Big win in Pennsylvania. It proves, once again, that this is a right-center nation.
There are over one hundred Republican-held districts that are bluer than PA-18, let’s win them all. Give here to the Balloon Juice fund that is split equally among all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.
Corner Stone
Everything I am reading about PA-18 has Lamb with about +600 votes, but no one seems to be calling it for him? I also see the Republicans crying foul about errant voting machines and people being told to go to the wrong polling places to vote. Hmmm…wonder how that feels, fucko.
Elizabelle
Yeah. Conor Lamb is this year’s “Moonlight” stealth Oscar win.
And he’ll be knocked off the front pages by the heroic schoolkids’ walkout today. (Or, dog forbid, whatever further idiocy Trump unleashes or becomes apparent today.)
dww44
How do you think we turn it into a left of center nation? It truly bugs me as I’m of an age when I remember that most of those around me were not right of center but were a bit left of it. Maybe culturally right of center, but definitely not politically. Have a friend who is 90 and a deeply committed Republican who frequently mentions that she and her father, long dead, loved Truman. Tells me she’s more Democratic than she realizes.
Kay
DougJ was a Lamb believer from the get-go :)
Good pick!
schrodingers_cat
@dww44: I think DougJ is being sarcastic. We are not a center-right nation , its an illusion created by the R friendly media.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: It will be fun if Beto beats Ted Cruz. For all his bravado Ted folded like a cheap suit and became a T stooge.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: By European standards we are.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
I want Paul Ryan to lose. Again. No one talks about it but he lost in ’12.
I was very aware that Obama winning meant Paul Ryan lost :)
Uncle Ebeneezer
@dww44: Convince/teach Dems to vote in every election, participate in local politics, be informed, be engaged. It’s exactly what we are doing now as we try to take the country back, and are seeing successes. We just have to make it a common practice across generations going forward. As L Joy Reid says at #SundayCivics podcast: Civic Engagement is a practice/lifestyle. Not a one-time deal.
We have the #’s. We just need to be better at exercising our collective power.
dww44
@schrodingers_cat: For me, voters ought to reject the GOP in November primarily because they are sycophantic bought and paid for suck ups. Cruz getting ousted would really make my day.
randy khan
@Corner Stone:
When the margin is that low, nobody calls it. However, barring a really bad mistake in the initial count, it’s really unlikely the result will change.
Oh, and look at the fun graphic of the shifts in voting in the district on this page:
All the arrows seem to be pointing left
blah_blah_blah
I was getting annoyed at the CNN panelists focusing on Lamb’s anti-Pelosi comments. How many voters did that sway, as opposed to Lamb’s views on healthcare jobs etc.
mapaghimagsik
I was following someone on Twitter that, with everything going on today, had to use Lamb’s victory to shout “CHUT UP EMOPROG DEMS”
I mean really?
I think some folks are in permanent circular firing squad mode.
Adam L Silverman
oldgold
This is a complicated nation.
To successfully run a big tent party, like the Democratic Party, in this complicated nation is going to require considerable patience and flexibility.
low-tech cyclist
There’s another special election coming up, in AZ-08 on April 24, to fill the seat that Trent Franks resigned from.
Hiral Tipirneni (D) and Debbie Lesko (R) won their respective parties’ primaries on Feb. 27. Lesko has been in the AZ state legislature since 2009, and is the state chair of ALEC – that latter fact tells me all I need to know about her, because ALEC is evil. Tipirneni, an emergency room physician, is new to electoral politics.
The district, which used to be Gabrielle Giffords’ district, but was clearly less conservative before the post-2010 redistricting, has a Cook PVI of R+13.
Adam L Silverman
@randy khan: As every aviator will tell you more power to the right wing will result in a left turn.
oatler.
@randy khan: Trump’s racing to pack the judiciary before the 2020 elections.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: The rending of the garments in the sycophant media over the loss of their darling boy genius would be an added pleasure.
mapaghimagsik
@oldgold: It will. Great observation. It will also mean some hard lines, because sometimes Lieberman was too high a price to pay. But I’m don’t think we have to,
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat:
Cruz is a Low T cuck.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@low-tech cyclist: Our Indivisible just sent out a bunch of postcards for this race to get voters out and encourage them to vote for Tipirneni.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s post-punk David Broder Edition ™ Doug!.
opiejeanne
@schrodingers_cat: That was my take on Dougj’s comment too: sarcasm related to certain talking heads saying the way for Democrats to win in a red district is to run a Republican, or Republican Lite.
He’s pro-choice, pro-ACA, wants no cuts to SS & Medicare and is for gun reform. Some Republicans are ignoring this as they try to claim him.
Oh, and that anti-Pelosi nonsense? I figure he’ll fall in line once he talks to her and sees what she’s doing.
Corner Stone
@schrodingers_cat: But that would finally free ZEGS to be The Wonkiest Wonk That Ever Wonked A Wonk ™ ! Just think of the opportunities ZEGS would have to transform from Think Tank Wonk ™ to Pundit Wonk ™ to Elder Statesman Wonk ™ . The wonky abilities are endless! We may actually see ZEGS *more* on our TV’s then than he is now.
Gretchen
@Adam L Silverman: Kansas has a winnable governor’s race but we’ll probably lose because an idiot businessman is too pure to pick a party and will probably split the non-Republican vote. He’s doing the stupid « both parties are bad so I’m and independent. ». He did this for Senate in 2014 and the Dem backed out so that wouldn’t happen, and he lost anyway. Didn’t learn a thing from that and probably thinks the Dems, rather than holding a primary that he could enter, should just fold and let him have it again. I hate that guy.
trollhattan
@oatler.:
Heard to day Club for Growth is dumping big buck$ into influencing judicial appointments. Texas serves as a good example of the best judges money can buy, so why not nationwide?
James E. Powell
@dww44:
We will have to eradicate or substantially reduce the racism, sexism, and religious bigotry that make it so easy for the ruling class to keep the working class divided into competing groups. These things need to be called what they are, attacked as moral failings, and targeted for elimination like polio.
For years we’ve tolerated and mollified these things and it was a mistake.
Adam L Silverman
@Gretchen: This is a new, highly organized scam being run by Evan McMullin’s campaign manager. The campaign manager is a hard core religious conservative.
https://medium.com/@joelsearby/come-work-on-an-independent-campaign-7f65255e7d0a
Corner Stone
@randy khan: I seem to recall, and I may just be biased here, that in several very close races where the R was barely ahead they called it. And then started demanding the D concede and be a good sport about it all.
Kay
I don’t care if candidates they say they don’t like Pelosi and I bet she doesn’t care either.
Only Pelosi gets this bizarre 6th grade likeability analysis, which is so blatantly because she’s female it’s ridiculous. She’s a pro. She wants her Party to win. They don’t have to give her a friendship bracelet.
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
I remember vividly watching the election results come in on the night of 2012, and when Obama was announced the guy on CNN exclaimed this was not possible, because America is a center-right nation.
schrodingers_cat
Conservative affirmative action hire, Kathleen Parker wants Hillz to shut up. I didn’t read the op-ed.
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: Wow – thanks for the tip here, Adam. Happy to spread that far and wide.
This will obviously be a huge concern, post-Trumpov.
Republicansrebrand asconservativesrebrand asTea Partyersrebrand as “Independent” and take in a bunch of low-info folks. Dems need to point out, constantly, that it’s still the same old scams.randy khan
@Corner Stone:
Well, the *Republicans* do that on a regular basis. One thing I particularly liked last night was Lamb giving a victory speech, more or less saying “it’s over, get used to it.”
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: It is what it is.
Jeffro
Btw Fox News running with nothing about Lamb’s huge upset right now…on the TV version, they are talking about Hillary Clinton’s remarks “slamming” Trump voters a day or two ago. I’m having a hard time seeing that as a tactic that will preserve their R+19 and lower districts eight months from now.
Corner Stone
@randy khan: Yeah, I thought that was a good pre-emptive jab to the guts to soften up any one who thought he’d be bowled over.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh shit, it’s in the local paper today and if anything is worse than the headline implies.
If Trump has made Jenn Ruben an ally of convenience Kathleen Parker seems to have kept hatred of all things Hillary at the tippy-top of her to-do list.
trollhattan
@Jeffro:
Read an analysis of Fox coverage as basically “Dems fail because it wasn’t the expected blowout. Too bad, Dems.”
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: How often do Republicans get peppered with questions about whether they like or support Ryan and McConnell? Maybe Democrats should make their names and faces as reflexively hateable to mushy-middle voters as Republicans have done with hers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Paul Ryan is trying to claim Lamb is a Republican. Laura Ingram went so far as to say “a young Tom Cotton” (I think there’s less than ten year’s difference in their age, but whatever). Bill Kristol is wistfully saying he’s a natural fit for a trump-less R party
Only issues he brought up in his victory speech were Social Security and Medicare. He called the Dems the party of FDR. Young Tom Cotton my ass
Washburn
Is a person who is personally opposed to abortion, opposes restricting second amendment rights (except for strengthening background checks), and supports tariffs center right?
FlipYrWhig
@trollhattan:
MR. BURNS: Honestly, Smithers, I don’t know why Harvard even bothers to show up. They barely even won.
SMITHERS: Their cheating was even more rampant than last year, sir.
Jeffro
Maybe this is what Hillz meant by Trumpistas being people who look “backward”: White Nationalist leader beats wife AND ‘chokes out’ her dad after being set-up while attempting to re-kindle affair with wife’s stepmother
Wait…is Hillary trying to say that folks like this aren’t ‘dynamic and moving forward’?!? Perish the thought!
Just ugh.
Kelly
Tis’ a child that shouted the Emperor has no clothes. May all the children out today be heard and our nation begin to point and laugh at the naked Republicans.
Corner Stone
@trollhattan: Don’t cross your Cromwells. J Rubin still has all the HRC hate she’s ever had. She just tucks it away for long stretches of time. Her Never Trump hatred has overshadowed everything else but she’s still a viper.
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat:
Strangely, there seems to be an absence of pundit calls for Mitt Romney to sit down and shut up.
SFAW
@Corner Stone:
All for that — more opportunities to point and laugh. And hope that he’s booted out of Wonkerdom in short order.
Peale
@Jeffro: Bucket of Despicables or something like that.
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: That parody of contemporary American life is a bit… on the nose.
[checks again]
Oh dear.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: Inbreeding the master race.
DougJ
@schrodingers_cat:
Thanks for explaining thus
schrodingers_cat
From KP’s word vomit
WTF. Why don’t you call them coolies while you are at it?
ETA: Her example of R lurve for Indian-Americans is Nikki Haley.
Corner Stone
@Jeffro:
They all live in the same trailer park. I am going to make sure my son’s school guidance counselor strikes “white nationalist” from potential career tracks as it doesn’t seem to pay all that well.
Frankensteinbeck
@SFAW:
Yes. The media loves to talk about him. When Ryan actually talks, he says something blatantly sadistic and patrician without realizing he’s just taken the mask off of Republican cruelty. He’s a gaffe machine.
Peale
@SFAW: With his dreamy blue eyes and almost too good to be true sculted chest, he’s really just a young William Safire waiting for a Sunday Op-Ed syndicated column.
satby
@Washburn: many people can be personally opposed to abortion and still uphold it as a privacy right and the law of the land. The problem is when their opposition is used to force other people to conform to their personal, often religious rules in spite of settled law.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Saw another tweet (Matt Yglesias?) that said:
MONDAY GOP: Lamb is a spineless gun-grabber who will let illegal immigrants come in and steal your unborn babies’ jobs then murder them in the womb
WEDNESDAY GOP: Eh, he’s basically a Republican
Which is it, GOP?
schrodingers_cat
@DougJ: You are welcome!
Peale
@Corner Stone: Oh, they got money. They’re just thrifty. That and when you believe that your dollars are worthless because the Jews have stolen all the gold, you might end up making unwise investment decisions.
schrodingers_cat
@dmsilev: Or the sainted John McCain. Do you know that he was POW?
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: Saw that story earlier. The absolute cherry on the cake is:
Of course they do.
Frankensteinbeck
@satby:
I appreciated Tim Kaine’s position on that. We’re not fighting over whether abortion is right or wrong. We’re fighting over it being nobody’s fucking business but the mother’s. People who personally disapprove of abortion but are pro-choice are very much in line with our values.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think we can all agree the counter factuals show we are Hard Right Nation,
Jeffro
@The Moar You Know: The other cherry is that they all list their profession as “white nationalists”. That’s a job? To me it sounds like code for, “Too lazy to go looking for work”.
trollhattan
@Corner Stone:
Hence: “ally of convenience.” She’d still land her plane on Willard’s shoulder, given the chance.
Frank Wilhoit
“Big” here is not a quantifier, but a qualifier; it can only mean somthing like “surprising”. What is the difference between “big” wins and “little” wins? Specifically, do “big” wins confer incremental legitimacy?
The semantic of every vote cast in any American election since 1980 is: “the supporters of the other party (irrespective of their number) do not deserve to be represented”. It is necessary to be forthright about this and the reasons for it.
Woodrow/Asim
@Adam L Silverman: Here’s a fun game to play — go to the website for the org/pseudo-Political Party that he runs thru (Unite America), and try to find either:
* A specific policy that they endorse, or
* A picture of a Person of Color.
Good luck! (Not.)
japa21
@satby: @Frankensteinbeck: In some ways I have even more admiration for a person who may have moral objections to abortions but who are willing to say that their beliefs should not dictate what is legal and fully support a woman’s right to choose.
Spanky
Well, apparently the Republican machine thinks they lost, because:
Because that’s who they are. Seize the machines.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig:
As the kids like to say: I know, right? You can’t make this stuff up.
? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?
@Gin & Tonic:
Europe doesn’t have the racial divide we have either.
Adam L Silverman
@Woodrow/Asim: I’ve dealt with Searby before. I don’t have to go to the website.
Peale
@Kay: Yep. That and the calls for Schumer to resign to bring on “new faces.” But he’s only had the job since last January. Its like Harry Reid retired and everyone just assumed that it was a decade ago.
Origuy
Turns out a friend of mine is the sister of Dave Cooper, who is running for Congress in Georgia district 9 to unseat Doug Collins. I don’t know anything about him other than that, except that he also does Scottish country dancing, like his sister. There is another candidate in the Democratic primary on May 22.
Calouste
@FlipYrWhig: It must be a parody, right? I mean, calling the spokesman of a white nationalist party “Mad Parrot” is a bit of a giveaway.
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Parker has occasional brief moments of rationality, so I think she has to cling hard to her Hillary hatred to avoid facing the fact that she’s been wrong about Hillary for 30 years.
What’s the Mark Twain line? Something like, It’s harder to con someone than it is to get someone to admit they’ve been conned.
Peale
@schrodingers_cat:
:LOL. Gosh I wish I could be a pundit. They don’t even ask them to write about important current events. Hillary’s book tour in India! And yeah, the GOP is never asked to make nice with the people who didn’t vote for them when they lose.
Just one more canuck
@The Moar You Know: I’m going to guess that it was in Florida
Nope, Indiana
AnotherBruce
@Gretchen: Did the Republicans hire this guy? I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a Republican stooge.
Mnemosyne
@satby:
I’m even fine with a Democrat who says, I’m personally opposed to abortion, which is why I support universal healthcare, easy access to birth control, maternity leave, equal pay, and universal childcare.
So far, Lamb sounds like one of those.
Haroldo
@Peale: And an op-ed in the Guardian yesterday calling for Pelosi to step aside. Almost smacks of coordination…..
AnotherBruce
@Corner Stone: Really, I started off reading this weirdness seriously. But once I read “trailer park” I started laughing. Some people are aggressively stereotypical. I mean, who hasn’t been chocked out in a trailer park?
schrodingers_cat
@Haroldo: Guardian is beloved here, but they veer into the purity left territory far too often for my taste.
mapaghimagsik
@AnotherBruce: Without trailer parks, the meth market would completely collapse.
Peale
@Haroldo: The GOP has to make this election about Nancy Pelosi vs. Trump and hope that the GOP’s resentment of Pelosi is enough to drive out their votes. The GOP Congressmen themselves would very much like the narrative to be that Nancy is in charge somehow in Washington and that is why they are failing to pass anything that they promised. They can disappear themselves and their own support of Trump and their obmoxious do-nothing laziness.
piratedan
@low-tech cyclist: small correction… the number was Gifford’s old district, but they changed the names/numbers of the districts when they redrew them with the redistricting commission… Martha McSally (R) is currently representing Gifford’s former district and she’s running for the AZ Senate seat. Ann Kirkpatrick is running for Gifford’s old seat and is likely to win it too….
catclub
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
Complacency is the enemy. And whenever either party has the presidency, complacency kicks in. ‘We have the presidency so I don’t need to go vote’
is what lost for us in 2010 and 2014 and won for us yesterday, when the GOP did not get the same turnout.
Given that it happens to both the GOP and the Democratic general voter, I have no idea how to fix it.
Haroldo
@schrodingers_cat: I am well aware of The Guardian’s proclivities. The calls for Pelosi, Schumer and Clinton to go away seemingly all within 24 hours is a bit much (if the right one don’t getcha, then the left one might). I have difficulties with each of them, but within this particular political context they are the way forward.
Matt McIrvin
@Spanky: I wonder how likely it is that Conor Lamb will be allowed to take office. Can they keep it in litigation until November?
sherparick
@dww44: I think Dougj was being “snarky” and “sarcastic” about this being a “right of center nation.” comment. I do worry that the Republican House may refuse to sit Lamb, “citing voting irregularities” as their excuse. It only takes a majority of the members to bar a person certified by the state as the winner from taking a seat.
Chief Oshkosh
We’re a left of center nation across the policy spectrum. That all goes POOF as soon as you mention any of the wild demons, like Pelosi/O’bummer/Clinton/Any_Democrat who support those policies.