It’s like a nightmare for Republicans, isn’t it? It just keeps getting worse and worse:
“Republicans should be under no illusion that for the first time in recent memory and despite record fundraising and spending by CLF, House Republicans are going to be massively outspent in October,” said a Republican strategist involved in House races. “We are facing a spending tsunami.”
Give to the Balloon Juice More More More fund that’s split equally among 46 Democratic candidates suggested by readers. You can just give to a couple candidates to avoid getting on too many mailing lists if you like.
Gravenstone
This has to really scare them because anyone who is engaged enough to contribute will also be engaged enough to vote. And they’ll likely bring friends.
Mike in NC
Refreshing to see something other than the latest about “Blackout Brett”.
Mick McDick
just win, baby!
Cacti
Funny how that just happens to coincide with Russian dark money coming under heavy scrutiny for the first time.
kindness
We are supporting the guy running against my current teabagger Representative. I am so happy as the last couple days the media in this area has been inundated with hate commercials put forward by Paul Ryan’s PAC. The commercials running are horrible lies yet the stations take the money and run them. Yeay BJ. Will contribute more on Friday when I get paid.
artem1s
The GOP has been losing contributors for decades. They just have more individuals that give at astronomical amounts. And with the advent of Citizen’s United, those donors can form their own PACs and send money straight to the crazy candidate of their choice. Louie Gohmert didn’t just screw liberals, he screwed any chance that those donors would naturally identify with the GOP. Every time the freedum caucus or Crazy Uncle Ron Paul or the Fundagelicals put Big Government or RINOs on parade as the enemy they drove another nail into the GOP’s coffin.
the number one reason the GOP hated the Clintons and wanted them destroyed is because they were the first Dems since JFK who could raise Republican level money during campaigns and down ticket. Obama was just as great a threat and everything the GOP has done to enable Dolt45 is aimed at destroying the progress of the Obama administration.
Yes they are panicking.
Nicole
And I imagine a lot of that spending tsumani is being made possible by folk who usually don’t contribute to political campaigns and aren’t, individually, contributing a lot themselves, but added up it makes for more than the wealthy can do on their own.
There’s a larger point to be made here, about the middle-class and the power they wield over an economy and why a lot of middle class people with some money to spend are better than a few really rich people with a lot of money to spend (and a lot of poor with no money to spend) but I think the rich have demonstrated again and again that they are too stupid to understand.
Ohio Mom
The best barometer I have that my gerrymandered area’s two Republican
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: Oh, for an edit function!
The best barometer I have that my area’s two Republican incumbents are running scared is that the local Gannett newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, is running articles bad-mouthing one or both of the Democratic challengers just about every day. It gives me hope that the Republicans are so worried.
ruemara
Until they’re dead, I don’t stop shooting. That rule works for zombies, feral animals and other dangerous predators. I won’t believe the Republicans have lost until they’ve fully lost in 2020.
Mike in DC
@ruemara:
Really we should be looking at winning 2018, 2020 and 2024, and holding control in 2022(and maybe picking up a couple senate seats). If we could hold control through two midterm elections, that might break the GOP as currently constituted.
WereBear
@Ohio Mom: I was them lying awake in a cold sweat.
Gretchen
The RNCC cancelled a million dollars in ad spending in my district, KS-3. The Dem, Sharice Davids, was ahead by 8 in the last poll. She was in the first group Balloon Juice helped. Thanks, everyone!
FDRLincoln
I’m in KS-2 and the GOP is going all-out with smear attacks on Paul Davis. He’s slightly ahead in the latest poll against a weak Republican but it is close. This is an open seat in a red district but Davis is well-known and a moderate who has a shot here.
Davids and Davis for Kansas!
Ivan X
I finally donated. Thanks for the persistence, Doug!
Roger Moore
@ruemara:
I won’t believe the Republicans have lost until the Republican party breaks up and is replaced by something new. Even then, I’ll want a second opinion.
ruemara
@Mike in DC: That’s the goal
@Roger Moore: It’s not them coming back I worry about, because they’ll always be here. It’s the tendency of the left to just be, “meh”.
John M. Burt
I’m reminded of the coda I’ve been putting on every comment I’ve been posting at YouTube lately:
“A #BlueWave is not enough.
“Neither is a #BlueTsunami.
“We need to make #6November2018 a nice day for a #BlueWedding.
“If you’re a U.S. citizen eligible to vote, visit vote.org and make sure you’re correctly registered, and urge your friends to do the same.”
My wife and I are too poor to donate and too busy to do much campaigning, but I do post things like the above, and I carry chalk with me to write VOTE.ORG in public places. Couldn’t hurt.
TenguPhule
U.S. terminates 1955 treaty with Iran, calling it an ‘absolute absurdity’
The chickenhawks really want to kick off that war with Iran they’ve always dreamed of.
TenguPhule
@Roger Moore:
Double tap. Its the only way to be sure.
TenguPhule
@ruemara:
Technically zombies are already dead. What you’re trying to achieve is neutralizing them as a threat by depriving them of the ability to attack and infect others.
Central Planning
@John M. Burt: “Neither is a #BlueTsunami.”
A “Bluenami” if you will.
Just donated to the NY candidates!
Walker
@TenguPhule:
Can the executive terminate a treaty without congressional approval? Or was this not really a treaty, but more of an agreement?
Chetan Murthy
@Ivan X: I also donated a couple of weeks ago, to a bunch of campaigns. And while I’d been planning on doing it for …. months, I didn’t get around to it until “not before time, eh?” B/c it’s tedious (I did it by check … after check, after check …. *writer’s cramp*) and a PITA to look up all the addresses and such.
Doug’s itinerant reminders with these posts was really helpful in reminding me to get off my fat ass.
Thank you, Doug!
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: Night of the Living Dead sez:
Ceci n est pas mon nym
That makes a much better than the fund-raising text message I got last night. “We just got the worst news from Capitol Hill. Republicans are bragging that after they cheered on Brett Kavanaugh in his hearing, money is FLOODING in from their far-right base.”
So do I believe the “blue tsunami” stuff or the “Repubs are getting truckloads of cash”?
I choose: neither. Just keep giving money to Democratic causes. Fund-raising on the other side is what it is, whether good or bad, we can’t worry or think about it.
And what the hell is the Washington Examiner? Somehow when I clicked on that article I briefly found myself on another article, also the Examiner, that says Ben Carson has a brain boosting drug that makes him sooper smart and Donald Trump is demanding that it be released to the American people. It must have leaked from a parallel sci-fi universe because I can’t find it again.
I suppose I don’t need to say here that I do *NOT* want any drugs that cause Carson or Trump to act and think the way they do.
TenguPhule
@Walker: Its a treaty. Ratified by the Senate Juily 11, 1956.
What’s one more Constitutional Crisis among so many others?
WereBear
@John M. Burt: I love that!
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: What is your opinion about this camera?. I have also been experimenting with my ipad2, the video quality seems to be better than my phone.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: I rely on the Zombie Survival Guide. Except for the part about relying on two story buildings as buffers because WW Z taught us that it doesn’t work out well.
Chyron HR
@TenguPhule:
Those “Donald the Dove” takes just keep getting hotter.
Amir Khalid
@TenguPhule:
Wait. Are you sure zombies and ghouls work the same way?
Tata
I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this, but if you can vote by mail, your vote can’t be hacked by Russian hackers. Today, my husband and I signed up.
http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/absentee-and-early-voting.aspx
Mary G
In 1992 I sent Barbara Boxer $5 because she had gone to Orange County to campaign and a bunch of young guys had made her give up speaking by shouting “Feminazi” at her so loudly that even with a mic she could not be heard. After that I never contributed to any politician, because I was hoarding money because I knew I would not be able to work much longer.
I voted and read Balloon Juice, Andrew Sullivan, and the political news in the newspaper, but my engagement was limited to observation. Bush 43 excellent adventures ramped me up and after Obama was elected I was much more involved/active than I had even been. I started giving to campaigns of out-of-state Senators in 2010, but not much. More in 2010 to 2014 because I saw the train coming down the tracks. A lot, for me, to Hillary in 2016.
This year all bets are off. I have been throwing $5 contributions to Democrats running for governor, Senate, House, you name it. I shudder when I look at my Act Blue account and see how much it’s added up to. But it’s worth every penny. One article I read said that Democrats were surprised how much they’ve taken in, and that refusing PAC and Goldman Sachs money was well worth it, because so many small donors had stepped up. One consultant said that now a 67-year-old woman giving $25 a month was the typical giver, and I raised my hand, except I’m younger.
Amir Khalid
@Walker:
Maybe the Islamic Republic has already repudiated the treaty, making it a dead letter.
Chetan Murthy
@Mary G:
(1) That’s $300/yr. I think that before this cycle, such a level of contribution was pretty much an outlier — that’s how skewed the entire distribution was, towards gynormous contributors.
(2) it’s a good sign that more people are taking this seriously enough to donat their money at this level
(3) but this is still ALL WRONG. Most political spending is a zero-sum game. It should all be publicly funded, and private contributions should be forbidden. Mr. Koch, do you wanna contribute? Roll up your sleeves and start working the phones, Mr. Koch!
Major Major Major Major
@Amir Khalid: They’re interchangeable within that franchise.
Chetan Murthy
There’s a saying about conservatives: they only understand a “social” issue when it hits close to home. Everything else is “identity politics”/”welfare state”/”crime”.
I got to experience that, talking with a friend (she’s still a friend) about politics. She voted against Trump, and is against the GrOPers generally (hence, still a friend). But I made the mistake of engaging with her on the deeper issues. Turns out, she believes the GrOPers went off-the-rails two years ago; before that, heck, she’d have been happy voting for Kasich.
She thinks the USG shouldn’t be a welfare state; that marijuana shouldn’t be legalized; and that we need to balance the budget. She’s completely unaware of the history of welfare for white people, and discrimination against black people. She has no idea about the careful studies that show that marijuana is wildly safer than alcohol. She thinks that the economy right now is doing great!
She is, of course, LIVID at the way the GrOPers, Lord Littledick, and his acolyte Rapey-K, have treated and will treat women. But it seems like that’s where it ends.
It’s very disappointing. It just reinforces Chef’s dictum: “Never get out of the boat”.
Sigh.
TenguPhule
@Amir Khalid:
I presume a sufficient amount of damage to the head works either way.
Chyron HR
Fuck, I want to play mobile games instead of working but I have to keep my stupid phone shut off. Thanks, Obama.
Frankensteinbeck
I’m hearing the FBI probe has expanded and some people Kavanaugh REALLY did not want to be on the interview are being talked to now. I don’t know more.
Jeffro
@ruemara:
AND until after we’ve well-packed SCOTUS (I think 15 justices sounds pretty good) so that the hard work of President Harris, Speaker Pelosi, and Majority Leader Schumer don’t get undone by Koch-heads.
THAT’S when I’ll believe they’ve lost.
TenguPhule
I admit this only occurred to me too after the fact.
Trump keeps contradicting himself so fast that its going Plaid.
John M. Burt
I wouldn’t put too much stock in that claim that working-class voters are actually giving more than a handful of super-rich donors. Remember, this is a claim being made by GOPers with their hands out to working-class rubes.
We’re in danger of putting ourselves in the position of the Russian Jew in the old joke, happily reading the anti-Semitic newspaper full of wonderful news about how rich and influential Jews are….
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
And even then, don’t rest easy until Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and Roberts are having open casket funerals.
germy
My phone just went off! Presidential alert!!
Jeez…
Frankensteinbeck
There went the test. Unless Trump follows up in thirty seconds with a personal message, which I doubt, it was harmless.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
If true, I guess it means the FBI told the White House where to stick that memo.
oatler.
That orange prick. Right in the middle of a “Mom” rerun.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@TenguPhule:
When I saw that, it pissed me off so bad. US sovereignty is to not be violated but smaller, weaker nations can be rolled and must always abide by international law. It’s such disgusting hypocritical, neonationalist arrogance that could only come from the 21st century GOP
I hope the rest of the world comes to associate American conservatives with this; that they are illegitimate and don’t truly represent us.
Amir Khalid
@germy:
The phrase “Presidential alert” is one I would never apply to Donald Trump.
Jeffro
@TenguPhule: Nah…I’m okay with having 11-4 decisions for the next several years. No need to wish them ill.
I think it was in an earlier thread, though, where some commentor noted Trumpov’s future gravesite as a tourist attraction/urinal or something like that. To that, can I just say Ay-effing-men.
Major Major Major Major
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
This is kinda bipartisan actually, but definitely 80% GOP.
D58826
Got the test txt. Sun still in the sky. Apples still fall to earth. Dogs contuse to smell each others butts. I guess we survived the textocalypse
germy
@Amir Khalid:
I had more than enough trouble with “President Elect”
Mel
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Wow! The “SooperSmart drug*” article sounds like a fine piece of journalism right up there with the “Hilary Adopts Alien Baby” National Enquirer bits from days of yore.
“Smart like Ben!” Now there’s a Republican catchphrase that I actually believe.
* Warning: SooperSmart Drug can cause narcolepsy, racism, misogyny, sociopathy, delusions of grandeur, severe cognitive deficits, public shoutiness, shrinkage of hands, and uncontrollable urges to hoard grain in makeshift pyramids. Take only as directed.
TenguPhule
@Jeffro:
Mark my words, the Nazis will escalate. They always do.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I don’t think I got the text. Perhaps this is good.
rk
Well I just read that republicans are energized by Brent Kavanaugh. So much for the blue tsunami.
Mel
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Lucky you!
It blared out of my phone at full volume, and made the poor cats run across my legs in panic mode, claws extended.
Mnemosyne
@rk:
And if a random pseudonymous commenter on a blog says it’s true, it must be true. I guess we’d all better stop contributing now, right?
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
I hate not having an edit button. ?
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@rk: Uh… that’s a leap. Got any data to support your assertion?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know if it’s true or not, but as I said in #26, DCCC is using those words in their latest doom-and-gloom fundraising text. I don’t respond well to those texts, they irritate the hell out of me, but I suppose they have their place in an all-out fundraising effort.
It’s possible, even probable, that both things are true. That there has been a massive fundraising tsunami on the blue side, but that the Republican leadership has been able to use the Kavanaugh spectacle to shake a few more shekels out of their base too. Porque no los dos?
If we hear that the Republicans are starting to put money back into the close races where they’re doing triage right now, then I’ll worry. But what good does worry do? Just keep giving (I tell myself).
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Specifically, what the DCCC text last night said was “GOP says it sees bounce from Kavanaugh and Republicans are bragging that… money is FLOODING… donations SKYROCKET”.
So we don’t know what the numbers are, and no doubt the GOP is exaggerating the bounce, but the DCCC has decided to quote the GOP’s claims.
MisterForkbeard
@Mnemosyne: On the other hand, I think noting that “Republicans” are in fact that they start getting really energized to vote for the GOP when… several women come out to tell credible stories that their SC nominee is a rapist.
I guess it’s what they like to hear.
MisterForkbeard
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Those awful DCCC fund-raising letters *always* claim doom and gloom. That’s how they try and get you to donate, and they’re incredibly exasperating. They try to make everything sound dire at all times so you’ll panic and give them money.
They’re not a good indicator of anything.
Major Major Major Major
@MisterForkbeard: there was just an NPR poll showing a big uptick in GOP enthusiasm over the last week.
ETA lol, right, timestamp time zones. Dead thread.
terraformer
@Frankensteinbeck:
But how in the everloving fuck can this be an investigation if the FBI is not interviewing Kavanaugh OR Ford?
Am I missing something???
J R in WV
@Chetan Murthy:
If you have a credit or debit card, ActBlue is a wonderful organization that accepts donations to progressive Democratic candidates and immediately moves those funds to the actual campaign fund. The organization is non-profit and funded by donations to ActBlue, It offers donors the opportunity to make a small “tip” donation to ActBlue when donating to a candidate, but that’s completely voluntary.
Long ago I saved my CC data at ActBlue, which isn’t required at all, but it makes donating really quick and easy. You get an email receipt for every donation, which you can file in an ActBlue folder to track all your donation, and they also provide ways to track donations on their web site.
It’s a well done interface both for donors and office seekers. I highly recommend their service if you want to donate in any amounts. I am fortunate to be able to donate frequently to people like Sharice Davids, MJ Hagar, Beto, Amy McGrath, etc. It helps me sleep a little better at night to know I’m doing all I can to help good Democrats run to defeat Russian-Republican fascists. I volunteer to do work as well. I hesitate to try to do door-to-door, my knees, ankles and hips are not what they once were, but sitting and phone banking, I can do that.
And every once in a while I get a republican on the phone so obnoxious I can blurt out an obvious truth, like “You know that Voting R means voting for Russia, don’t you?” before hanging up… not great fun, but a little happy inside after that once in a great while. Some of those guys are so full of Faux News and so eager to share it with a self proclaimed Democrat that it just works for me to hit back where it hurts.