I want to follow the Ossoff election coverage, but the hot takes are just nauseating. Is it worse because there are only two elections to cover today and the media, pundits, and rabblerousers are thirsty, or is it always like this and I have just blocked the most recent general election from memory?
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Bruce K
My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that the GOP’s capacity for evil has overwhelmed our capacity to cope.
The Moar You Know
Coverage of elections is one of the biggest problems we have with elections in this country. Most countries have a mandatory blackout on election coverage for a least 48 hours prior to the election, and until all results are in. We could really use that.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Sort of a GOP evil event horizon… a GOP evil singularity.
Hal
I was listening to 538 podcast this morning while commuting to work and they were talking about this race, and what win/lose really means. Part of Nate Silver’s point though was that media coverage of this is going to be terrible because of the money and rhetoric.
Bruce K
@The Moar You Know: Sounds good in theory, but I don’t think there’s any way to square that with the First Amendment. Of course, it doesn’t help that the core of the news media was so hot and bothered about HER EMAILS that they glossed over the con job pulled off by the most corrupt team ever to take over the White House.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yes.
Is there anything but takes to follow at this point until the votes are counted? At this point on Nov 9 Rudi Giuliani was negotiating with his kids to talk to him long enough to post his resume on monster dot com, and we were all laughing at the trump’s head cake that looked like it was crying.
raven
What’a hot take?
Quinerly
@Bruce K:
I think you have nailed what has happened to me this week.
schrodingers_cat
@Quinerly: I have found unplugging from TV news, helpful. Even the NewsHour and local news. I get my political news from the BBC website, Washington Post and Balloon Juice.
raven
never mind
West of the Rockies (been a while)
In a just world, Ossoff should win. Turdlicans have won the last two seats, despite beating up a reporter.
Bill
I’m worried that we’ve put far too much emphasis on this race. In this end, it’s still Georgia and I will be very surprised if Ossoff wins. But I’m concerned that far too many Democrats will take a loss as a “well that’s it we don’t stand a chance” moment.
hovercraft
Well here’s a development that I’m sure s totally on the up and up, no bribery, conflict of interest, grift, or anything like that! Really people just move along nothing to see here!
Report: Jared And Ivanka Invited To China, Possibly To Preview Trump Visit
Bloomberg reported Tuesday, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter, that China has invited President Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law to visit the country later this year, perhaps as an opening bid to bring Trump himself to the country.
An unnamed U.S. official told Bloomberg that details of the trip were still under discussion. An unnamed Chinese official added, per Bloomberg’s wording, that the visit “may also help prepare for a trip by the President himself.” The same official said Chinese President Xi Jinping had made an offer to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner when he visited Mar-a-Lago in April.
Iowa Old Lady
@Bruce K: Works for me.
gene108
@Bruce K:
If that were true gay marriage would be illegal.
Income taxes on the rich would be gone.
The AHCA would not even attempt to hide itself from the fact that it is a tax give away to the filthy rich, at the expense of the poor. There wouldn’t even be a name that’s close to the ACA to confuse people as to which law is which. They’d just straight up repeal Obamacare, give the tax cut to billionaires and call it a day.
I think we’re stronger than what Trump, Russian and Congressional Republicans will dish out.
Kropadope
@The Moar You Know:
Yes, this. But also, do you think things would have been any better last election if the media didn’t have Sunday and Monday before the election to cover James Comey’s *shocking* revelation that not-Hillary-Clinton’s-but-Anthony-Weiner’s computer didn’t have any incriminating new Hillary emails on it?
Granted, most of the people who wanted to vote for Hillary already knew there was nothing to that burger, but still…
pluky
@raven: comment made in the moment without all relevant facts available. i.e. in the heat of the moment.
Kraux Pas
@gene108:
RA! RA! CIS BOOM BAH!!!
gene108
@Bill:
The people I’ve encountered, at a few Indivisible meetings, are very fired up. We’re a bit disorganized, as some groups pop-up, while others fall apart as people have lives to get on with, but making a race Price won in 2016 by something like 20 points competitive still gives people hope.
There has been some good news regarding local races, in places like Illinois, where Democrats have taken control of cities in the non-Chicago part of the state, which had been Republican and where Republicans often ran unopposed.
I think individually we all need to do a bit of self-care. It’s not a sprint, it’s a distance run to 2018 and 2020 and beyond.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Agreed. So what did you finally decide for mom’s birthday?
The Dangerman
@Bill:
This. Price won 60 to 40. The media narrative if the Right wins again, even in a squeaker, will be terrible.
ruemara
@gene108: This is correct. I think that this is a winnable race, but I don’t see it as a bellwether to slit my wrists to.
SatanicPanic
@gene108: The thing is, even if we do nothing right we’ll still be back in power eventually. Did the Republicans do anything positive to be in power now? I can’t remember any smart moves they made.
OTOH if people are like, “we’re doomed, they’re going to suppress voting and we’ll never win again”, fine. But take up golfing or knitting or something, because if you really think that then politics is just going to make you feel bad and life is too short.
Kraux Pas
@gene108:
I saw Bill Maher recently mocking Democrats for cheering the act of beating the spread. But given the closeness of races with spreads along the lines of 20 points; that’s plenty of cause for at least cautious optimism, if not outright cheer.
raven
@The Dangerman: Here’s a little tip, it’s terrible either way,
JPL
@gene108: The article that Betty linked to below, mentioned groups working for Ossoff are not going away, win or lose. They are in it for the long haul, to make representatives work for us. Pave it Blue is a good local organization.
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Gift certificate to a spa.
Probably go out to dinner on day of.
The Dangerman
@raven:
True. Kinda like the Lakers and Lonzo Ball. Take him at 2 and potentially get a head case. Skip him and miss out on a local kid that might be good. I wouldn’t want to be Magic right now. Well, other than all the money and all the women.
gene108
@SatanicPanic:
They leveraged the Citizen’s United decision to flood down ballot races with attack ads, which the Democratic incumbents were not prepared for or had the means to respond to and flipped a lot of state houses in 2010.
And then redrew districts to lock in their majorities at the local level and in Congress.
It’s not “smart” from a “does it make things better” perspective, but from a “will I continue to have power” perspective it was very shrewd.
Smart for Republicans is not about being effective in government, it is about amassing power and wealth. That’s metric you need to measure them on.
Does making people hate government make things better? No but discouraged voters are more willing to buy into the cynicism that government sucks, everyone in government sucks, so whey the fuck not let them loot away to their hearts content.
D58826
Sometimes hard to tell the difference between the Onion and a real news site. This is Newsweek:
Now at first blush this seems insane but on some reflection it is totally brilliant. Teaming up the Russians on cybersecurity will save so much time and money since they have the ‘toolkits’ that we want to block. And it’s a simple trade – they give us the toolkits and we lift the sanctions. A perfect Trumpian win-win.
Hmmmm given that any of that makes sense must mean I need a long vacation from anything remotely connected to the internet or thew news/
raven
@The Dangerman: You watched the Celtics-Lakers 30 on 30?
SatanicPanic
@gene108: OK that’s a fair point. Gerrymandering was smart.
To go back to your point about Indivisible- the one I belong to has actually grown considerably. I’m not too worried about people getting complacent.
Spanky
@D58826: That just tells me that our IC ain’t giving Drillerson the time of day on cybersecurity. Which is as it should be for that compromised piece o’shit.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: You’re kidding. They’ve been working 70 years, since the late 1930s, to get back in power and stay there. They took over the churches, got that vote out, under Nixon got the entire white South on their side with his “Southern Strategy”, successfully split off voters with never-ending wedge issues, took over the Supreme Court, got the rich firmly on their side with tax cuts paid for by the middle class, got Citizens United instituted as the law of the land, gerrymandered every Congressional district in the United States, and broke all the unions that used to be the Democratic Party’s main source of funding.
Everything they’ve done was a smart move. They knew it would take decades, and they had the patience and determination to do it. And here we are.
Can we reverse it? Of course, but it will take what the Republicans put into it: patience, determination, and decades of work. Forget 2020. Start thinking of 2060, because that is how long it will take Dems to truly be back in power. City, county, state and national. Just like the GOP is now.
rikyrah
Morning Cole.
Hope all is well at Casa Cole :)
The Dangerman
@raven:
Some of it, not all. I still can’t watch Rambis get clotheslined (or, for that matter, Worthy taking out Maxwell, which may not have been the same year). That’s not basketball, but rather WWE stuff. Plus, the Celtics won the first go round which was sickening as a Lakers fan growing up. I did watch enough to enjoy seeing Magic when he was really, really something on the court. Other than the Jungle Ball, those were the days.
ETA: Showtime was fun. And Nicholson was a kick. One game I was at, circa 1986, a gorgeous Asian woman went down to his seat for an “autograph” (i.e., give him her number). The entire gym was watching her as she was an 11. I think she got a standing ovation.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: And yet for their brilliant, decades long strategy they lost big in 2006 and 2008, and have only won the presidency outright one time since 1988. They’ve made a lot of dumb f*cking moves in the last few decades.
You’re from California, you should know this is wrong.
ETA- I mean seriously- “Everything they’ve done was a smart move. “- their response to Hurricane Katrina? The Iraq War? The Clinton Impeachment? Donald Trump? come on man.
D58826
@gene108: I’m not sure how much impact Citizens United had in NC but Art Pope basically bought the legislature and then the governorship. over the past 1/2 doz. years. Even w/o Citizens he was able to go into the TV markets of the smaller rural legislative districts and overwhelm the D’s with advertising. In districts that saw $500 for lawn signs, $1500 for leaflets and maybe 3 or 4 local TV ads, he could buy up every TV slot for a month prior to the election. Once he hoovered them up he could move to some of the more expensive districts. In the end it didn’t matter if the more liberal Charlotte area went D, he simply had more legislators from the smaller districts than the D’s had coming out of Charlotte,
This does not mean I think Citizens hasn’t had an impact. I just don’t think getting rid of Citizens will be a magic fix for the D’s. I actually think that it is a two pronged problem. Citizens opened the flood gate on the money but the gutting of the Voting Rights act meant that a moderate/liberal DOJ would be powerless to challenge the ill-gotten changes to the voting laws that Citizens help enact.
Bruce K
@SatanicPanic:
Sorry if I’m a bit of a Debbie Downer, but there are a number of us who are worried that we might not survive to see “eventually”. Particularly if CheetoCare reduces our healthcare options to “either win the lottery or drop dead”.
(Has anyone used CheetoCare to describe the AHCA yet? If now, how does one give such a term a bit of traction?)
JPL
@gene108: Handel is not well liked in the district, so I might add that the contest is whether or not scary, negative ads work. I think they do, but I hope I’m wrong.
raven
@The Dangerman: My brother is a die-hard Laker fan and those things were his focus. I still live in Urbana when Illinois beat that Michigan State team the year they won it all but I didn’t have the emotional connection to the Lakers so I have enjoyed the historical aspect.
The Moar You Know
@SatanicPanic: Look at the scoreboard. We aren’t winning.
ETA: 1300 downticket seats lost since 2008 alone. Sure, the GOP has done some stupid shit. But the trendline is very, very clear. It can be reversed. But again…decades. Not two election cycles.
gvg
I have been destressing by using google images to find lots of pictures of stained glass and collecting screen shots. I haven’t done any in 30 years but didn’t get rid of my tools and still have some nice scraps. I really am thinking of doing some again. Family is stressing me and nothing I can do so, time maybe to get back to making something beautiful and tangible. It has always helped me. I like making things. I have done other kinds of making things but lately I have been dreaming about glass again. anyway i recommend anyone use google images to cheer themselves up. what do you love? Go look at it till you feel better.
SatanicPanic
@Bruce K: Of course. What’s going on right now is horrible and it can’t end fast enough.
SatanicPanic
@The Moar You Know: Thanks Captain Obvious!
ETA- yeah, we lost a lot of seats since 2008. I wonder if you went back to, say, 2008 what the trendline looked like.
tpherald
Free advice: Don’t use videos from libertarian self-centered anti-science scumbag Penn Jillette.
Mnemosyne
@Bill:
A point of order: the media keeps saying that there is a “record amount” of $15 million being spent on this race without mentioning that Handel has spent $12 million of that.
The Republicans are scared, and they’re pouring every resource they have into this race that they should have won in a walk.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
They “won” the same way the Patriots won: by cheating.
Yeah, Pats fans, I said it. Bite me.
Skepticat
@Bruce K: You are so sadly, painfully, depressingly spot on.
D58826
@SatanicPanic: Yes they have lost big on occasion but they are in it for the long term. The Kochs, et.al. know that election cycles are just like in the Auto industry for every clunker like the Ford Edsel there will be winners like the Mustang and the Tarsus. And they have had a lot more Mustangs than Edsels (W not withstanding).
Dirge
@SatanicPanic: They gerrymandered the states to take the House. Senate is more cyclical, but vote suppression helped.
They didn’t just wait for power to come back to them.
SatanicPanic
@D58826: This is true of both parties. No party has dominated for long in our current environment.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Agreed.
Step away from the TV; it mostly serves to push conventional wisdom. It’s programming. Somewhat designed to inflame Republicans and depress Democrats.
Fingers crossed for Ossoff. Let’s win. Go Democrats. Remind anyone you can to remind their circle to vote.
bemused
@The Moar You Know:
Probably everyone here has seen the 1980 Goo Goo Government youtube of Paul Weyrich, co-founder of Heritage Foundation and also had a hand in starting ALEC. 37 years ago, Weyrich straight said he didn’t want everyone to vote because then Republicans lose.
The Moar You Know
@Mnemosyne: Sure they did. In a system built to allow cheating, you cheat. They worked the system. Very, very successfully. Both the GOP and Pats, to be clear.
Winning is winning. This is how winners think: “I’d prefer to do it the right way but I’m totally OK with doing it the wrong way as well so long as I win.” McConnell might as well have that tattooed on his very shiny, recently lifted forehead.
The GOPs winning and how they got here is not my main concern. It’s “how do we, as Democrats, get to where they are?” And that answer involves a lot of money, a lot of work, and a shitload of time that we really would like not to spend…but we’re going to have to. We have neglected downticket races for decades and that’s why we’re in the hole we’re in. We, as a party, really can’t do that anymore.
SatanicPanic
@Dirge: Who is suggesting we just wait? I’m saying that regardless of what we do, we’ll eventually get back, not that we should do nothing. On the contrary, we should fight hard. The Republicans were able to gerrymander (in some places, not EVERYWHERE like some people are wrongly suggesting) because they won some key races, but they had to win in an environment that wasn’t gerrymandered, and there was nothing magical about that. They’ve shown that they suck at governing, so eventually people get sick of them and throw them out, and gerrymandering can’t protect them forever.
D58826
@SatanicPanic: Well if you look at the federal election cycles based on presidential years:
1964 Pres – D/ Congress D
1968/1972 Pres – R/ Congress D
1976 Pres – D/ Congress D
1980/1984 – Pres – R/ Congress split
1988 Pres R/ congress / Congress D
1992 Pres D/ Congress D
1996 Pres D/ Congress R
2000/2004 Pres R/ Congress R
2008 Pres D/Congress D
2012 Pres D/Congress split
And if you include the off-year ejections since 1968 the D’s have controlled both ends of PA. avenue only 8 years – Carter 4, Clinton 2 and Obama 2. And as Yrtle showed between 1008-2014 even in the minority the R’s can do a lot of damage.
And none of this includes the conservative tilt to the judiciary and SCOTUS.
So since LBJ left I would say the GOP has been pretty successful. In fact it is rather amazing that as much of the progressive agenda that has been passed or saved.
Cris (without an H)
As a venerable Georgia resident says: https://twitter.com/AugustJPollak/status/876792666444451842
D58826
@SatanicPanic: I think the R’s did pretty well from the post civil war till 1932. The D’s got most of what they wanted from 1932 till 1968. What helped then was the GOP was only moderately right of center and had come to accept the New Deal. Nothing at all like the post Reagan mob.
rikyrah
Devin Nunes: ‘I never recused myself’ from Russia probe
06/20/17 11:21 AM—UPDATED 06/20/17 11:29 AM
By Steve Benen
By early April, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) had become the punch-line to an unfortunate joke. The California Republican, who was supposed to be leading an investigation into the Russia scandal, took steps to effectively blow up his own probe by partnering with the White House, keeping secrets from his colleagues, and lying publicly about his own antics.
With circumstances forcing his hand, and facing an ethics probe, Nunes announced on April 6 that he was recusing himself from the Russia investigation. Responsibility for overseeing the probe quickly shifted to other GOP members of the House Intelligence panel.
All of which brought us to yesterday, when the GOP congressman said he didn’t actually recuse himself after all. The Washington Examiner reported:
As Rachel noted on last night’s show, we were certainly led to believe Nunes had withdrawn from the process, “but he now says that was all fake news. He’s still in charge. He’s not recused and he’s still controlling the subpoena power on that committee. That’s weird.”
zhena gogolia
@raven:
You ask a question that has crossed my mind many times in recent months.
zhena gogolia
@tpherald:
Okay, that’s who I thought it was. I was wondering why he was having his fat face plastered here.
SatanicPanic
@D58826: Alternatively, the Republicans have also only controlled both branches a few times- the 2000s are messy because the senate divided Congress, what, 2002-2004? Can’t remember when Jeffords flipped. And then they fuly lost congress in 2006. And obviously they won it back in 2016. It’s hardly a tale of Republican dominance.
The Moar You Know
@D58826: That agenda survived because it was popular. People didn’t like the poor and elderly dying on their streets. That’s probably changed. Post-Reagan, as you note. Reagan destroyed this nation’s soul and decency. Trump’s only cleaning up the leftovers.
Your stats are incomplete, but that’s because it would be very difficult to compile, and impossible to present on one page, how bad the damage is at the state, county and city levels. My state has managed to limit the damage at the state level. Hell, we beat the GOP to death on the state level but they gave us the opening to. Thanks, Pete Wilson!
But even my county (which went for first Obama and then Hillary) has a 5/0 GOP ruling coalition, which has some serious ramifications for our local educational system, among other things. The GOP are not out of business here in CA and we need to double down on beating them, and keeping what we have…and I’m not seeing plans to do that.
gene108
@SatanicPanic:
We really did shift pretty far to the Left during Obama’s tenure.
I’m not sure how much was deliberate and how much just sort of happened for reasons no one can quite explain.
We went from “o.k. maybe raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hr” to “fuck it, $15/hr or bust”.
We are pushing for some level of free post-secondary education – whether 4 year colleges or vocational schools and/or community colleges.
And this doesn’t even touch issues regarding gay marriage and LGBT rights, which went from “maybe we can have civil unions” to “let’s all gay marry, who we love!!!”.
People don’t want to lose those gains. The momentum behind those proposals has hit a wall, with Republicans in charge, but we’re trying to batter that wall to pieces.
D58826
@rikyrah:
Hate to disagree with Rachel but it isn’t weird it is corrupt. But then corrupt and republican are interchangeable these days.
gene108
@D58826:
That’s because people, who didn’t accept the New Deal, lost bigly.
The only way to change the Republican Party is to beat them election cycle after election cycle, until they either change or wither away and die.
JR in WV
@gvg:
Hi gvg, there was a nice old stained glass window in last week’s On The Road post:
https://balloon-juice.com/2017/06/16/on-the-road-91/#more-211818
Old tiny village church in Tuscan vineyard.
For inspiration… it’s a olive branch.
Van Buren
@West of the Rockies (been a while): I see the problem here.
Bill
@Mnemosyne: You’re right of course, but I’m more concerned about the number of people on the left I’ve heard say things like “if we can’t win this then all of the resistance was meaningless.” It’s one race that Democrats had no business winning in the first place. If it’s close that’s something to build on, but I’m worried that too many people are seeing this as the finish line rather than the start.
(Maybe I’m just worrying too much. But i don’t think so.)
D58826
@gene108: In part but it was the party of Ike, Rocjefekker, Dirkson and even Jerry Ford. The more conservative Taft wing was sidelined after Taft lost out to Ike for the GOP nominee. The very conservative wing lost bigly with Goldwater but they licked their wounds and plotted a come back that resulted in Reagan in 1980. The thing is they had deep pockets and had the patience to execute a long term business plan.
I really am not a PR flack for Jane Mayer but read her book Dark Money. Centering on the Kochs it describes the long term RW business supported strategy to go back to 1890.
And to see what can happen even in a purple state
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/magazine/is-north-carolina-the-future-of-american-politics.html?referer=
zhena gogolia
@Bill:
I share your worries.
SatanicPanic
@gene108: it’s really been a sea change in recent years, right? I think it’s in part due to Republicans shooting themselves in the foot by exposing their bad faith. Obama was their last, best hope to control the narrative- they could have worked with him on things and preserved the idea that bipartisanship was a positive good. That’s gone. And sure, they’re in control right now, but that won’t last, and then we’ll ram through our agenda when we get the chance.
hovercraft
@Kraux Pas:
Bill Maher can be funny, but he’s also got several blind spots, beginning with his whole Islam is bad shtick, cheering the fact that we came close is not the equivalent of everybody getting a participation trophy. When at first yo don’t succeed……… We have to celebrate the close ones and strategize to do better the next time, period. If all we do is bemoan the fact that we lost, you do demoralize people and make them feel dejected. I hope Ossoff wins, but if he doesn’t it just means we have to try harder.
rikyrah
@Bill:
This was Newt’s House Seat.
It would be like a Republican being competitive in Nancy Smash’s district.
dww44
@The Moar You Know: Yet another reason that the election of Democrats at all levels is imperative for our democracy. I love the idea of a 24-48 hour blackout and mandatory paper trails/ballots. You know one thing about the optical scan ballot we used here prior to 2002 was that it worked perfectly fine and was not easily hacked. Only the tabulation could be. Sometimes simpler and older is really better. Particularly when costly updates can be avoided.
mai naem mobile
I am expecting Handel to win. That way I am not disappointed. What’s the saying – the soft bigotry of low expectations?
Chief Oshkosh
@SatanicPanic:
I think that they did EVERYTHING right to be in power, though they’ve done nothing to actually govern. They’ve been building grassroots organizations, funded by rich white boys, since the 60s. They run in every race, no matter how dismal their chances, and they never stop. They are relentless because, at the end of the day, there’s always just enough money in the till to keep going.
We don’t have that on our side. But worse, we don’t have closers on our side. The most wiley guy we’ve got in the Senate is Shumer, and he ain’t that great. He’s really great for Chuck Shumer, but not so much for the rest of us. Nancy Smash is great in the House at governing issues, but I don’t think she’s so hot at getting Democrats elected. I realize that that is not the job of either of those people technically, but, it really is their job. :)
Chief Oshkosh
@The Moar You Know: Thanks. You said it a lot better than I did.
WaterGirl
@SatanicPanic: They are shooting themselves in the foot, but they are shooting our country in the head or the heart and nearly every vital organ. Republicans need to go down, and go down good. I just hope the wheels of justice can grind quickly enough, and I am counting on the exceedingly fine part.