Beautiful sunrise at Stonehenge for the #SummerSolstice #SummerSolstice2017 pic.twitter.com/gJaJNq3ApI
— BBC Wiltshire (@BBCWiltshire) June 21, 2017
Summer solstice, for most Balloon-Juice readers. Today’s Google doodle will strike a chord for all of us who’ve ever resented the extrovert’s Such a lovely day — put down that book and come outside to enjoy it! (Those of you in the Southern Hemisphere get a different version of your own.)
Thoughts & prayers (seriously) to those of you in the Southwest bearing the triple-digit brunt of that “scientific hoax” known as climate change!
Apart from that, what’s on the agenda for the day?
***********
Couple quick notes on last night’s GA-6 race. Josh Marshall, at TPM:
… This is a big disappointment. But remember, by any objective measure these races show a Democratic party resurgent and a GOP on the ropes. These seats came open because they were vacated by people Trump picked for cabinet appointments. They got those picks because they came from safe seats. They are by no means a cross section of House seats. The thing to do is learn what we can from coming up just short and move on to the next fight. No one should expect any of this to be easy. If you do, bow out of civic questions and just watch movies and TV. We need people with more endurance.
Ed Kilgore, in NYMag:
…Democrats searching for a silver lining in the Georgia race don’t have to look too far. This is the third consecutive special election (the fourth if you count South Carolina) in a historically Republican district where the Democratic percentage of the vote jumped sharply. Democrats will surely retake the House if the swing in their direction is similarly strong in 2018. In retrospect, ironically, tonight’s results may inspire new respect for Hillary Clinton’s performance–when she came within a point of Donald Trump in this district last November — and provide some new data points for doing well in GOP-leaning districts that resemble GA-06 with its highly educated population.
As a long-time Georgian, I would add that in my experience Georgia Democrats don’t much show up to vote in special elections, or runoffs, much less special election runoffs. That so many did in this election was a minor miracle…
Taking the loss hard is different than chucking everything & saying we’re doomed unless we do everything g different.
Winning _is_ more fun https://t.co/jn3wALGT6V
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) June 21, 2017
WereBear
I was hoping to win, of course. But coming so close is also a win of sorts.
bemused
I think I just heard Morning Joe say no way would Republicans vote for the bill before CBO score. Really? I think they are capable of anything, no matter how low or insane at this point.
BlueDWarrior
@WereBear: I think people are coded to think of political wins and losses the same way they think of sports wins and losses.
As we should be reminded (constantly), human society is an ever evolving and shifting thing. Just because you win or lose in one moment doesn’t mean you won or lost forever. So we should learn what we can from the Ossoff loss and see how can we parlay that into hacking into, if not overturning, the Repub House majority.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
I’m kind of at the “let’s fund kickstarters for Chechen rebels and the Weathermen” stage.
JPL
After Handel received the disgraceful mailer, along with the powder, you could feel the momentum move into her favor. People around here felt bad for her. I hope they catch the person who did that, but it’s unlikely.
Baud
@bemused: I think it would violate Senate rules.
NobodySpecial
@JPL: He’s probably working for her campaign.
Bill E Pilgrim
I turned on Morning Joe and Democrats apparently suffered a terrible, humiliating defeat in the Georgia House race last night, presumably a seat they had held for years and lost in a stunning upset, which means that the Democratic Party must clearly rethink everything and Harold Ford Jr says that obviously they need to focus on promising tax cuts and Joe adds that they should try anti-abortion and pro-NRA candidates, and so on.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the last Republican won the safely-GOP district by a 28% margin, and a Democrat just came within a few percentage points of taking the seat by capitalizing on how terrible and unpopular the Republican President is.
Click.
WereBear
@BlueDWarrior: I agree. I also think most people are unaware of just how much cheating the Republicans have been doing, from gerrymandering to voter suppression.
OzarkHillbilly
SSDD
Lapassionara
@bemused: Republicans will fall in line, just as they did in the house. They are just wired that way. How anyone could see Karen Handel coming and not run in the other direction is a mystery to me. What a vile human being.
Good morning, all.
Baud
@JPL: I think it’s like the Comey October surprise. You give GOP leaning people a last minute excuse to do what they want to anyway and they seize on it.
Baud
@Bill E Pilgrim:
As sound as any other piece of crap advice we are subject to.
p.a.
Well what the fuckity fuck would it take for them to show up? The Rethugs aren’t going to run someone who OPENLY practices human sacrifice. Jesuschrist
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Cornell West Woulda Won
Baud
@p.a.: You forgot a “yet.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Bill E Pilgrim: Obviously we need to gut the Democratic Party down to the frame and rebuild it and eliminate the “Establishment”.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
And this is some kind of change for you?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
Middle of the road Anglo conservatives ALWAYS veer right in coalitions to obtain/retain power. Witness the Tories and DUP, Nixon’s Dixie strategy, the teabigots, etc.
bemused
@Baud:
Rules, schmules!
JPL
Fifty-eight percent of the district has a college degree, and they voted for a candidate who finished high school. That did not appear to be an issue though, and it was raised by Ossoff.
Dirty tricks and negative ads work.
Baud
@bemused: They can try to change the rules, but I don’t think they’ve crossed the line yet when it comes to ignoring the rules.
Of course, I could be wrong about the rules.
Anya
@Bill E Pilgrim: If it was that easy why didn’t Harold Ford Jr win his seat? I am so glad I stopped watching Morning Joe since that was the only time I saw that opportunist ligh weight.
rikyrah
Good Morning,Everyone???
JPL
I have a dentist appt at nine, and if my dentist mentions the election, I might bite him. Accidentally, of course.
Baud
@JPL: Same culture though. That’s what this is all about, from Trump to Handel.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JPL: Finished High School? ELITIST!
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
p.a.
@Baud: I think it’s Atrios who says “why would someone vote for a fake rethug when a real one is available?” Harold Ford for Ambassador to Antarctica.
bemused
@Lapassionara:
But, but, she’s guided by her Christian faith just like her voters!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@JPL:
I’m doubt Handel’s campaign team would turn themselves in.
This is an old trick. Especially used in southern or rural areas when the campaign is losing. Manufacture an outrage and then blame the other side. Even Rove did this:
Baud
@p.a.: I’ve heard that before and at this point I don’t buy it. Although I prefer liberal Dems over centrists, I don’t know that one has been more successful than another in swing districts and states.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Anya: I read or heard somewhere that Joe and Harold worked on some across the aisle bill, given that Scarborough was part of the “Gingrich Revolution” back then I’m sure it was a real piece of work, and Joe was impressed because Ford was the only Democrat who would co-author it with him, and they’ve been joined at the hip since. Which partly explains why this person who virtually no one else has thought about for a decade is a prominent voice on that show.
Luckily I’m moving this weekend and that show is actually on at like 3 am if you’re on the West Coast, weirdly, so I won’t be tempted to turn it on out of habit as I do sometimes now since it will be over by the time I get up.
kd bart
@Baud: The 2 month lag between the jungle primary and the runoff might’ve been the worse thing for Ossoff. It gave the GOP plenty of time to coalesce around Handel and run a proper negative campaign. If the runoff had been a month ago, he might’ve been able to pull it off.
Baud
@kd bart: Perhaps. Frankly, November 2018 is more important than this election. Hopefully we can apply some lessons here to that election.
BlueDWarrior
@Baud: By and large, these are people who will take any opportunity to piss on liberals; but by and large are ARE running centrists in these seats, and they are losing. (To be fair, when liberals sneak through in primaries, they don’t fare hardly better, or really worse.) I think what they are trying to get at is that we have to stop having liberal leaders and spokespeople, and tell conservatives and conservative-leaners the necessary lies to make them feel comfortable about themselves: like how yes government is a giant beast that needs to be on a starvation diet, black people need to be taught to act like proper Americans, women need to stop shouting about anything and everything happening to them, and on down the line.
It’s another in the long line of rhetoric trying to get liberals and leftists to just shut up and stop rocking the boat about all the things they see wrong.
Kay
Disappointing.
Congress is really far Right. The Senate health care law is rumored to to be further Right than the House bill was, and the extreme Right got everything they wanted in the House bill. We’re going to lose childrens coverage which took 30 years to get. It’s a dramatic step backward.
If you give a (low) estimate for what just childrens health care coverage is worth for low and lower income families and say “400 dollars a month” that’s almost 5000 dollar annual loss for people who make, say, 25,000. It’s a huge loss if you look at coverage as part of annual compensation- pay- which is how better-off people look at it.
I don’t have any ideas on how to fix it, though. He seemed like a fine candidate to me and they certainly raised and spent enough money. If working class people aren’t going to come out for 5000 in value and their childrens health care I guess they will lose it. You really CAN take away something they already have and with no political repercussions at all.
JPL
@JPL: Whoops.. He did not raise the issue of her lack of education.
Baud
@BlueDWarrior: That’s their right, just like it’s the right of lefties to complain about centrists and the “Establishment.” But right now, neither side knows what the winning formula is. And unlike the GOP, we seem to have difficulty coming together when it’s time to defeat our real adversaries.
BlueDWarrior
@Kay: I think the problem boils down to they don’t want those damn coast city elites telling them what to do. Notice how every Democrat, no matter how liberal or centrist they are, become a Nancy Pelosi/Chuck Schumer Democrat.
They have done a bang up job of straight up poisoning the well, making so that when a Democrat comes to say “What can I do to help?”, enough people are hearing “How can I order you around and make you swear fealty to the godless, leftist amalgam that wants to destroy everything you hold dear?”
That is the small sliver where the typical burn-the-party-down types MIGHT have a little fraction of a clue; we have a branding problem that goes way beyond ideology – it’s almost as if white people who aren’t urbane and/or liberal have been trained to have a pavlovian response and to automatically disregard anything a Democrat says and replace it with the worst strawman they can possibly conceive.
Thankfully, there are a few way to get around it, but it requires a level of general political skill, and oratory in particular, that is rare amongst lower-level politicians.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
They’ll handle it by skipping insurance, filing medical bankruptcies and dying preventable deaths.
OzarkHillbilly
@BlueDWarrior:
What DEMs need to win in most of these districts is an (R) after their name.
debbie
Speaking of Solstice…
Baud
@BlueDWarrior:
It’s the main function of right wing media to make it so.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Even a Centrist Dem will be called Nancy Pelosi’s twin.
Amusing Ourselves to Death
More loser talk. That’s helpful.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes: And blaming Obama!
debbie
@WereBear:
Agree. A warning shot over the bow, so to speak.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Agreed.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: The preponderance of the white working class people who vote hate Democrats the way they hate the college sports team from the adjacent state. They don’t care who the individuals on the team are, they hate the uniform. And they don’t see politics as a means of getting things that they want or that help. They see it as a way to stick it to Those People. There is no reaching them because they’re not waiting to be reached. They’re just assholes. This fantasy that they’re waiting to get a certain promise or prefer a certain policy needs to end. That’s not what politics _is_ to them.
Kay
@BlueDWarrior:
Medicaid cuts are a huge loss. Don’t kid yourself. The only people who have EVER expanded health care coverage for poor and working class people are Democrats and they have expanded it A LOT over the last 30 years.
This idea on the Left that poor and working class people have “nothing to lose” is just bullshit. They can, and will, lose a lot. It can get a lot worse for them. Their wages are garnished when they can’t pay out of pocket for health care. The payments on the debt come right out of their check. It’s a direct wage hit. A pay cut.
debbie
@JPL:
The only mailer Google shows is one where voters were given the wrong date for the election. Is this what you’re talking about?
ThresherK
I’m using Chris Cillizza as my Bizarro Polestar on this. When he says* Ossoff’s showing in a district gerrymandered for Newt Gingrich, Pseuuuuudo Intellllectual, is good news for Republicans…
(*No, I’m not looking up his twits for the exact wording.)
BlueDWarrior
@?BillinGlendaleCA: because Democrats have become this amorphous liberal monster that will destroy everything that they are culturally and socially.
This also dovetails nicely into #MAGA-ism, which is a refinement of general anti-Democratic rhetoric. Once the evil Democrats have been vanquished, America will be restored to the Valhalla it once was. Therefore to vote for a Democrat is anathema, no matter how well-spoken on in line with the community they are.
The question is that we have to ascertain is that are there enough people who would vote Democratic but just can’t get turned on that we have to adjust to, or find some new set of rhetoric that will defuse the walking political time-bombs that are Republican partisans (but not quite conservative ideologues).
To me, the answer to that last question is “it depends on the locality”, GA-06 is a case of defusing time-bombs, but other districts have enough bulk to win (even if by a small margin) if you can goose them and get them out to the polls.
Iowa Old Lady
I have to admit I’m really down over the GA loss and the likely AHCA passage. I feel like the country is lost and likely to remain so.
debbie
@Kay:
You left out the last word in your sentence: “yet.” I can’t believe Trump’s voters will be unaffected by the horror of the AHCA.
bystander
@Bill E Pilgrim:
The other part is Ford’s miraculous diction when his tongue and lips are so deeply planted up Joe’s derrière.
FlipYrWhig
@BlueDWarrior: The part that never makes any sense to me, though, is that the “burn the party down types” ARE ALSO LIBERAL ELITES THEMSELVES. A bunch of skinny-assed white dudes with advanced degrees. It’s a very peculiar fantasy they’ve cooked up.
JMG
Overanalysis is the curse of the Democratic Party. Handel beat Ossoff because the election took place in a district with many more Republicans than Democrats. That’s it. Ossoff brought many more Democrats to the polls in the second round, but more Republicans showed up too. The rest is just chaff created by the political bullshit-industrial complex. It has about as much meaning for the future as Stephen A. Smith’s NBA draft scenarios.
rikyrah
@bemused:
They voted on it in the House before a CBO score.
BlueDWarrior
@Kay: Of course it’s a loss, but that loss is not being conjoined with the political win or loss. A Democrat losing to a lot of people doesn’t mean that social programs are in jeopardy, because they just assume they will work regardless.
You can say though it is a failure of Democratic rhetoric that these things aren’t self-evident to everyone, but we’ve seen people are very good at convincing themselves of something that we’d find illogical to downright stupid.
ArchTeryx
@Kay: I guess we’re going to find out just how much you can take away before the squishy lean-Rs finally revolt. They finally did with Bush after Katrina, which is why we won back Congress in 2006 despite gerrymandering.
I do note that my original prediction is going to turn out wrong: That 2018 and 2020 would come down to which base had the higher death count from lack of health insurance. Instead, we’re going to find out if voters that are slated for the death list – and they’ll know exactly who they are – still keep on voting R (or sitting out elections) right into the grave or not.
eric
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes: as God so righteously intended (See Job)
rikyrah
@JPL:
You can’t possibly believe that was real, can you?
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
This assumes they don’t pay for any of it, though, and that’s not true. If they have wages, wages can be reached. They can’t pay the full cost but they can (and will) pay whatever state law allows as a garnishment, depending on how many creditors got there first. I see the judgments weekly. They bring them in to ask what it is. They think it’s a complaint- the first part of the process. It’s the last part of the process. It’s the judgment that allows garnishment. You can’t really blame providers. It isn’t free and they provided the service. Someone has to pay. If it isn’t Medicaid it will be people who make 20k a year.
Medical bankruptcies are for large debts. Ordinary health care? They pay for that. Out of their wages.
eric
@FlipYrWhig: Yes, they are on THE winning team, even if they personally lose.
rikyrah
@Bill E Pilgrim:
I always flip the script..
What if, someone came within 2 points in Nancy Smash’s district?
They would be saying that the Democratic party was coming to the end.
BlueDWarrior
@FlipYrWhig: Because they have convinced themselves they have cracked the code that will lead to the Progressive Utopia. And nothing a damned moderate or institiutionalist (or ‘the Establishment’ if you will) will be able to say anything to dissuade them.
They are, in some sense, the inheritors of the people during the late 60s and early 70s who thought the system was hopelessly corrupt and only the purfying flames of chaos could destroy them, and then through some magic everyone would ‘get it’ and we’d build the Utopia in it’s wake.
And no I don’t know how it’s supposed to work either, usually chaos like that leads to lots of dead people and the survivors screaming about who runs Bartertown or some such.
rikyrah
@Baud: phuck OUTTA here ?
With that bullshyt ??
Baud
Remember when Corbyn finished with 60 seats behind the Tories and it was considered a huge win for him….
Quinerly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo fka Edmund Dantes:
I’m with you.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Also too, it doesn’t matter who is the democrats have as leader, the republican media would create a cartoon mythology for their base.
take Harry Reid, for example — here’s a guy who’s a former boxer, a former cop, who comes from a rural western area, who’s pro NRA and anti abortion, yet the republican media painted him out to be some sort of hippie.
Baud
@rikyrah:
There was a lot of hand wringing when Mark Warner’s reelection was surprisingly close.
JPL
@debbie: No an envelope with white powder and a flyer calling her a fascist c..t, was left in her mailbox, along with several neighbors.
It truly energized the area where I live.
A few weeks early, another neighborhood received the same type of flyers, but not the powder. Both deliveries were timely, and received a lot of coverage.
eric
Look at Kansas and just how bad it had to get before republicans said enough. and, then they are not turning to the democrats, just less crazy republicans. If you vote for dems, you are in the same cultural group as black people, police haters, flag burners, gay people, atheists, [fill in the blank]. The mere temporary association with one or all of those groups is too much for some people, no matter if they are the “blank:” union worker, rural poor, etc.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@rikyrah: The House has different rules than the Senate, I believe they need a CBO score in the Senate to pass under reconciliation.
HeleninEire
Morning, morning crew. 12:30pm here in Dublin and we are on day 3 of temps in the high 70’s/low 80’s and everyone is losing their shit about the “heat.”
I love these people!
MJS
Isn’t it Cole that says, basically, that Republicans hate us (us being Democrats)? That’s really it, in a nutshell. They hate us enough to never vote for anyone with a (D) after their name. They hate us enough to drop everything they’re doing to get out and vote in virtually every election. It doesn’t matter that the idiot they gave the reins of power to is fucking everything up. In order to vote for a Dem, they would have to believe that electing Trump was a mistake. The vast majority of them don’t believe that. Like their president, they are incapable of admitting a mistake.
The good news is that there is a way to fix this, and that is to continue to fight the gerrymandering, continue to fight the voter suppression, and get out the vote. Don’t waste time trying to convince anyone who voted for Trump to vote for a Dem. Go after the people who don’t bother to vote.
WereBear
I think we found out with Katrina. They have to see dead people in vast quantities AND a clueless idiot responsible for it looking clueless.
We’ll work on that.
MJS
@HeleninEire: If that could be the weather in Ireland for at least 3 months a year, I’d retire there ASAP.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@BlueDWarrior:
aka, the Dark Ages.
Quinerly
@JPL:
Have only read one report about the mailer. But I do think that and the Bernie Freak’s shooting up the practice pushed her to winning. Also, as I said repeatedly yesterday it would be helpful to have candidates that will make the effort to move to their districts. It’s nice when our candidates can actually vote for themselves. It troubles me that this election wasn’t closer. It should have been. I sure thought it would be.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: You’re much closer to the action than I am, but I would expect that a lot of affected people will blame “the government,” which is always meddling liberals ruining the country by giving away free stuff to Those People even when it’s being run by Republicans.
BlueDWarrior
@eric: Some of the more ‘bro’ of the Brogressives online have basically made a point to say, as much as possible, that the Democrats and liberals should give up on social equality as an active part of the platform and ideological portfolio. Just make it a pure economic left right argument, and actively tell people who are arguing on the social Z-axis of politics to shut up and wait.
Of course I can’t agree with that, but I can see why people start listening to that siren’s call.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@ThresherK: Chris Hayes once explained that media personalities who don’t have talent or who are lazy become contrarians or republican apologists (ie Cilliza, Halperin)
satby
@Kay: as terrible as it is, that’s what they’re voting for in the end. And until people understand that because they’ve lost it, I don’t think it will break the tribal, team sport aspect of how people vote. I consistently hear from Republican voters that the bad things we say the Republicans will do won’t actually happen. That they wouldn’t REALLY go after (whatever), they just say that.
Time to let them live with their voting outcomes, even though I won’t have access to insurance either. Experience is the only teacher that will work.
WereBear
@eric: That’s it, exactly. Their self-image is caught up in not being whatever the heck we are.
And the religious ones suffer for de lawd; they have been trained to be footstools.
bemused
@rikyrah:
The capacity for GOP evil has no limit.
ArchTeryx
@BlueDWarrior: The French Revolution was a good model. Plenty of the aristocracy went to the guillotine, but the rest escaped. While they started to make major trouble from outside (in the form of military invasions) the revolutionary factions started their own utterly lethal game of purity pony, which ended with the Reign of Terror and Danton going to the guillotine himself.
Revolutions, even left-wing revolutions, don’t end in Utopia. They end in terror and purges. It’s why our Founding Fathers tried to build into the system the way to have peaceful revolutions instead of violent ones.
Unfortunately, a lot of those checks and balances have been summarily disassembled.
Quinerly
@Lapassionara:
The vilest of the vile. That’s what hurts the most for me.
OzarkHillbilly
@MJS:
It doesn’t hurt that for most R’s in Misery*, voting is a 15 minute interruption of their day, but for a lot of DEM’s it’s a 4 hr ordeal. There is more than one way to skin the ole voter suppression cat.
*take note, I say Misery because that is what I am familiar with, chances are pretty good other states Rs follow the same strategy
efgoldman
@Baud:
Quoth Yertle McTurtle: “The what? The who?”
Kay
The most hopeful thing I’ve seen since Trump was elected is how they’re backloading the drastic cuts to existing programs.
That sounds like bullshit to me. Promising to cut something a decade out is just political base pandering. It doesn’t mean anything. The cuts will never come if they lose power and we ever end up without a far Right majority in both chambers. They went REALLY far Right. They’ll have to keep a GOP President and far Right majorities in Congress or the cuts won’t stay this draconian. They’re not going to be able to hold one Party radical Right government for a decade. Their base will think they did it but with even minor changes in ideological composition in Congress the cuts will never be made.
So. There’s a real reason to stick with beating them. They backloaded the cuts because they can’t defend them politically and you don’t need a revolution to make sure they’re never made. You just need a couple of Senators.
Baud
@efgoldman: See my # 21.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@MJS:
I was going through twitter last night and the morons didn’t like Handel but they were cheering that a dems were mourning a loss.
debbie
@JPL:
Wow. Sounds Nixonian to me. I hope they find out where it came from. Remember those debate binders that mysteriously found their way into Gore’s headquarters? Mark MacKinnon all over again; they never change.
JPL
@Quinerly: The mailer was right after that, so it was a double whammy. I didn’t expect it that close though. The district is 60/40.
Quinerly
@Baud:
Good morning to you! We were looking for you midday yesterday. Someone was talking up a Baud/Poco 2020 ticket ? ( apologies to that person, your nym has left me). After two days of school, Poco is really big on shaking hands. I see this as a plus.
satby
@eric: second this. The R voters don’t want to be on a non-R team.
40 years of hate radio and slanted news beamed consistently to the hinterlands helped.
gene108
@Kay:
People don’t understand what they have and how they got it.
They just know they have daily struggles, which are not getting better, so fuck it…why bother.
And the fuck it-why bother attitude will get worse as they lose healthcare.
This is also part of the Republican plan.
Baud
@Quinerly: I’m wary about being upstaged by my Veep. On the other hand, I don’t want to face him in the primary, so maybe I should bring him inside the tent. Decisions.
OzarkHillbilly
Today addition to the “Things I never thought I’d read” file: “We are furious,” said Terry Lee of the hotel. “Toes are very hard to come by.”
And to think that some people donate their bodies to science or medicine. What a waste.
Baud
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: I almost admire their focus.
Iowa Old Lady
@satby: The “they won’t really do that” argument always puzzles me. You mean you support this politician because you think s/he’s lying?
Kay
@satby:
They say it because there’s truth to it. The GOP Senators plan on voting for a far Right bill knowing that the cuts are ten years out and in that ten years we could have two Party government again (in fact, it’s likely we will) and they’ll never have to defend the cuts because they won’t be made. It makes political sense for them. They can tell the base this year that they cut spending and yet never actually deal with the blowback ten years out because by then Democrats will intervene.
I am to the point where I vacillate on whether this is a good thing. At some point GOP voters have to feel the pain. This free ride they get, where they indulge in “hating liberals” while surviving on liberal programs is a fucked up incentive frame. I was never a “burn it down” person but at some point there have to be consequences. You want to follow Bikers for Trump because they say mean things about liberals? Okay. But your wages will be garnished to pay for the health care the government currently covers. Their Senators made sure the cost is a decade out. Their Senators made sure to insulate “voting for Republicans” from “Republican policy”. They made it safe.
BlueDWarrior
@Kay: And that is what makes it so damn difficult for Democrats to argue on the policy, because the cuts are always backloaded to not harm people in the immediate. That’s why the Social Security cuts are generally couched in language that where it’d affect the middle-aged as they become seniors versus the already senior. Democrats have to make a 2 or 3 step argument while the Republicans can just say “we fixed Social Security”.
They know how to get elected, and then propose to do things to where they don’t have to actually govern, and let the Democrats run around defusing their time bombs because they know Dems can’t help it.
bemused
@gene108:
If they really wanted to know or understand what they have and how they got it, they could, easily. It’s not difficult. They just don’t want to. And ffs msm, stop interviewing these lazy, willfully ignorant, asshole whiners.
japa21
Not going to let last night ruin this day which marks the beginning of my 8th decade on this earth. It is a beautiful day and I am going to enjoy it damn it.
Quinerly
@japa21:
??❤
bemused
@Iowa Old Lady:
This!
germy
@satby:
And yet they enjoy every advantage Democrats have won for them. Their social security, their paid vacations, every bit of progress. And they enjoy them while talking non-stop shit against “teh liberals”
Hal
Goldie Taylor has a really fascinating take/history on the GA race:
germy
@japa21: Wow! You were ten years old in 1947? You’ve personally witnessed so much change over the decades.
Kay
So this is my weekly boring lecture on how we have to win state races. I’m only getting involved in one congressional race- Sherrod Brown’s- because he is a gem and it simply doesn’t get better than him in the Senate. The rest will be state races.
If you donated to the GA race consider re-directing that money next time to a state candidate. We have one Party federal government. Look to the states. If you compete in state races you’ll bring Democrats out for congressional races anyway, if you can convince Democrats to complete their fucking ballots, you will. In this county Republicans vote all the races much more than Democrats do. I mean, for God’s sake. You’re in there anyway. You can’t vote the whole ballot? We see Democratic ballot after Democratic ballot with just the President voted. This is just dumb. There’s no excuse for it. If it’s an uncontested R race then skip one line. Don’t just stop there. Local elections can turn on 5 votes. “Ballot drop off” can’t happen so much.
schrodingers_cat
@japa21: Happy Birthday!
Mitch McConnell is winning now because he didn’t curl up into a ball or light his hair on fire after President O won in 2008.
Baud
@Iowa Old Lady:
No, they support them because of tribalism. “They won’t do it” is a defensive mechanism they use when challenged about their choice.
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady: All politicians lie, but they like the (R) lies better than the (D) lies.
gene108
@Kay:
Maybe that is part of the plan. Figuring Republicans will not hold the White House forever, back load the cuts, so when a Democrat is in office in 2025, they face the brunt of the problem. The only way for a Democrats to undo it is to get control of both chambers of Congress and the Presidency, which is likely not to happen.
WereBear
@germy: That is what liberals are for.
It’s like the “men” who expect their wives to do everything while they sit in their recliners and yell for more beer. Works great for them, and so why change it?
efgoldman
@Kay:
Actually, one of Granny Starver’s acolytes proposed, right after the election, that they push the repeal out past 2020 to avoid the obvious electoral chaos if they started chopping this year and next.
Typical RWNJ short-term thinking, just like our corporations who don’t look past the next quarterly reports.
satby
@Kay:
Exactly. It’s a game to the elected Republicans but deadly serious consequences if those policies are out in place. I’m not a burn it down person at all, but my kids learned to make good decisions because I didn’t prevent the consequences of their bad ones, they had to learn cause and effect.
Unfortunately, so do a lot of voters. I will be more impacted than many of them, but we live in a country that needs to learn some terrible lessons.
schrodingers_cat
They want us to give up and stop fighting. There is no need to make their job easy for them. The probability of a win was small to begin with, in yesterday’s race.
Quinerly
@Hal:
Thanks for this post. Most interesting thing I have read about this race. Much appreciated. Should be shared widely.
satby
@japa21: Happy Birthday ???! Great year for you, new grandbaby, new decade. Best wishes!
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: FWIW, your fighting spirit has not gone unnoticed. Keep it up.
Jeffro
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
=)
Iowa Old Lady
@Kay: This year, the Iowa legislature voted to get rid of the little box that lets you vote straight party. They knew what they were doing.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: Sorry, didn’t catch that since I’m curled up in a ball sobbing.
gene108
@japa21:
????????
?BillinGlendaleCA
@gene108:
And if they do, tar and feather them like they did in 2009-2010. Winning!
Quinerly
Interesting Bloomberg piece on Trump and Russia: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock
Kay
@Hal:
I’m not criticizing him, to be clear. I have no idea what he could have done differently. The hardest part of losing to me isn’t the candidate. It’s all the nice earnest “regular people” who helped. I end up rooting for them. The candidate really recedes – “oh, that guy won, too” :)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Thanks, it means a lot. It has earned me epithets from some other commenters, ranging from childish to asshole.
Jeffro
Hey team, do we need some good news to cheer us up this morning? I think we do!
Flynn may have already flipped and be in talks with the FBI
OH YEAH BABY! Couple that with the crew that Bob Mueller continues to assemble (and the speed with which he’s moving)…I’m a happy man today! (This despite the 2 1/2 hour agony of getting to FedEx Field for a concert last night and only having had about 5 hours’ sleep)
Another Scott
@JPL: As much as we all hated getting the screaming e-mails from Ossoff’s campaign, multiple times a day, I have to wonder what Handel’s $35+M was spent on. Roughly $260/vote for her. That pays for a lot of e-mails and flyers and TV ads. Were GOP voters bombarded with 3x as much stuff as us?!?
But surely an awful lot was “skimmed off the top” by “consultants” and “advisers” and so forth, right?
I hope we learn the right lessons from the races yesterday (both of them), and that that lesson isn’t “we have to raise and spend more money and shovel more cash to TV ads and political operatives!!11” Just like “money isn’t speech”, money isn’t votes. (Of course, enough money is required.)
Have a good day, everyone. Call the Senate and keep fighting.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Do you need a lighter for your hair, or is that for another time?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: No, I smoke so I have plenty of lighters. Thanks for thinking of me.
JPL
@Another Scott: I received a call from a repub. polling company, so I was taken off the list. My son though, received both mailers. He thought they were pretty even. Most of her money came from Superpacs
Elizabelle
@japa21: New motto: Life begins in the 80s. Have a good one.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Elizabelle: Not true, I was born in the 60’s.
@japa21: Happy b-day.
Kay
@satby:
I will be less impacted than almost all of them. They should probably think about that. A lot of us don’t actually have the kind of skin in the game that they do. I often, regularly, vote to raise my own taxes. If it’s vitally important to poor white people that I stop doing that so they can identify with Bikers for Trump and piss on liberals maybe I will. They can still bring me the judgment that allows garnishment of their wages and I’ll still explain that’s what it does, but I’ll just start voting for that instead of against it. Doesn’t change my day to day much.
schrodingers_cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You are welcome. BTW no new photographic expeditions?
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: On Team Schrodinger’s Cat on this one.
No Eeyores. Cute as he is. Not a role model.
Another Scott
@debbie: APOD is always cool.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@schrodingers_cat: It’s been too damn hot(over 100) and will be for the next week or so, Though I’m headed to the desert for a Milky Way photoshoot on Saturday night.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I thought you quit.
JMG
Nothing is worse for parties that lose elections than trashing the candidate. Nothing. Ossoff flew a kamikaze mission and damn near sank the aircraft carrier. That he didn’t do is about the mission, not the pilot. How are Democrats supposed to recruit candidates in R districts if besides the usual ordeal of running for office, he or she can look forward to getting scragged on Twitter if things don’t pan out?
A true story: In the 1994 Republican wave, a guy named Peter Torkildson was elected in the Mass. district next to mine, and I live right on the border of the two. In 1996. Torkildson was duly broomed out. In the early summer of 1998, I went to the local Stop n’ Shop and outside the entrance was Torkildson, all alone, seeking signatures for a ballot petition and not getting many. It takes some guts to risk that kind of utter rejection, and those who take the risk for our side should be supported, not condemned by armchair strategists seeking ego points on the Internet.
Baud
@JMG: All of this. Thanks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: No, too many bad influences around.
Baud
@Elizabelle:
I’m both on and off her team.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Has it affected your hiking?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@JMG: I’m sorry DNC Rule 35.1.1 says that we shoot losers. Rules is rules.
OzarkHillbilly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Back when I was still smoking, the worst thing in the world was not to run out of cigarettes, but to not be able to light one. There was no length I would not go to get me a little piece of fire. Eventually I learned to always have an extra lighter somewhere nearby.
I have not smoked in 7 years, but I still can not walk out the door without a lighter in my pocket, I think I’m addicted to them.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: No, other things have. Mainly the weather; either too hot, bad visibility…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: It’ll be 7 years in September that I quit drinking.
Kay
@Jeffro:
I was gonna watch the Senate Russian interference hearing today because I’m off work but now I am mad so I’m going kayaking. I’ll watch it later because I’m interested in the process interference but first I must be mad and the kayaking trip is (supposedly!) for my birthday so I think I have to go :)
We’re going to this Michigan river that has a historical marker. The river was cleared and cleaned up by WPA workers. The logging industry had killed it- it was officially a “dead river” (nothing lives in there- no longer has an ecosystem- just dirty water) in the early 1900’s. So this fight has been going on a long time.
If I don’t survive the (babbling brook, gentle) rapids on the Mighty Pere Marquette you’ll never know what happened to me.
Quinerly
READ THIS: http://www.salon.com/2017/06/17/im-a-blue-guy-in-a-red-state-john-mellencamp-and-the-search-for-an-american-soul/
Bupalos
@Iowa Old Lady: I’m with you IOL. It’s not the political losses. It’s the general turn of the country. It’s the people. What freaks me out is that more people are not freaked out by trump. I’m well aware of the margin tinkering that voter supression and gerrymandering has wrought. It’s daunting that we have to overperform by 5 extra percent due to these things. But I’d think trump would be more like a -30% thing. I’m starting to realize that trumps pathological narcissism, short attention span, mean spirit, and addiction to entertainment and unearned wealth isnt such a negative in this country. It’s more of a reflection.
Immanentize
Fun Solstice Day fact —
Oy about 12% of the human population lives in the southern hemisphere.
schrodingers_cat
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Cool! Do share.
satby
@Kay: Carter, Clinton, Obama were my wins at national elections, as an IL voter my local politics were often easier because Chicago is solidly blue. My only votes ever for an R have been when the D running for governor in IL was anti-choice and the R was pro-choice.
Some years I made decent salaries, some years I didn’t; my votes aren’t about me, they’re about the society I want to live in.
For way too many people in this country, their votes are divorced from policy considerations almost entirely. They’re on Team Republican, and they’re going to whip Team Democrats this year. It’s tribal and a lot of that has been greased by hate media, racism, and Cleek’s law.
Edited to add: they don’t see that policies actually work on their behalf. So they don’t vote that way, because that’s what they hear over, and over, and over: their money is going to everyone else and they’re just struggling in what’s left.
Kay
@Bupalos:
But we sort of knew that going in, I think. Reality tv is a huge net negative. The only good thing I can think of is public health people say “Teen Mom” discourages teen pregnancy. I binge watched it once. It really is a brutally accurate depiction of teen pregnancy, I have to hand it them. I could see it discouraging sex, period. You’d go read a book or something after watching that fucking horror show. Stay away from people completely.
Another Scott
@FlipYrWhig: We shouldn’t forget that most GOP votes are in suburbs and rural areas. They look at the way local Democrats run the Big City™ and see underfunded schools, crumbling infrastructure, crime, and too often graft and corruption. They don’t want that. It doesn’t matter if the reasons for those first 3 problems have much more to do with lack of investment and too little funding (from the state and nation), the last two get conflated with them. And the picture they see of local Democrats being “corrupt and incompetent” gets pasted over national Democrats.
Look at the way Detroit has been demonized for the last 40+ years.
We need to do more to clean up our local and state parties to fight the bad memes. We need to do more to elect people to state-wide offices that have so much to do with the health and prosperity of our cities.
No, we won’t get rid of all the temptations and bad people in politics, but we tolerate things like this too often, and we don’t work hard enough on the “farm teams” and the credible threat that bad people will be replaced if they damage their voters and the team.
“Who are you going to believe? What the fancypants TV ads show, or your own lying eyes?!?!”
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: Just reading another fun solstice fact:
I remembered it was one of the ancient Greeks who first figured it out. My memory is going to hell.
Immanentize
@japa21: Happy Birthday. Another trip around our friend the sun! And a solstice baby as well. Congrats!!
Kay
@Bupalos:
This is petty but I hate how all the Trump women and a lot of the hires have what I consider to be “celebrity hair”. They dress like people on tv shows. I liked how Hillary Clinton was bad at clothes because she doesn’t give a shit about that and it shows. She’s one of those people who lets other people dress her so she looks like she’s wearing someone else’s clothes- I found that endearing and almost admirable. So competent but helpless before the fashion industry!
I want them to dress like they’re at work instead of reality tv. Like AnHe-la MER-Kel :)
Patricia Kayden
@Lapassionara: Handel was awful back in her Komen days when she had to resign for trying to defund Planned Parenthood and it appears that she has only gotten worse. It’s a shame that she will be in Congress now. Oh well.
schrodingers_cat
When President Obama was elected in 2008 along with a Democratic Congress and Senate, the Rs fought back. Unless we fight back we are not going to win. You don’t win just because you are virtuous.
Patricia Kayden
@Anya: I cannot imagine waking up every morning to listen to Mika and Joe and guests like Ford and Halperin run their mouths about politics. I’m trying to keep my blood pressure down and stay sane. Hell naw!
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: You can look good and professional without looking like a Faux Nooz bimbo. Look at Sally Yates, for example. I don’t think women need to be either frumpy or look like models to be taken seriously.
Laura
@HeleninEire: it’s going to be 109 by 5:00p.m. here in Sacramento today.
I’m willing to swap places with any Dubliner. This offer stands through the end of the weekend, so there’s time to pack and buy a plane ticket.
Please keep me posted on any takers so I can dig through a pile and locate a light sweater to bring with me to Dublin.
Immanentize
@schrodingers_cat: Well I appreciate your fightin’ spirit. And what’s wrong with “Childish Asshole” as a nom de Guerre anyway? That has been thrown my way after some of my proudest moments.
satby
@Another Scott: you said it better, as always!
Kay
It doesn’t mean anything- I’d hire a lawyer too if I was surrounded by all this sleaze (and the lying! they all lie so much) whether I was involved or not but it really would be great to get rid of Sessions. Ivanka and Kushner and Bannon don’t have real power independent of Donald Trump. Sessions does. He can do real harm to literally millions of people. His 1980’s style drug war alone will have a body count- millions of prisoners. That’s not even counting the voter suppression. He could set AA’s back decades, and he can do it almost alone.
He’s the prize defendant in this. He resigns it’s a huge threat averted.
Immanentize
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That rule was promulgated after the 2016 primary, I guess?
SiubhanDuinne
@japa21:
Happy 70th!
Immanentize
@OzarkHillbilly: OK. That is a great fun fact. Thank you!
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s not just the women. Kushner also dresses like a celebrity. In a different way, Bannon does too. Treating them like celebrities is too prevalent as it is- they shouldn’t dress the part. First Lady is a weird, archaic non-job so they’re excepted from my rule.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Immanentize: Yup, DWS on her way out the door.
rikyrah
@Kay:
When will people admit how evil these people are?
D58826
Spent a lot of time on this rant so will repost here since it looks like the other threat has gone to that better place in thread heaven’
begin rant
OK a few thoughts on the election yesterday in the GA-06 starting with events in DC.
A bill that slaps new sanctions on Russia, and passed the Senate almost unanimously, has hit a major stumbling block in the House.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said the legislation has been flagged by the House parliamentarian as a “blue slip” violation, referring to the constitutional requirement that revenue bills originate in the House.
“The House obviously will act to preserve the Constitution. Or the Senate can take the bill back, make the updates to it, and bring it back and move forward from that direction,” Brady told reporters on Tuesday.
The development marks a major setback after the Senate overwhelmingly passed the legislation, which also includes new sanctions against Iran, last week in a 98-2 vote
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/…..;ocid=iehp
David (hardly a whiny Democratic liberal) Frum’s reaction in the Atlantic
It’s Trump’s Party Now
The Republican triumph in an affluent, educated Georgia congressional district showed GOP voters standing by their president.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/its-trumps-party-now/531066/
And my 1/2 cents worth:
1. I agree with most of the tweeter comments above.
2. GA06 is a deeply red district and the D’s made a lot of progress in cutting the margin from 20 points to 4. that’s the good news.
3. The bad news is that Hillary lost by 2 points while Ossoff lost by 4.
4. You can call it the glass is half full or half empty but a loss is still a loss whiter by 1 vote or 1 million. Close only counts in horseshoes.
5. As Frum notes this is an urban, well educated affluent district. Maybe the D’s have bigger problems than just appealing to high-school level WWC voters in in fly over country
6. From what I have read both candidates were not overly popular.
7. There were no hot button local issues
8. A democratic win would not have changed the balance of power in the House but it would have been good for moral and fund raising.
9. If ever there was a freebie symbolic protest vote election this one was it.
10. What with one thing and another maybe 2016 can be explained by an unhappy electorate willing to take a chance on Trump (I know Hillary won the PV by 3 million but the name of the game is the EV)
11. But after 5 months of Trump antics, incompetence, Russian ties and turning the WH into a family business 52% of this urban, well educated, affluent district where still willing to say they supported his conduct and don’t care about his ignoring the Constitution and the governing norms that have been in place for 200+ years
12. Now maybe they will tell interviewers that that have concerns but J. McCain has lots of concerns but he still votes straight party line.
13. By the same token, they have said that they don’t care that the Congress is failing to perform it mandated role in over sight and checks and balance on the executive.
14. To put it a different way they don’t care that Trump is willing to metaphorically murder 23 million Americans on prime time TV in Time Square and that the GOP in Congress will supply the ammo and cheer him on from the side lines.
15. Does any of this mean anything for 2018. Who knows. A lot can happen over the next 18 months.
16. I think the D’s should stop obsessing over the WWC in fly over country or the folks suffering from economic anxiety.
17. After 6 months of listening to talk show hosts, reading the VSP in the media and reading the comments here on BJ, I think we are at the point where we have 6 blind people describing the donkey. Each person does an excellent job of describing his/her piece of the critter but to win elections you have to describe the entire critter in a way that you can sell to the electorate. I think now is a good time to get started
And if I hand any ideas on how to do this I would have charged a lot more than 1/2 a cent for this rant
Immanentize
@Kay: The body count in an 80’s style drug war will be counted in actual bodies, as well as those imprisoned. The AIDS epidemic, crack cocaine deaths, police killings — they were all ties to the drug war obsession.
OzarkHillbilly
@Immanentize: I thought “chilish asshole” was a compliment. It’s not? The things I learn here.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@D58826: Price won the district by 24 points in November, I don’t think there were that many votes for both Hillary and Price on the same ballot. I’m guessing there were a shit load of undervotes for President in that district.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: I’m not sure it requires that much analysis, TBH. I think it’s pretty much “Handel sucks and Trump sucks even worse, but I’ll be damned if that means I’m voting for some Democrat liberal who’ll hike my taxes and give away goodies to Those People.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D58826:
Clinton was running against trump, Ossoff was running against somebody who seems, from my long distance view, to be a pretty good fit for the district, who had held statewide (I'm assuming elected) office before.
Yes, but… in the South.
one comment I saw last night was from an anonymous Republican (so, could be anybody) who said that s/he was relieved Ossoff barely mentioned trump. Most observers seemed to think in the run up to the vote, that was smart. I still think trump was what kept him close. You never know, at least I don’t, how and where a hook is going to come, and Ossoff couldn’t find it. And for all the talk I read about Ossoff being “a young and telegenic candidate”, he never struck me as particularly charismatic, though that too is in the eye of the beholder.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Yes. They are peddling utter swill. They are rotten AZZ people.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig: You know Pelosi and Schumer, those city folk, will give away the store, gota elect someone that will keep them from doing that.
O. Felix Culpa
@MJS:
Late to the conversation, but yes, this. We can do it.
germy
Handel announces during a debate that she and her party don’t believe in a “living wage” and she still wins the election.
The wingnut wurlitzer is like a flock of sirens on the rocks.
FlipYrWhig
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Plus with the way they’re fantasizing about killing Republicans lately you can’t give ’em the satisfaction of a win! It’ll just encourage them! :P
D58826
@FlipYrWhig: Maybe but there are still lots of other flippable House seats (at least 23 that Hillary won but elected a GOP House member) and 24 Senate seats that have to be protected come 2018. so the D’s better figure out a way to neutralize the
message. And if they can’t convince 50% +1 voters in a purely symbolic election then election night in Nov. 2018 will be another long night for Rachel and Chris Hayes et. al.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I saw a tweet this morning that said Pelosi has a 90+% name recognition in the district. That’s amazing, though I suspect that recognition would not survive a second question, like that guy Rachel Maddow interviewed who was protesting Eric Holder, and when RM asked him what he didn’t like about EH, he said, ‘just look at his voting record’. Maddox pointed out that Holder has never been a legislator. The guy was confused by her point.
O. Felix Culpa
@BlueDWarrior:
I can’t. Lived through fact-free, arrogant *progressive* white males in the 60’s and 70’s and today’s version has no more credibility than it did back then. Their thinking is attractive mainly only to them because it’s predicated on their privilege. Actual blue collar people aren’t interested.
schrodingers_cat
@D58826:
I want to see the raw numbers and not jump to conclusions based on percentages alone.
FlipYrWhig
@D58826: Yeah, I dunno, I don’t have my hopes up TBH.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby:
Sadly true. Sometimes toddlers have to learn firsthand that the stove is HOT before they believe you and act accordingly.
sherparick
@Anya: I have slowly broken the Cable News habit. I will still watch Chris Hayes and some Rachel Maddow (until her “tease” schtick drives me away), but that is about it, and only a couple nights a week. I reading a lot about the collapse of the Roman Republic (book called “Rubicon”) and the decline of the Roman Empire in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Justinian was apparently the Roman Empire’s Trump. It did not turn out well.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JMG:
Yes, I do love the “Ossoff sucks ass because he didn’t win a game that was deliberately rigged so he couldn’t” theme going on. It begs the question then as to who was the better candidate that Ossoff pushed out in the primary?
FlipYrWhig
@O. Felix Culpa: I really truly can’t fathom how college-educated lefter-than-left people keep making this leap where they think their vision of white working-class politics has a record of appealing to white working-class people. A guy hanging drywall really doesn’t give two shits about anything that matters to left pundits.
O. Felix Culpa
@Quinerly:
Next step: Poco kissing babies. The Baud! part of the 2020 ticket ain’t gonna do it.
D58826
@schrodingers_cat: I’m sure the numbers will be poured over like an astronomer looking for an earth like planet but those were the numbers the VSP’s were throwing around last night. And I still don’t think that will invalidate the basic point that the GOP is now just one more Trump branded propereties. He has hotels, golf courses, steaks, wine, and a fraudulent university . The fraudulent GOP fits right in
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: I think we’re a good year away from being optimistic or pessimistic about 2018.
One thing I do find discouraging is the way the fight that met the first vote on trump care seemed to have fade by the second vote. There are some signs that it’s picking up again with the Senate, but it does feel (so, no data) as strong. Also the apparent (and to me bewildering inability) of the ‘the left’ to grok the importance of the Supreme Court for going on thirty years now (Christ, I’m old)
O. Felix Culpa
@japa21:
Yes it is and yes you should! Happy birthday!
SenyorDave
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The guy had a point. EH had a terrible voting record, he was absent for 100% of the votes.
D58826
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Bernie would have won.
FlipYrWhig
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It tends to become “The Democratic Establishment, who are losers, prevents us from running the kinds of people who would win, because the odds are always against brave insurgents, which is why they have trouble winning. Also, our brave insurgent would totally have won, because people love that kind of thing.” o.O
Hal
@D58826:
Why is that bad? You can’t compare a presidential race to a local house race. Tom Price won by double digits [20+] in the same race Hillary lost by 1.5. Price would be a far better comparison to Ossoff than Hillary. And however well educated these people are in the majority, they’re still Republicans in a red district in a red state.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@sherparick: Careful there “Rubicon” leaves a lot out of it’s narrative – like the Roman senate worked because senior senator knew all the rules and how to things so after both Marius and Sulla purges of the senate at the end there was only one senator who know how to get things done.
Suzanne
I truly believe that through rural overrepresentation, gerrymandering, and voter suppression, we will not win more than the isolated race again. Unless, that is, the next time we do manage to stumble into some degree of power, we use the same fucking shitty tactics the GOP thugs are using to systematically disadvantage them. Get rid of the electoral college, increase House representation, etc etc etc. And perhaps most importantly, stop subsidizing red states.
There just are not enough liberals and leftists, and we are constitutionally not good at coming together to be led.
It is fucking miserable hot, and I have to go do a field report this morning. FUUUUUUUCK.
zhena gogolia
I am beginning to think that the internet is the Devil incarnate. I cannot believe that Putin is able to take over our country despite his country’s manifest economic, military, and moral inferiority (at least up until 11/8/2017). All he has is hackers and bots — but that seems to be enough.
schrodingers_cat
@D58826: Percentages can be deceptive if we don’t know what the percentage is with respect to. Unfortunately most journalists are innumerate.
She lost by 2% doesn’t convey much if I don’t know 2% of what?
Quinerly
@O. Felix Culpa:
Poco does give good goose. Especially with the ladies. That might be a bit of a problem.?
O. Felix Culpa
@FlipYrWhig:
Prezackly. The drywallers and truckers and such laugh them to scorn. The lefty-left is delusional about their appeal to the white working class, while being ever at the ready to abandon actual allies – namely women and POC – in the pursuit of purity. White (mostly) male privilege in lefty clothing, once again.
sherparick
I expect events of the last week, the shooting of the Congressional Republicans baseball practice, and Ossof deciding to say he was really not that much a Democrat in pursuit of that that will’o’wisp, constant unicorn that Democrats have pursued the last 36 years since Reagan, the “moderate, Republican voter” probably depressed his turnout some, and caused enough of those “moderate, Republican voters” to keep voting for the Republican.
Handel will be another terrible Republican, voting to defund Plan Parenthood, end Medicaid, and of course repeal the Affordable Care Act and give huge tax cuts to the donors who funded her campaign, directly and through “independent” expenditures. Her history as the former CEO of the Susan Komen Foundation speaks loudly her ethics and agenda. (Pro-life, until birth, then they are on their own.)
I am tired of the explanation that Democrats can’t get their vote (young, single women, Blacks, Hispanics who have not won the “whiteness” privilege badge, hippies, and liberals) out at special elections, local elections, and off year elections. This is a problem of organization and we can all help by joining local Democratic and/or liberal organizations and identifying the voters who support good Government and a fair economy and remind them and badger them to vote at every election for our candidates.
By the way, there is the slogan “Good Government and a Fair Economy.” The Republicans are the Party of Corruption and Privilege. The ACA is being repealed and Medicaid is being repealed to take from the many to give to the few. How hard is it to say that message and repeat, repeat, repeat.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: If the playing field is not level, let’s just abandon the game. Excellent plan.
O. Felix Culpa
@Quinerly:
I dunno, I like his chances. It apparently wasn’t a problem for the current Gooser-in-Chief, and Poco’s a LOT better looking. Not sure about Baud! though. :P
satby
Kindle and the Amazon cloud just reminded me that I was at Stonehenge today in 2011. Not because I wanted to be there for sunrise (I wasn’t) but because it was my only free day to go see it after my work meetings. And after the various hippies, New Age, Druids, and partiers leave the site when the sunrise is over, it’s closed for cleanup. So I got to see it from outside the fence, but at least I saw it in person.
rikyrah
@Kay:
Telling you that you can cut 880 BILLION from a program..
and, that there will be the same level of service..
PHUCK.OUTTA.HERE.
rikyrah
@Iowa Old Lady:
NOT happy about it, but I don’t think all is lost.
Peale
@JMG: yep. He ended up with about the same % vote he got in the primary. He got the Democratic Party voters to turn out. Which they don’t do in that district for off year elections. He got more votes than the previous democratic candidate. So he actually found a few thousand more voters. Unfortunately, he needed to find 10,000 more voters. In that district, finding 10,000 democratic voters in a three month campaign is really going to be a challenge. usually we talk about that pool of dems who vote for president and sit out all other elections as the potential source of votes. He got those. That’s exactly what we need in 2018. On the other hand, I think SC -5 outcome shows that you might not need to spend $100 per vote to get Dems out.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah:
Cosigned.
FlipYrWhig
@sherparick: I don’t see the sin in running to attract affluent, educated Republicans in a district chock full of affluent, educated Republicans and where the Democrats are affluent and educated as well. It seemed to me, from a distance at least, that he was trying to run as a think-local technocrat. On its face that doesn’t seem like a bad idea _for that district_.
rikyrah
@Kay:
There is a Black woman running for Governor. Think about donating to her.
rikyrah
@japa21:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY :)
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
Mueller seems to live by the creed:
If you take a swing at the King, you best not miss.
He is NOT playing with the team that he’s assembling.
rikyrah
@Kay:
You ain’t lying.
You..me…right here on Attorney General White Citizens Council.
JPL
@Hal: I know of folks who didn’t vote for either presidential candidate, and that alone would make the percentage different. They also thought Trump was a sure winner in the state, so they could vote their conscious. If the state polls were closer, you would have seen a different spread. imo
D58826
@Hal: True but then why did the D’s even try. It made sense to spend money if you were trying to over come a 2 point difference. If anyone thought they could overcome a 20 point difference then the need a keeper.
@schrodingers_cat: Also true but some of the VSP on cable last night have real world experience in running political campaigns and these were the numbers they kept coming back to. As much as we like to make fun of Chuckles Todd he was the NBC numbers guy before becoming a commentator. O’Donnell used to work in the Senate and even Tweety has some real world hands on political experience. Michael Steele and Steve Schmidt, whither you like their slant on political policy issues can play it straight when discussing the in and outs of the mechanics of an election and what numbers they would consider important. They have hands on experience running political campaigns either as advisers or candidates.
rikyrah
complete and utter bullshyt.
Trump reportedly wants ‘more heart’ in GOP health care overhaul
06/21/17 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
Last week, before a White House meeting with Senate Republicans, Donald Trump said for the cameras that the chamber’s health care plan will be “generous, kind, with heart.” The presidential message came with subtext: Trump apparently believes the House GOP version, which he touted vigorously, wasn’t generous or kind, and obviously lacked heart.
Indeed, once the cameras were gone, the president reportedly told senators the House-passed health care overhaul was “mean,” “cold-hearted,” and a “son of a bitch.”
Remember, this was in reference to legislation Trump has championed and said he’s eager to sign.
CNBC reported that Trump had a meeting with business leaders yesterday and reportedly raised similar concerns about the Senate bill.
Quinerly
@O. Felix Culpa:
Poco also has been known to nuzzle the house p*ssy. He does want to chase the street p*ssy. We might be on to something.?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I didn’t see Steele, but Schmidt called this an “ominous victory”, and I think the point he was making was that it never should have been this close in this district. I agree that a loss is a loss, but I’m not ready to give up the ship in elections that won’t happen for a year and a half.
O. Felix Culpa
@Quinerly: We haz a campaign strategy!
ETA: Of the winning kind.
schrodingers_cat
@D58826: If you have a link to the raw numbers of the people who voted for Price and T and their Dem opponents, I would like to compare them. MSM bots are always looking for a R friendly narrative, so I take their conclusions with a grain of salt and want to see the data for myself.
D58826
@sherparick:
The thing that has me TOTALLY confused is that in this red anti-communist, anti-Russian and Putin is a mass murder state of GA, the entire Russian hack is a total non-issue among the GOP.
And as an aside, somewhere there is a special place in heaven for the TV producer who first assigned the color red to the GOP on the TV election maps. Given that it was done at the height of the cold war and the D’s were usually accused of being soft on communism, it was an epic troll long before the world came to mean what it does today. Now maybe the choice of red and blue had more to do with the technology of the TV cameras (I can remember when fireworks blurred out the colors on the color TV .) at the time but it is still an epic troll.
schrodingers_cat
Ds have some advantages when it comes to elections and Rs have some. I don’t see Rs fretting about the D advantages, they work to enhance their advantages. When was the last time Rs fretted about the demographic timer, or that minorities don’t vote for them. But Ds have to pursue the mythical WWC that voted for T (this is the MSM narrative, not the truth) in order to win.
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Steele wasn’t on last night but I included him because he can play it straight on the mechanics and has been known to criticize the home team. On the other hand there is a guy on MSNBC named Schlapp (I think) who is a pure hack. He would make excuses if Trump raped the Virgin Mary on prime time TV.
El Caganer
@Kay: Agree totally. Trump is dangerous by accident; Sessions is dangerous on purpose.
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Neither am I but a lot of electrons have been burned and ink spilled arguing over who lost the last war (i.e. 2016). Yes, you have to learn from the past election in order to move forward but at the moment it still seems like ‘he said she said’ between the Hill-bots and the Bernie bros rather than what do we do to win in 2018. The Hill-bots and the Bernie Bros are two of the most important of the six blind people hanging on to that donkey.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D58826: Steele has his moments, but it’s astounding to me how loyal he is to the party that tossed him aside like a used kleenex in favor of… Reincey. I hate Priebus enough to hope Steele gets a frequent dose of schadenfreude from watching Reince stumble and bumble and toady to Mr trump.
Yeh, Schlapp is almost scary. I think he comes from one of the right wing media organs? A kind of Junior Hugh Hewitt, IIRC, a neveretrumper who rallied to the winner.
D58826
@El Caganer: and if Der Fuhrer is removed from office Pence is just as dangerous as Sessions
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@D58826: I think of all the special elections we’ve seen, this is the one least relevant to the ’16 primary. The VA Gov primary was at least interesting in that regard. PIerrello had the backing of Warren, Wilmer, Obama, and IIRC John Podesta, and lost to the candidate preferred by the much-maligned and under-appreciated Clintonite Terry MacAuliffe. Actual VA Dem voters here said Northram had more visibility and reputation in the blue-er and more populated parts of the state
hovercraft
@D58826:
Matt Schlapp is who Twitler was referring to when he said he could murder someone on Fifth Avenue.
From his Wiki page
His wife also goes on TV to shill for republican bullshit, she is a hard line first generation Cuban American.
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think when you watch any of these VSP’s you have to judge what they say based on their party/ideological affiliation, what they have said in the past, what jobs they have held outside of cable news commentator and what the subject matter is. I will given a Steve Schmidt or Nicolle Wallace a much more respectful hearing than Schlapp , Hewitt or Erickson just based on their non-TV track records. I find Nicolle Wallace’s take on what happens inside the Oval Office interesting because she has been there. On the other hand I take her comments on the lead up to the Iraq war with a certain grain of salt, ironically for the same reason – she was in the Oval office at the time and was part of the process.
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: all i can say is politics makes for strange allies.
D58826
@hovercraft:
well my analogy was, as they say, close enough for government work
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Northam won IMHO because he succeeded, as McAulliffe did before him, in tapping into the support of the African American Democratic “establishment” and using that vicarious trust to bring out African American voters. This is part of why I am prone to scoffing at presumptions about the baseline level of fondness Democrats have in all things “establishment.” Maybe fiery white progressives who oppose everything corporate and neoliberal have a big issue with the Democratic so-called establishment, but maybe there are other groups that have different preferences and standards, and who vote, in large numbers.
The Truffle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m really tired of the the Young Turks/Jill Stein concern troll crowd. Whose side are these people on?
hovercraft
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He’s been known to enjoy some moments of schadenfreude when Rise Pubis is having a hard time.
He’s a lifetime republican, I think because of the social issues, yes here it is:
From his Wiki page:
So between his mother ‘s stance on accepting government handouts, and his religious training, he’s a republican. Incidentally, I admire his mothers determination, but everyone’s situation is different, and the fact that she did it doesn’t mean everyone can, some people need government help.
hovercraft
@D58826:
I think you mean for the invisible hand, after all yous was fresh and innovative! Free Market !!!!!!
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And just as a general point for all comments on these threads a bit of a personal story. My Granddad was born in 1890 and therefore was a rock ribbed racist till his dying day. He and I (a still wet behind the ears liberal college know it all ) argued over the various issues of the 1962-1970 period. At one point or another one of us would launch the killer closing argument with ‘well that’s your opinion but the fact are’. It took a few years and some drying behind the ears for the light bulb to go off that that line rally was a pearl of wisdom if understood correctly. It is either ‘his opinion and my facts’ or ‘my opinion and his facts’. ever since then I have tried to listen (not always successfully) to the other guys facts and recognized that I am often just spouting my opinions. There are Republicans who advance good fact base ideas and policies and there are democrats who push BS at 200 decibels. Just have to listen and based on life experience try to sort out the two.
D58826
@hovercraft: :-) I take your point
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@hovercraft: A year or so ago, Steele made a reference to “pro-life Republicans like me” or some such. I was astounded because he was on MSNBC pretty much once an hour around that time, and I, political-media junkie, had never heard him mention abortion or social issues at all, I had always assumed he was part of the Chamber of Commerce wing of the party. It was interesting to me because the relative passivity of the left wrt judicial appointments often makes me wonder if choice is as key an issue as I think/thought it was, but OTOH the way Republicans downplay it make me think they know it will blow back on them if they go too big on it.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
IIRC you’re in Phoenix? That’s Instant Death Weather you’re having; plead “still technically alive” and postpone. ‘Til October.
Once had a Phoenix bidnez trip in August, during the effing “monsoon season.” Hit 118 while I was there and the storms launched the humidity–might have been from 2% to 15% for all I know but the effect was ghoulish. Was looking for office space and appallingly, every space I saw had single-glazed windows. “Just put a bigger A/C unit on that sucker and call it a day.” WTF? You couldn’t lay your hand on the pane for longer than a split second.
To my fellow Californians: if you live on the ocean or over 7,000 feet, enjoy the solstice! If not, stay the hell inside.
D58826
@trollhattan: So hot in Phoenix that American airlines is having to cancel some afternoon departures because the temps are outside of the flight envelope for take off. The plane can’t generate enough lift for a safe take-off due to the hot air. Landings are fine for the plane maybe not so much for the deplaning passengers.
But TS Cindy in the Gulf of Mexico this week
Steeplejack (phone)
@japa21:
Happy threescore and ten!
Steeplejack (phone)
@germy:
If you’re 80 years old, you have completed eight decades, you’re not starting the eighth one.
germy
@Steeplejack (phone): I misread him. I thought he said he was 80. Well, 70 is impressive, too.
hovercraft
@D58826:
I heard this morning that the high is going to be 118 down there, holy shit, stay cool ;)
Elizabelle
@Baud:
You get it. But no Eeyoring, especially from you. You gots responsibilities here.
D58826
@hovercraft: AH then with the ‘cool weather’ the planes can take off. The max takeoff limit is 120.
My weather limits were 105 in Philly and -19 in Minneapolis.
D58826
From Huffington Der Fuhrer can’t even get any love from the Queen –
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/donald-trump-uk-state-visit-shelved-after-no-mention-in-queens-speech-2017_uk_594a48a5e4b0177d0b8aa0cb?v08&utm_hp_ref=uk&
joel hanes
@JPL:
the disgraceful mailer, along with the powder
I smell Rovian ratfucking.
To be more explicit, I suspect that a harmless powder was deniably sent by a Republican partisan.
I suspect that the Rs will not press the search for the culprit.
Like the forged TANG documents that took down Dan Rather: we somehow never investigated the question of who was the forger.
japa21
@germy: No problem. Although I am not quite ready to add 10 years that quickly. Thanks to all the well wishers.
TerryC
@O. Felix Culpa: I have to disagree. Because I play disc golf and am heavily networked in that area, I have many (100s) WWC young and middle-aged friends. Some hate my politics, but far more enthusiastically follow my progressive and liberal posts and, when I see them in person engage in conversations that sound like those you guys are saying don’t happen.
JR in WV
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Perhaps they would call a Centrist Democrat Nancy Pelosi because Pelosi is a Centrist Dem???
JR in WV
@debbie:
Sweet!!! Thanks for posting the link!!