Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

People are weird.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

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One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

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You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

The press swings at every pitch, we don’t have to.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Those who are easily outraged are easily manipulated.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2018 / 2018 Elections Open Thread: Another Senate Seat Up for Grabs

2018 Elections Open Thread: Another Senate Seat Up for Grabs

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This cannot be regarded as a real surprise, since Politico was willing to say Cochran was “frail and disoriented… needed a staffer to remind him where the Senate chamber is located” all the way back in October. But it is a disruption, especially to the GOP. Per the Washington Post:

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) will resign from the Senate on April 1, he announced Monday, ending a four-decade congressional career and triggering a fall election that could carve new divisions in the Republican Party and put the GOP Senate majority at greater risk.

Cochran, 80, has been suffering from health problems in recent months. He missed several weeks in the Senate last fall while recuperating from a urinary tract infection. He has appeared frail since his return and has been keeping a low public profile.

“I regret my health has become an ongoing challenge,” Cochran said in a statement. “I intend to fulfill my responsibilities and commitments to the people of Mississippi and the Senate through the completion of the 2018 appropriations cycle, after which I will formally retire from the U.S. Senate.”

First elected to the Senate in 1978 after a stint in the House, Cochran is one of the longest-serving members of Congress in history. He is the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, a powerful panel with jurisdiction over government spending. When he steps down, the chairmanship is expected to pass to Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), who is next in the line of seniority…

Shelby, 83, went out of his way to vouch for his own health. “I’ve still got a lot of energy,” he said.

Beyond shaking up the Senate, Cochran’s exit will affect the battle for the Senate majority. It gives Republicans another seat to defend at a moment of great uncertainty about the midterms…

Unlike the regular election this year for Republican Sen. Roger Wicker’s seat, candidates for Cochran’s seat would not compete in a primary, and if no one got more than 50 percent of the vote in November, the top two finishers would compete in a runoff.

Chris McDaniel, a hard-right Republican state senator who lost to Cochran in a nasty 2014 primary, announced last week that he would run against Wicker. But he left the door open to switching to a race for Cochran’s seat if one were to take place…

McDaniel represents perhaps the last best hope for the insurgent wing of the GOP, in which former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon and his allies have been plotting to shake up the Republican order by elevating candidates hostile to McConnell…

This is treating McDaniel’s history very, very delicately; CNN referred to his 2014 Cochran challenge as “the nation’s ugliest primary”, with cause. If you don’t think it can get worse than Roy Moore, well…

Reader Interactions

61Comments

  2. 2.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    Shelby, 83, went out of his way to vouch for his own health. “I’ve still got a lot of energy,” he said.

    It is to laugh. Gerontocracy is the operative word?

  3. 3.

    efgoldman

    There must be an anti-Semitic, racist, pedophile, rapist the RWNJs could run. But will s/he ooze to the surface in time?
    However, absent a Roy Moore situation, odds are really, really slim.

  5. 5.

    cain

    Maybe Roy Moore will run for the seat! Yes, I suppose it could be a slim chance.. but we did flip a seat and we should see if we can get people out and flip it and give the Republicans some serious problems.

  6. 6.

    GregB

    @efgoldman:

    Have you seen the caliber of these nitwits the GOP is pouring out into the world? Don’t count them out on nominating a serial rapist, wife beating peeping Tom Nazi.

  7. 7.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    Roy Moore may be looking up nearest U-Haul outlet as we speak.

    He’d have to rent a hitch and a horse trailer, too. And make a reservation for his Jew lawyer.

  8. 8.

    Mary G

    Isn’t McDaniel the loon whose supporter filmed Thad Cochran’s wife in the assisted living facility, trying to get her to say Cochran was cheating on her with his aide?

  10. 10.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    There must be an anti-Semitic, racist, pedophile, rapist the RWNJs could run. But will s/he ooze to the surface in time?

    Hey, read the McDaniels story I linked! That last 2014 run involved breaking into nursing home to take pictures of a patient in the advanced stages of dementia (Thad Cochran’s wife, whom McDaniel accused him of cheating on), the subsequent suicide of the blogger responsible for that break-in, accusations of ratfvckery on both sides, a desperate last-minute bid by Cochran to get African-American Democrats to vote for him (it worked!), and national agitation about thimblerigging from the Wingnut Wurlitzer that went on for more than a month. Didn’t want to waste pixels re-sharing it all on the front page, but if McDaniels *does* decide to jump in (and is there a stronger motivation for such men than vengeance?) it will most surely be a campaign to keep every GOP operative who isn’t already chugging Maalox sending through a bulk order on Amazon Prime…

  11. 11.

    Doug R

    Hmm-looks like a variation on the jungle primary. If Democrats stay disciplined and Republicans run all kinds of nuts, the Dem could end up in position 2, perfect for the run-off.

  12. 12.

    efgoldman

    @Anne Laurie:

    Hey, read the McDaniels story I linked!

    Isn’t that pretty much bog standard Ms’ssippi politics, no matter which party was nominally in charge, going back before Faulkner? Dirty, nasty, vile, evil, but i don’t think anybody ever said McDaniel was a pedophile.

  13. 13.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    Would sending Levi Sanders as a campaign surrogate or something help Dems win? Perhaps he could bemoan the loss of filling station jobs.

    /s

  14. 14.

    jl

    Since it’s an open thread, I heard on the radio news that Nunberg said, after all the fuss he made, that, gosh golly, maybe he would cooperate with the Mueller investigation and respond to the subpoena.

    So, maybe the guy was stewed the gills today during his serial TV news freak shows. Or maybe he’s just as feckless as the guy he used to work for and will move on to another theme in an ongoing fugue state tomorrow.

  19. 19.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman:

    i don’t think anybody ever said McDaniel was a pedophile

    Dig deeper, journos. Trust me, there’s a serious whacked-out fetish in that creep.

  22. 22.

    efgoldman

    @FlyingToaster:

    Trust me, there’s a serious whacked-out fetish

    Been waiting for you to be here. Arsenal Street open yet? You don’t live on that side of the Square if I remember correctly.

  24. 24.

    efgoldman

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Don’t make me read Faulkner.

    Dirty little secret: I never read Faulkner (or Silas Marner, or Moby Dick…..) I was and am really good about grabbing context from discussion, enough to write a credible blue book or short paper.

  25. 25.

    mike in dc

    Just read that Mike Espy is interested in running for the seat. Is he a good candidate, or are there better potential ones in MS? I’m poorly versed in Mississippi Dem politics.

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    @efgoldman:

    Dirty, nasty, vile, evil, but i don’t think anybody ever said McDaniel was a pedophile.

    Yeah, but one of the 2014 sub-stories was good ol’ Thad reminiscing about his happy childhood farm days “doing indecent things with barnyard animals, y’all probably know what I mean”. The ‘scandal’ (not so much the bestiality, as the suggestion that talking about it meant Cochran was losing his facilities) couldn’t get traction, with all the other charges & counter-charges being thrown. Probably should’ve regarded it as a prequel to the Trump candidacy…

  30. 30.

    Anne Laurie

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?:

    Would sending Levi Sanders as a campaign surrogate or something help Dems win?

    Is he gonna campaign for one of the Republicans? Because I can see that happening, in this Year of Our (Dark) Lord, 2018.

    (Been resisting the challenge to write a post about Sanders Jr, because eeugh. Same reason I don’t waste pixels on Eric Trump or Bristol Palin — they can’t help their defective upbringings. Also, he just doesn’t deserve the attention, unless he wins the primary, or flames out in some particularly amusing newsworthy fashion.)

  32. 32.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman: It opened at 4; I had tweeted that it was still closed at 2, but it opened up around 4:10 (according to WBZ) and I went through it at 4:30 and tweeted the update to Universal Hub.

    Some wags didn’t understand what happened. A pole in front of Lexus (at School & Arsenal) (opposite the Army labs) had gone down ~ 11:40am Friday. About a block outbound is that set of one-story shops (tofu maker, restaurant, tile store) in the 200 block, followed by what used to be wasteland and is now 3 mixed-use apartment blocks, some under construction, all the way to Irving. ALL of the poles in front of the 1-story block went down at 12:02. 8 poles, snapped at between the 2 and 4 ft height. They took with them the brand new metal lally column light poles, again at that height. Some serious 160mph downburst hit one or two of them, and took the rest along.

    They had the wooden poles replaced Sunday around 4pm, but the debris was still all over the road. They finally had the wires strung and working at 4. But the 5 streetlight poles are still missing, and there were cherry pickers (5) and cops (3) on both sides of the road when I went through. Plus I saw that the power had gone out over on North Beacon around 8:30. So there’s still a fuckton of work for Neversource to complete.

  34. 34.

    Steve in the ATL

    @efgoldman: Silas Marner was god awful. I’m convinced it was written to make eight graders hate reading. There are millions of better choices. No idea why schools still push that garbage.

    Though it’s better than Ayn Rand.

  35. 35.

    FlyingToaster

    @efgoldman:

    You don’t live on that side of the Square if I remember correctly.

    I live in Bemis, right below the old Brown School.

    WarriorGirl’s school is opposite the Mt. Auburn Cemetery’s greenhouse. So I usually take Mt. Auburn in the mornings (after circumventing the Squayah), and Arsenal in the afternoon. Except last Friday, and on my way back from lunch today.

  36. 36.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    Cochran was “frail and disoriented”

    And yet Wilmer won’t leave.

  38. 38.

    psycholinguist

    @mike in dc: He would be a great candidate. He was a rep for a number of years, agg sec under Clinton, has a very good reputation in the state, his son played for Ole Miss football, and he is networked. If that crazy fucker McDaniels gets in, he could really pull down some of the alt right white vote, and if he ended up with Espy as the last two standing in a runoff…. MS is about 36% AA. that’s about as good as it could get right now i think.

  41. 41.

    efgoldman

    @FlyingToaster:

    Some wags didn’t understand what happened.

    I knew the area well (we talked about it). i assumed by now the empty spaces and the one-story businesses would have been gone for development, probably condos.

    I live in Bemis, right below the old Brown School.

    We voted at the Brown school when we lived there. Daughter was 11-ish months old, it was snowing, we pulled her in a toboggan. We lived on Bromfield St. Main St to Evans, Left on Nash, right on Bromfield (I had to look it up)

  42. 42.

    Ninedragonspot

    @Steve in the ATL: I once listened to Silas Marner in audiobook form on a long drive through the Midwest. Seemed fine to me. Maybe it benefits from being read by a sympathetic actor.

  43. 43.

    efgoldman

    @Ninedragonspot:

    Maybe it benefits from being read by a sympathetic actor

    I don’t believe in either burning or trashing books, but I’d make an exception….
    It could benefit from being buried deep on the remainder shelf.

  45. 45.

    Achrachno

    This is great news, and boosts my already optimistic outlook. Let’s win this one! I’ll bet even many southern repubs have noticed by now that their guys are bums — and may be getting discouraged. Espy sounds good, potential winner.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @joel hanes:

    As I recall (and I may be burnishing the memory to make it a better story), I discovered Twain’s two essays while I was struggling my way through Cooper as a high school sophomore and was able to use them to persuade my teacher that I should not be forced to read any more Cooper.

    If I further recall correctly, this was the same teacher who introduced me to the works of P.G. Wodehouse in AP English two years later. Best term paper assignment EVER.

  55. 55.

    Aleta

    From Vox Jan 11, 2017: “There’s a lot of evidence to suggest that Tillerson lied” at his Senate confirmation hearing.

    One major theme was Exxon Mobil’s stance on sanctions the Obama administration has imposed on Russia, which Tillerson has criticized publicly. He was asked, repeatedly, about Exxon’s lobbying activities against sanctions.

    “I have never lobbied against sanctions,” Tillerson said. “To my knowledge, Exxon never directly lobbied against sanctions.”

    …Corker later gave Tillerson a chance to finesse his response, which Tillerson took — arguing that the company never opposed sanctions per se, but merely engaged with Congress to understand how Exxon’s business would be affected. “Exxon Mobil participated in understanding how the sanctions are going to be constructed,” he said.

    Sen. Chris Murphy said “In your mind, calling a United States senator to express your belief that sanctions are not effective is not lobbying,” Murphy said. “In my view, that is a distinction without a difference.”

    OpenSecrets, an influence-tracking organization, records Exxon Mobil as having lobbied repeatedly on the Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014, the bill imposing sanctions on Russia’s oil sector after its 2014 invasion of Ukraine. These activities continued since then, including, contra Tillerson, direct lobbying against new sanctions bills.

    “ExxonMobil successfully lobbied against a bill that would have made it harder for the next president to lift sanctions against Russia, clearing the way for the oil giant to restart a program worth billions of dollars if Donald Trump eases those restrictions as president,” Politico reported last month.

    These are not isolated incidents. Byron Tau, a Wall Street Journal reporter who has covered lobbying extensively, notes 14 separate instances of Exxon lobbying against sanctions between 2006 (when Tillerson took over the company) and 2014. Tau tweeted links to several lobbying disclosure forms showing that Exxon did, in fact, lobby on sanctions related to Russia and Iran.

    “Exxon lobbied on sanctions and disclosed that activity in public reports. Period,” Tau wrote.

    Tillerson … bragged in June 2014 — when the Ukraine Freedom Support Act was going through Congress — that his company wasn’t just trying to gather information from elected officials, but was actively informing lawmakers of their views. “Our views are being heard at the highest levels,” he said, per the New York Times.

    And those views were, quite clearly, critical. Under Tillerson, Exxon had struck about 10 deals with Putin’s government to explore Russian oil, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.

  60. 60.

    Dupe1970

    I think there should be a max age requirement for all Federal elected positions. Too many of these politicians are mentally failing in office.

  61. 61.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mnemosyne: I actually read and enjoyed Cooper’s first novel, “Precaution”. Per the ever-useful Wikipedia:

    In 1820, Cooper’s wife Susan wagered that he could write a book better than the one that she was reading. In response to the wager, Cooper wrote the novel Precaution (1820). Its focus on morals and manners was influenced by Jane Austen’s approach to fiction. He anonymously published Precaution and it received favorable notice from the United States and England.[

    So I guess we have the woman to blame! //

    But, yeah…enjoyed “Precaution”, tho’ I don ‘t remember a damn thing about it now, but yow…could *not* get into “The Deerslayer”.

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