faces, you know, just like they do with the ever elusive Trump supporters. Because the media fucking hates boring reasonable Democrats because they do not generate revenue clicks. Government operating normally and providing services sucks for the media, its why they seemingly put their thumbs on the scales for conflict and they really don’t give a shit about who is fighting who, just that somebody is fighting.
TS
@Morzer:
Need a LIKE button
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Oh gods, I read that column last night, and I’m sorry I did. Her idea of “feminine power” seems to be “sit down, shut up, and look pretty.” She applauds them for dressing modestly yet attractively and says that Saudi women look up to glitz and glamour. Or something. Parker filed her story from Palm Beach, which she seemed to think was important to her readers, as she repeated the fact several times. It was a deeply stupid and profoundly lazy column. The comments are brutal.
Hal
@piratedan: I agree with what you wrote, but at the same time I’m finding it hard to separate the rabid Bernie Bros. from the rest. I don’t believe there is much of a Sanders wing of the Democratic party so much as a large number of “people on the left” who support Sanders and somehow get intertwined with democrats. Do they even every vote outside of their favorite candidate?
My big fear is dems are going to make big gains over the next couple of years and when 2020 rolls around it’s going to be Bernie Sanders shuffling his way onto the national stage again. 2016 primaries all over.
prufrock
@Betty Cracker: I haven’t taken Parker seriously since she based an entire abstinence column on the idea that there is a 15% chance of contracting HIV if you hook up with a stranger, even if you use condoms. Turns out the source of her claim was a medical study that stated that condoms reduced the transmission rate of HIV by 85% (and that included people who used them improperly). Given that even the most people don’t have HIV, and even people that do only have a 7% chance of transmitting it per vanilla missionary act, her claim was…dubious. She either was lying, or is so stupid she can’t do fifth grade math.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Hal: I don’t think Bernie will be much of a factor in 2020: he’ll be edging in on 80 yo, the rest of the field will be more aggressive towards him than HRC was, and there may be rule changes that may make a run like 2016 a bit more difficult. Now there may be a ‘Bernie’ type candidate, though I think the environment post-Trump will be alot different and will make less of an impact.
tobie
@Hal: I know lots of Bernie primary supporters and I’d say all have voted in the past for Democrats but weren’t strongly identified with the Democratic party. Some considered the party too mainstream, some were just not that political. But generally by the time of the general election they all fell in line and usually liked, even if they did not love, the party candidate. The case in point would be John Kerry. They preferred Howard Dean but grew a soft spot for Kerry during the party convention and general election season. Not so this time. All HATE the Democratic Party, have reregistered as independents or greens and burn with incandescent rage at HRC. And yes they continue to track Bernie’s pronouncements and reiterate ad nauseum his critique of the neoliberal forces that run the Democratic party, and take a certain pleasure in Dem defeats as it proves to them that they’re more in touch with the mood of the people than the party.
Oh, how could I forget: they are all white and claim to feel the pain of the white working class, though none of them are working class. Such loyalty, such certainty–I’ve only seen it in cult movements like the GOP.
Morzer
@Hal:
The 13 million votes Sanders got in the primary suggest that actually there is a pretty substantial constituency in the Democratic party for Bernieism, whatever that might be. If the Clintonites try to pretend otherwise and just go back to business as usual, they risk losing those votes to apathy/despair/disillusionment (whatever flavor of rejection you prefer). I don’t see how they can hope to win elections without reaching some sort of understanding with Sanders and his voters. And, of course, the reverse applies, which is why I think the dead-enders/extemists on both sides of the divide need to stop squabbling and hurling insults and accusations and recognize that they share far more in the way of ideas and aspirations than they disagree on. Bernie’s people have screwed some stuff up – but so have the Clinton folks. No-one has a monopoly of virtue here and it would be wise to recognize that fact now and unite against the GOP and Trump before they do even more damage.
tobie
@Morzer:
Yeah! Like the time at the convention when they kept on interrupting Bernie’s speech with shout-outs like “No NRA” or when they lambasted the left the day after the election about not paying attention to people of color…
Oh, shit, naw, that’s not what happened. The calls were No TPP and the critique of HRC was that she supposedly said or insinuated, “Vote for me because I’m a woman.”
The friggin party did everything it possibly could to make nice to Bernie’s supporters and his supporters spit in their faces. Maybe it’s time for Sander’s acolytes to remembers that 16-17 million Dems voted for HRC in the primary and as the majority of the party they deserve a big voice, too. Both sides don’t do it. One side, the party faithful, are there every election giving money, making calls, knocking on doors, etc. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and and with special verve since November. Am yet to see a sizable contingent of Bernie folks turn out for local school board races, state legislative seats, etc. Wonder why.
Shalimar
@Cookie monster: To state the blindingly obvious, congratulations for noting how popular Bernie Sanders was before Republicans spent 5 months doing nothing but shitting on him. Hillary Clinton barely attacked him because she was the front-runner and she didn’t need to. Republicans held their fire while they attacked Clinton because they would have preferred to face Bernie. The only reason Bernie Sanders still seems clean was because no one had to dirty him up to beat him.
Shalimar
@tobie:
I have been trying for the last year and this is the main problem: you can’t rationally discuss anything with rage monsters. Everything always circles back to their hatred. It is all they want to talk about.
Shalimar
@Morzer: Bernie supporters are welcome in the Democratic party. I was a Bernie supporter at the beginning of last year, before his campaign turned so ugly. He didn’t create some new, more liberal wing of the party. We have been here for decades.
It is the assholes who want to burn the old party apparatus to the ground and start fresh with themselves as leaders who can get the fuck out. Those selfish assholes will never contribute to anything positive.
leeleeFL
@David Spikes: Does not make you a bad person! Shit has really been difficult to withstand in any rational, adult, Liberal way. I feel you completely, and would like to wish Cilliza a miserable case of poison ivy of the crotch. Just so you’re not alone.
DCF
@SatanicPanic:
The fish may not be biting, but the ride itself is worth the effort ;>) ….
ourrevolution.com/candidates/christine-pellegrino/
Democrats Just Flipped Seats In 2 Districts That Voted For Donald Trump
GOP candidates lose special elections in New York and New Hampshire.
huffingtonpost.com/entry/democrats-win-two-elections_us_59250144e4b0ec129d3082d0
Barbara
@Yutsano: I read a NYT article on the Quist election and what keeps popping up is this idea among some voters that billionaires are not beholden” to anyone and so will exercise their power independently. Trump clearly benefited from this meme. I was trying to think of a suitable response, and here is what I came up with, so far: Billionaires are not beholden to other people but they are beholden to a system that reinforces their wealth and influence, by cutting their taxes and along with, cutting the things that might benefit you, like education or health care or even infrastructure, and by appointing judges who make rulings along the lines of money equaling speech. The fallacy is that not being beholden to other people automatically means that they are inclined to help people who are not billionaires.
Also, after giving Quist three separate donations I unsubscribed from his list. I was, literally, getting 5 or 6 e-mails a day with subject lines like I was enabling a catastrophe by not giving further. I don’t usually unsubscribe but whoever was running his campaign went overboard with this kind of thing. There must be someway of generating categories so that an email program can distinguish between someone who has given in the last week from someone who gave six months ago. Anywho. I hope he wins.
Citizen Alan
@Shalimar:
I really do regret that Mike Malloy dropped out so soon. If it had more staying power, eventually he would have reached the point where he had to tear down Bernie in order to have a chance of becoming the anti-hillary consensus choice. He could have torn down pretty stander’s in a way that Hillary Clinton was not in a position to without looking like a bully.
Stan
@Mike in NC:
No
Stan
@tobie:
Absolutely not true in my community. Our local dem party is hopelessly corrupt, and almost evenly split during the dem primary (Bernie won our city and county). Strong, hardworking activists on both sides of this. And yeah, it is still influeincing local races as our primary season heats up.