Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We still have time to mess this up!

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

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

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

He really is that stupid.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

This really is a full service blog.

“woke” is the new caravan.

No one could have predicted…

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

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

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Mardi Gras!

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Mardi Gras!

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And the next day, also in the Washington Post (paper of record for a company town where the monopoly industry is national politics), E.J. Dionne:

The core political challenges facing Democrats are not the rise of those who proudly call themselves democratic socialists and the danger that Republicans will succeed in red-baiting the entire party.

Instead, Democrats face formidable coalition-management problems because they now provide a home to millions of voters (and scores of elected officials) who in earlier times might well have been liberal Republicans.

Democratic leaders — and presidential candidates — must find ways to cope with an alliance that spans not only their own long-standing left and center-left factions but also many moderate voters who despise President Trump but have not been Democrats before…

Finally, ex-Republican Jennifer Rubin, on “The benefits of Joe Biden”:

… In the current field there is a decided lack of gravitas, for lack of a better word. The contenders don’t lack for ideas or for fiery rhetoric, but there is a certain lighter-than-air quality to the case they make for their election…

In short, the current field has been good at identifying the problem — Trump and the middle-class squeeze — but may badly overshoot the mark on solutions and overestimate the degree to which Trump, total gridlock and nonstop fighting in Washington have exhausted the country. The country arguably yearns for normalcy, not for revolution.

That brings us back to Biden, who routinely praises the country in a way that communicates that our problems are manageable. After all, the economy is pretty good now. (It’s not as if it’s 2008, when Barack Obama was able to run against a party on whose watch an economic disaster had occurred.) Biden instills a level of confidence, perhaps aided by years of experience, that he has the tool kit to fix some sizable problems without upheaval…

Biden is not any less committed to universal health care or anti-climate-change measures or raising take-home pay for working-class families than others in the race. What would set him apart is a certain wiliness and a sensibility that voters, even those who oppose his policies, analogize to a pair of comfortable shoes…

In the carnival spirit of overturning conventional wisdom, a Modest Proposal: Joe Biden should run against Trump — as a Republican.

‘Come back to sanity, my GOP friends! You’re better than that malarkey!’

Or even ‘I knew Ronald Reagan. You, Donald Trump, are no Ronald Reagan.’

Yeah, yeah, won’t happen in this fallen world. But wouldn’t you love to see Chris Cillizza and Chuck Todd fall down and swallow their own tongues, as their inadequate circuitry overloaded?

Reader Interactions

249Comments

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    I’d say Biden is as likely to seek the Republican nomination for POTUS as I am, and is also as likely to get it. But if he did, it would certainly confuse a lot of Republicans. He should go for it.

  11. 11.

    Shalimar

    Biden is gravitas? I guess he’s old enough now that we can forget he was most famous for decades for saying incomprehensibly stupid things off-the-cuff.

    Also, even George W. Bush hadn’t destroyed out economy in 2003. Comparisons to 2008 are a bit unfair.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @rikyrah: I read your comment and thought you were referring to his failure to endorse his son in the N.H. primary, which was a good thing because his son was even worse then he is.

  19. 19.

    chris

    Via Reddit, carnival float in Dusseldorf, Trump and MBS as you’ve never seen them before and will not want to again. Savage.

    From the comments:

    The caption reads “The Murderer and his Guardian Angel”

    Edit: I misread schmutz(dirt) as schutz(guardian) and entirely missed the pun.

    AND:

    I think it’s either slang or a pun. Schmutz is mud or dirt or dirty. Edit to say I googled it and it’s Schutzengel is the proper way to say guardian angel.

    So they are referring to Trump as a dirty or filthy guardian angel.

  22. 22.

    Mustang Bobby

    Want some good non-political and shameless self-promoting news? Okay, great. I’ve been invited to the 27th annual Valdez Last Frontier Theatre Conference in Valdez, Alaska, June 8-15. This is a huge get; playwrights from all over the country apply, and they’re taking my ten-minute play “A Moment of Clarity,” a piece I wrote several years ago about me and my dad as he slips into the fog of dementia. So excuse me if I holler “Yip yah!”

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Mustang Bobby: Congrats! May the play get the 3 standing ovations it deserves. Say hello to Alaska for me (an old friend I’ve never met).

  29. 29.

    Kay

    I’m not a big fan of Biden. To me he completely reinvented himself in 2008 and I’m not sure this is true:

    Biden is not any less committed to universal health care or anti-climate-change measures or raising take-home pay for working-class families than others in the race.

    and his dependence on his biography annoys me.

    I also have real questions about his indecision here, what that says about him. Why can’t he decide?

  31. 31.

    Derelict

    Democrats simply MUST court the Center, which means they simply MUST move to the right, which means they SHOULD be looking to the likes of Biden and Manchin for the 2020 race.

    This is the advice that Democrats have been given–and have been taking–since 1988. Since then, Democrats went from having a lock on both houses of Congress and winning the presidency in 1992, to losing both houses of Congress and the presidency to the likes of George W. Bush and Donald fucking Trump. We also went from controlling most state governments to controlling just a handful.

    So maybe the advice that we need to be more Right is wrong. Maybe what we need is more AOC and less of the Joe bros.

  35. 35.

    Amir Khalid

    @chris:
    I wonder if you noticed: whoever sculpted that nekkid Trump angel made him anatomically correct.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    I didn’t follow this- I thought it was disgusting and I have limits on what I’m willing to read and I can’t read all this horrible shit- but I never knew the reason they did this was to protect Assange:

    In his column, Corsi promoted a theory that the DNC hack — a crime for which Special Counsel Robert Mueller later indicted 12 Russian intelligence officers — was an “inside job” by Rich. Corsi cited a Washington Times op-ed that said Seth Rich and his older brother, Aaron, had carried out the DNC hack, quoting one passage directly from the op-ed, which was written by a retired Navy admiral: “Interestingly, it is well known in the intelligence circles that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron Rich, downloaded the DNC emails and was paid by Wikileaks for that information.”

    Not to protect Wikileaks, mind you. The conspiracy theory implicates Wikileaks- but Assange and Stone. Interesting! That they were that worried about it that early in the game.

  38. 38.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: I cannot WAIT to see what Colman makes of the role! She’s terrific. I got my mother-in-law hooked on The Crown. She doesn’t have or want Netflix (she not the most technically adept person), but we binge watch a few episodes when she visits and stays with us overnight. She’s almost caught up to the end of season 2, and then we’ll all have to wait until they release season 3.

    @Mustang Bobby: Congrats, and have fun in Alaska!

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Raven: My folks spent 2 summers there after the old man retired. My little sis and little brother went with them on both trips. Sadly, I had a life by then and was too stupid to put it on hold. Someday…

  41. 41.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I don’t understand why he doesn’t just decide privately. One of the things I don’t like about him is his kind of free-association public rambling and this feels completely consistent with that.

    But, OTOH, there probably should be a couple more moderates in the race to get a good measure of what Democrats want so he fills out that lane. This is terrible but I also want a kind of “sample” to measure what I think is unrecognized misogyny among the D primary electorate so that lane needs a man, ya know, for my fake comparison study.

  42. 42.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: It means the one year statute of limitations for filing a civil suit by the Rich family approacheth and this is part of the settlement.

  43. 43.

    NotMax

    Biden may be affable but that doesn’t make him any less of a political lightweight and a dimbulb than he ever was, with as much gravitas as a sponge cake.

    Having a president after 2020 who might best be described as dedicated just to limiting further harm is not what we’re in need of. Move over, Joe, there’s a line of newer models coming along in the passing lane.

  44. 44.

    Baud

    @Kay: Yeah, I have various issues with him, but I just don’t think it’s too late yet. I hope he runs because he would be the front runner based on name recognition instead of Bernie.

    @Immanentize: A good point. But wasn’t this lie over a year old?

  45. 45.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Is that what you think? I was thinking he was just scared of the lawsuit. Rich’s family are racking up some victories against these people. I was hoping they’re developing a kind of blueprint for how to sue on this, one the Sandy Hook parents could also use.

    But it does seem more and more certain Assange was working with the Trump campaign, otherwise why this elaborate conspiracy theory that involved so many far Right media people?

  46. 46.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Wasn’t it one of your fellow Ohio Dems who said, “Can’t we have a man this time?”

    I don’t think I’ll ever forget that line…. And delivered without a hint of irony to boot?

  47. 47.

    satby

    @Baud: read the article linked in the tweet.
    @rikyrah: Good morning! I just shared that article to FB. I didn’t think I could hate that fucker any more, but I do.

  49. 49.

    A Ghost To Most

    I’m still not voting for anyone older than me.

    Put Biden and Warren in charge of the Truth & Reconciliation Committee.

  50. 50.

    Baud

    @Kay: Right. A Fox-Assange-NRA-GOP-Trump-Russia conspiracy (some might call it a vast right wing conspiracy) seems to be emerging from the investigation.

  51. 51.

    NotMax

    Describing Rubin as an ex-Republican is, IMHO, several steps too far. Recently lapsed Republican is more like it.

    And assigning credence to strictures from any form of Republican on who Dems should run is as ludicrous on its face as it would be were the parties reversed.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    Oh, God, yes. And so whiny that I knew it was blurted out – purely a gut-level reaction. I was speechless. He’s not my favorite person anyway. He ran a failed insurgency inside the county party which is how I got my appointment, in the aftermath of that, the establishment Dems appointed me. The “establishment” Dems here are more progressive than the insurgents. The insurgents are actually the recently deposed “establishment”. The insurgents were the establishment prior to ’08, and Obama. I was an insurgent then, except we won.

  53. 53.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    NPR ran a report just now on elderly veterans and others who express in their last moments that they won’t live to see the Mueller Report.

    “I got a call at 11:00. My mom said, ‘Well, dad’s not feeling well — he really can’t stand.'” recounted Tendler’s son Walter, who lives in San Diego. “Within a couple of hours they called 911 and got him into the ER because it wasn’t getting any better.”

    Mitchell Tendler began to fade. He had outlived two implantable defibrillators, and was on his third. The devices had kept him alive, but now posed a problem for the medical imaging he needed in the hospital. Doctors gave him some painkillers, and then he had a final thought.

    “It just was quiet for a little while,” Walter Tendler recounted, “and then he just sits up in bed halfway and looks at me and he goes, ‘S***, I’m not going to see the Mueller report, am I?’ And that was really the last coherent thing that he said.”

    Kind of awful to say this, but it cheered me up.

  54. 54.

    satby

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’m feeling the blech with you. The dogs woke me up, the oldest epileptic one was having a seizure. Poop and a flood of pee before coffee never starts my day well.

    @Mustang Bobby: but happy news is always a mood lifter. Congratulations Bobby!

  57. 57.

    Matt McIrvin

    In an age when Donald Fucking Trump is President, “normalcy” and “gravitas” are still code for “old white man”.

  58. 58.

    Mary G

    I think Biden is having trouble lining up the big donors, and the fact that he wants the big donors shows how out of touch with the voters he is.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Glenn Greenwald is freaking out that people are tying Assange to Trump. I think that’s crushing to those people, the idea that none of this was noble or high minded but instead was just politics. In Assanges case I think it was pure personal vengeance against Hillary Clinton. Doesn’t get any smaller than that- not even a Republican- just a person who hates Hillary Clinton.

    The “proof” that Assange isn’t implicated in this is that “Trump’s DOJ” is after Assange. So I guess Greenwald thinks the DOJ is purely a political enforcement arm, that Trump actually directs all investigations and prosecutions, which is a kind of shocking accusation.

  63. 63.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    I don’t understand why he doesn’t just decide privately.

    I sympathize with his indecision. There came a point in my life where things I had always done, had been a part of for decades, just. didn’t. fit. anymore. And yet the not doing of them felt like amputating my arm. And so, I waffled. I wanted to, but not really, had so many other things to do, and yet how could I not?

    I don’t know the source of Joe’s indecision, but I understand it.

  64. 64.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Derelict:

    Maybe what we need is more AOC and less of the Joe bros.

    I thought Socialist Cynthia Nixon was charismatic, likeable and ran an inspirational campaign. She campaigned side-by-side with AOC. But she was crushed by a boring, old, corrupt corporatist, losing by 32 points in a deep, deep blue state.

    Just yesterday a poll confirmed that running widely as an open Socialist is box office poison.

    According to the results, only 18 percent of Americans view the word “socialism” positively, presumably this is why Republicans keep trying to align Democrats with the governing philosophy. Only 25 percent of Americans said that they would be comfortable with a socialist as a president.

    [Nate] Silver noted that “public opinion is complicated.” He explained that so-called “socialist” goals like greater income redistribution “are often quite popular. But ‘socialism’ as a brand or label is really unpopular.”

  69. 69.

    Betty Cracker

    Wow, this is refreshing!

    U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon has decided not to enter the increasingly crowded race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination after months of consideration…

    He aims to fight anti-democracy moves including voter suppression, gerrymandering and dark money. He said he also wants to focus on helping families by improving health care, education and access to living-wage jobs and on stemming climate change…

    He is not endorsing any candidate yet but said he is impressed by many of those Democrats who have already declared their candidacy or intention to run.

    Thank you, Senator Merkley!

  70. 70.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker: It’s sad and a little frightening that people I didn’t even know were considering running and announcing decisions about running.

  71. 71.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I’m not that decisive either- I always get a million opinions- but I’m not a public figure. To me it goes to his ability to make decisions- is this how he’ll be all the time? Publicly musing on things? Can’t he just do that internally?

    One of the things I want to get away from after Trump is their psychology. I don’t want to know their inner thoughts. I want them to be more disciplined than that. I don’t really care about the Trump family dynamics. I have my own fucked up family to worry about, thanks. I have to be involved in their gross family because they insisted on foisting it on the country.

  76. 76.

    Derelict

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
    Yet, the same poll showed socialist policies and programs are very popular.

    I think what we’re seeing with the toxicity of the term “Socialist” is the same thing that happened to the term “Liberal.” The Rightwing Wurlitzer turned it into an epithet so that people would react to the word without knowing anything about what it actually means.

    Try this experiment: Ask someone what Socialism means. Pick any random person. I’ll bet you cash money that the response is something along the lines of “the government takes over control of everything.” This is the result of Rightwing control of the narrative filling the average person with not just mis-information but mal-information. The same way Republicans were able to convince a majority of Americans that Obamacare was a disaster that would take away their healthcare while, at the same time, a majority of Americans loved the Affordable Care Act–Republicans made people think that Obamacare and the ACA were two different things.

  77. 77.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie:

    Kind of awful to say this, but it cheered me up.

    Not awful at all. We all die but our final words are rarely so coherent. Here’s a ;-) for the late Mr Tendler.

  79. 79.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    South Carolina 2020 Poll: Biden leads Primary Field by Wide Margin;

    By Emerson Polling

    On March 2, 2019

    One year out from the South Carolina primary, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders are the only two candidates to reach double digits in the Democratic Primary for President. Biden leads with 37% of the vote, followed by Sanders with 21%. Kamala Harris comes in third with 9%, Cory Booker has 6%, while Beto O’Rourke and Elizabeth Warren both receive 5%. The poll was conducted February 28-March 2, 2019 (link)

  80. 80.

    John S.

    @satby:

    Timing is everything. He should have kept that promise in 2016. Now, the window of opportunity has closed.

  81. 81.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: Former Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), who recently died at 92, reportedly said the same thing to his wife. Man, I sure hope the Mueller report lives up to the hype. Reading between the lines of evolving political jockeying by both Republicans and Democrats, I think it’s going to be a big fat let-down. But maybe none of them know any more than the rest of us.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    I have an idea for a debate. One. A panel of X subject matter experts. Some can be academically or training qualified “experts” but some should be practitioner/experts (teacher, physician, like that). They each get one question for the candidates in their area. You could really do a million new things with debates. It’s wide open.

    I know we would be really mad at who was chosen for the panel of experts, so just price that in :)

  83. 83.

    Baud

    @Derelict: Whether or not people would like “socialism” if they knew what it really was doesn’t advance your initial argument that being a socialist would achieve better election results or that “socialism” is no longer a dirty word.

  84. 84.

    satby

    @Baud: early on when GG first got popular I shared his writings and bought and shared his book. It’s been a long time since he was an honest broker of ideas; maybe he never was and just happened to align with the anti-Bush sentiment of the time. If he ends up swept up in the investigation it’s through his own efforts and I really won’t sympathize. He’s an authoritarian like the rest of them.

  86. 86.

    Baud

    @satby: My comment wasn’t about GG. It was about your comment on Biden and his son. Nothing about GG getting implicated in the investigation saddens me in the least.

  87. 87.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    ormer Vice President Joe Biden leads the field of potential Democratic presidential candidates by double digits among likely Iowa caucusgoers, according to a new poll.

    An Emerson College poll published Saturday found that Biden has the support of 29 percent of the planned caucusgoers surveyed, well ahead of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who has the backing of 18 percent of likely caucusgoers polled.

    Following Biden and Harris in the poll is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with 15 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) with 11 percent. No other candidate received more than 6 percent of support.

    (Link)

    The interviews were conducted Jan. 30-Feb. 2.

  89. 89.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @satby: My feeling, and I have no evidence to back this up, is that at some point in his early political career he realized that among all other things, he really wanted to be President. That some part of him still wants to be President. But the rest of him really doesn’t want to campaign for it.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    Well, its a double double cross because to me it looks like Assange also screwed Wikileaks. Used them as the outlet for a political hit. Which they’ll never admit. Then they’d have made a mistake and that’s impossible.

    Sadly, the information on Assange doesn’t “want to be free” so we must sue and indict for it. You’ll notice these radical transparency people release NOTHING on themselves without a court order or settlement to avoid money damages.

    Information doesn’t want to be free that much.

  91. 91.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: As an atheist, I don’t believe in the power of prayer, but that thought has me reconsidering my position.

  92. 92.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay:

    To me it goes to his ability to make decisions- is this how he’ll be all the time?

    That is a reasonable concern.

  93. 93.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    In head-to-head matchups on the 2020 ballot against President Trump, all Democrats have a lead over the President, though all differences are within the margin of error, with one exception. When asked if voters would cast their ballots for Biden or Trump, 55% said they would vote for Biden, and 45% for Trump.

    List of other hypothetical 2020 Ballot Tests:
    Trump 47% v. Elizabeth Warren 53%
    Trump 47% v. Beto O’Rourke 53%
    Trump 48% v. Kamala Harris 52%
    Trump 48% v. Sherrod Brown 52%
    Trump 49% v. Amy Klobuchar 51%
    Trump 49% v. Cory Booker 51%
    Trump 49% v. Bernie Sanders 51%

    (link)

  94. 94.

    chris

    @Derelict: Sure. Socialism=Venezuela!!!11!!!!! Some of them, like Kirk and Shapiro are actually saying that. Reminds me of the deficit=Greece!!!11!!! stuff in 09-10-11…. Be nice if some loud voices pointed out that maybe socialism = Denmark or Sweden. You know, the happiest countries in the world.

  96. 96.

    NotMax

    Please, please tell me we’re not going to yet again fall into the habit trap of quoting polling conducted a year and half out.

  97. 97.

    satby

    @John S.: I hope Biden decides that too, but he would have an appeal to the wider middle of voters that swing back and forth across parties. And an elder statesman that could start to heal the damage the current idiot has done to our international relations would appeal to a lot of less partisan people too.
    We’re much more liberal and better informed on this blog than the wider public is and it helps to remember that. Joe could be seen as a safe, known quantity after these chaotic years. And he could pick any of the younger generation pols as a running mate. If he decides to run, it wouldn’t be the worst thing. I hope he decides to enjoy his retirement, but I’m ok with it if he runs. I just think our primary would weed him out.

  99. 99.

    satby

    @Baud: Ah, ok. Yes, that saddens me too. I think Joe deserves his retirement just as I think the Obamas do. And the Clintons. They worked hard for us.

  100. 100.

    Baud

    @satby:

    I recently spoke to a fairly moderate white male former Republican-turned-Democrat, and he had good things to say about Kamala Harris. My anecdote of the day FWIW.

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @chris:

    None of these people should be credible based on their bullshit on the deficit alone. Think back to how much handwringing there was over the deficit in the Obama years, compared to now.

    They’re all full of shit, including the cable tv hosts who pretended to care about it. It was pure fucking racism. They wanted to bleat about a black man with a “credit card”. Obama was a MUCH better financial manager than Donald Trump, on ANY measure. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone! Trump inherited everything he has and he’s a SERIAL bankrupt. He’s a deadbeat. He doesn’t pay.

    Trump has been damn valuable in one area- he has exposed PLENTY of mainstream frauds. They’re all thinking the “emporer had no clothes” is limited to Trump- it’s not. It’s catching a whole lot of people naked. We have the deficit frauds and we also have the “national security” frauds, who were so concerned about Obama’s “weakness” and Clinton’s email management and now don’t utter a peep. Phonies. All of them.

  106. 106.

    NotMax

    @satby

    Your last point is why I tend to favor even more new blood jumping in. Letting the voters have a say on the direction of the party. What a concept.

  108. 108.

    Betty Cracker

    @chris: “Socialism” as a smear is losing its sting among many groups, but it’s still a more powerful force in Florida than I realized. I suspect it was a far more effective (and bogus!) charge against Andrew Gillum’s candidacy for governor than Democrats anticipated, including me. If Democrats want to make a play for the state’s 29 EC votes, they’ll need an effective counter to that smear. if Sanders is the nominee, they can write those 29 votes off.

  109. 109.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:
    I wonder why Assange feels vengeful towards Hillary. I don’t recall her ever doing anything to him or Wikileaks.

  110. 110.

    satby

    @Baud: I am very hopeful that the younger Dems running change the entire conversation! As was linked above, the general public likes and supports more “socialism”, but they’ve been brainwashed against the term. It’s long past time for this country to have the same benefits for its citizens that every other first world country has.

  113. 113.

    Baud

    @satby:

    People have to get past the fact that the social part of socialism includes everybody, including women and minorities. Then we’ll see.

  114. 114.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    The whole hot take that turned into beltway wisdom (tongue so firmly in cheek it might poke through) that trump and Bernie were the anti establishment was always horseshit. Trump was so clearly white resentment and so was Bernie. His support was so overwhelmingly white in 2016 and still is. He called planned parenthood the establishment even though planned parenthood’s funding and women’s reproductive health services were under attack in multiple states. He has also been a fucking member of Congress for 30 years and it doesn’t get more establishment than that.
    And now that Sanders seems to have gotten it through his newly smooth noggin that he needs black people all he can talk about it is how he supported Jessie Jackson and he has Talcum X writing fictional origin stories about his civil rights bona fides. It’s disgusting.

  115. 115.

    Kay

    Scott Dworkin
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    “Let me say right here, right now. Absolutely Donald Trump should release his tax returns.” GOP Rep Matt Gaetz

    Donald Trump’s show poodle apparently ran into some pissed off constituents.

    They’re vulnerable on this. There is no good reason Trump shouldn’t release his tax returns. It’s the norm. That’s why Bernie should quit messing up the unity on this demand and release his.

  119. 119.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    I think Sanders is kind of annoyingly precious about not being a member of a Party. I recognize this from Lefties here. It’s literally “identity” politics. I have less and less patience with it. It is ABOUT them- how they want to think of themselves- as people who would never be so common as to join a TEAM. They’re better than that. But the Left has their OWN fucking rigid rules that are strictly enforced, which none of them will admit. It’s actually really narrow, the “acceptable” discourse. Both Sanders and his wife seem to me to personify this. His wife actually more than him.

  120. 120.

    MomSense

    @Derelict:

    I think we should look at the evidence before we launch a strategy and I don’t think the polling from the 2016 or 2018 elections supports the AOC hypothesis.

  124. 124.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: My two-bits:

    – Most people serious about running for president write and release a book. Where’s his book?
    – What did Joe do in the 2018 cycle? Did he campaign for the party or in specific races? Not that I recall.
    – What has he been doing since January 2019? His foundation doesn’t seem to be getting any visibility.

    This hemming and hawing seems to be a throwback to George Washington – ‘yes, I want to be president, but actually campaigning for it is so unseemly. I’ll run if everyone makes it clear that I will win…’

    He seems to be lost not being a politician any more. That’s not a quality that we need in a presidential candidate these days.

    And he went nowhere in previous national campaigns. He needs to retire from politics.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  127. 127.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rikyrah: Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Overload! Overload! The cuteness is toooooooooooooooooo much!!!!!!!!!!!!

  128. 128.

    danielx

    @satby:

    It’s odd how some of Trump’s strongest supporters do not recognize that this whole capitalism deal hasn’t been working very well for them of late, or much of anyone else who doesn’t have a net worth of at least eight figures.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Bernie should pay a non-family member to organize his financial disclosures. It is ridiculous that these two pretending they are like W-2 wage earners filing online Monday evening after their shift at the factory. Give me a fucking break. He’s a professional politician and he has been one for 30 years and why does he bring his wife into campaign matters so much anyway?

    There’s this Lefty self consciousness with them- I can’t get past it. It feels posur-y.

  131. 131.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    Word. I live in a low population state which means that when I go to political events I recognize everyone. Hell I’ve probably called them for fundraising appeals, referenda, volunteer asks, etc. The people who went nuts for Sanders in my state were retired hippies who either didn’t show up to help or attend anything during the Obama years or they showed up and derailed events by going through the truthout type of litany of how Obama had sold us out. They literally could never help us do anything constructive or organized. All of a sudden these motherfuckers were caucusing and then turning our state convention into a shitshow almost as horrific as the Ronulans did to the 2012 Republican convention. It was grievance based by people who only became Democrats to vote for the candidate they liked because he isn’t a Democrat.

  132. 132.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Nothing precious at all as far as I’m concerned and way beyond annoying. It is also infuriatingly naive.

  135. 135.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: Stepped into? Stuck in one is more like it.

    ETA let me amend that: more like stuck in my older brother’s earliest diaper days finger paintings.

  138. 138.

    MomSense

    @rikyrah:

    I agree except this is exactly the kind of non scandal scandal that will take all the attention of the beltway media and be manipulated but GOP operatives to take attention away from the terrible things the GOP are doing and from our field of Dem candidates.

    I wish she would wait until after we win Congress and the White House – when we could actually have good people who will act in good faith for diplomatic efforts. This is a tactical blunder on her part. It’s not going to help.

  139. 139.

    JR

    Biden is closely associated with Obama in many voters’ minds. But he’s not Obama. I’ll crawl over glass to beat Trump but I hope voters realize this.

  140. 140.

    hueyplong

    Of course we’d all “love to see Chris Cillizza and Chuck Todd fall down and swallow their own tongues, as their inadequate circuitry overloaded,” but that can be accomplished in any number of ways, for example, by Democrats decisively nominating Kamala Harris without having formed a circular firing squad at any point in the proceedings.

    I don’t want to hear one word about the Democrats being too radical when we’ve spent the last 2+ years under the occupying forces of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, both leading institutions for which the majority of Americans voted for Democrats. I am heartily sick of seeing judges nominated and confirmed, whose resumes would have been dumped in the trash by screeners at any firm at which I have ever worked or even encountered.

    Fuck em, tick tock, blech, etc.

  142. 142.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Millions of people laboriously collect financial records and deliver them in response to various demands every single day. Many of those people, even low wage people, PAY other people to help them. But not the Sanders! They have to craft an artisan doc reveal at their hand-made kitchen table. I have more respect for Trump- he’s just “fuck you! Of course I’m a crook!” This coyness is just annoying. No one else gets this. Also, is Jane billing the campaign for her 4 year tax preparation job? Maybe they should have gone to the Wal Mart booth and just had them done.

  143. 143.

    danielx

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Got that right. Bernie has about as much chance of being elected as I do, not that either of us wouldn’t be a better choice than the current incumbent. But he will hang around pissing in the soup, as will his unprecious supporters. I give him his due; he did raise issues that needed to be raised. But after 2016, I really don’t need any more Bernie bullshit, nor do I need his holier than thou, sanctimonious supporters.

  144. 144.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    I’m pretty sure we called it in 2016. Sanders all of a sudden dropped millionaires from his stump speech and changed the 1% to the 1/100 th of the 1% because his taxes would show that he is a millionaire and/or member of the 1%. I used to joke that if trump and Bernie both released their taxes we’d find out sanders hadn’t more cash in hand than trump.
    Tax returns would damage the brands those two have carefully cultivated.

  145. 145.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    To be fair, this issue came at him suddenly. It’s not like he had four years to prepare for it.

  148. 148.

    Betty Cracker

    @Another Scott: To be fair, Biden did campaign hard for Democrats in 2018. I think you’re right, though — he’s lost since he doesn’t have a daily job as a politician anymore — a role he’s had since he was a young man. I get that; a lot of folks find retirement difficult to face! But their psychodrama around it doesn’t usually have national implications. I really like Biden, despite his many faults. I hope he sits this one out and finds happiness in being a retired elder statesman. Being a strong VP to a really good president is a major accomplishment!

  149. 149.

    SFAW

    According to my daily “Here’s the stupidity we’ll be publishing today” from the Boston Glob, the Always-Clueless Joan “I Hates Me Some Strong Women Candidates” Vennochi thinks Demon-rats are being double-plus mean toward Uncle Joe Biden.

    Disclaimer: I did not read the “opinion” piece, because I refuse to give clicks to that formerly-but-no-longer-liberal piece of shit (the Glob, that is — Vennochi’s a fool, but I wouldn’t characterize her as a piece of shit, and she was never a liberal anyway), so she may have been not-stupid. Also, unlike some, I have no particular animus toward Biden, but that’s neither here nor there. But, to paraphrase Ozark: belch.

  151. 151.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    Assange has always had troubling politics. Going back to 2013 he was supporting the white nationalist candidate in Australia. He said all the things the libertarian left wanted to hear and pulled a lot of liberals in but it was always, always ratfucking.

  154. 154.

    Betty Cracker

    @MomSense: Bingo. It might be instructive to search a database of Sanders’ stump speeches in the 2016 race and pinpoint exactly when he dropped “millionaires” and switched “1%” to “1/100th of 1%.” Then we’d know the precise time-frame when Jane closed the TurboTax tab and said, “Bernie, we have a problem…”

  156. 156.

    oldgold

    When the economy turns sour the Right understands socialism.

    They have always shamelessly embraced privatizing their profits and socializing their losses.

  157. 157.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I don’t know the source of Joe’s indecision

    My theory: Biden is torn between really really wanting to be POTUS and the awareness that he sucks at running for president.

  162. 162.

    chris

    @Betty Cracker:

    “Socialism” as a smear is losing its sting among many groups, but it’s still a more powerful force in Florida than I realized.

    Well, yeah. Everybody knows the Nazis were socialists, it’s right there in the name! Some guy even wrote a book about it. Also, Stalin, Pol Pot and… Venezuela!//

  163. 163.

    Turgidson

    @Kay:

    Nothing about Greenwald’s or Assange’s schtick has been noble or high minded for many many years now. Glenn is just upset that his phony showboating grift show is being exposed to sunlight. Oh the irony, that.

    As I said on twitter at some point, if Glenn was in a room with Hitler, bin Laden, and a mainstream Democrat and had a gun with two bullets, that fucking asshole would shoot the Democrat twice. He’s a bitter old crank at this point.

  164. 164.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker: Don’t you think one of the reasons that “Socialism” is such a smear is because a lot of elected Democrats also believe it is a bad thing?

    The education in another direction has just started. And no, Bernie did not start it.

  165. 165.

    satby

    The struggle is real: it’s 8° out with a wind chill of -15° and I should already be at the Farmers Market. And I don’t want to go ?

    At least after today it will get better slowly weather-wise.

  167. 167.

    NotMax

    Elderly landlady knocked on the door yesterday all aflutter that something was terribly amiss with her car. Took it for a spin around the neighborhood and noticed nothing amiss. Would lay down real folding money she forgot to release the parking brake or only partially released it.

    Will be driving it tomorrow to take her to an eye doctor appointment in town, so fingers crossed that’s all it was.

  170. 170.

    satby

    @Immanentize: Wilmer’s context free underpants gnome theory of how to accomplish the socialistic changes he proposes for our society is part of why “socialism” too often gets a bad rap. He’s dishonest about the costs and the changes. But to be fair, he’s not the only one who has done that.
    It can be done, and fiscally it potentially saves the nation money and recovers productivity, but there are tradeoffs and most people only hear the “higher taxes” one.

  172. 172.

    satby

    @Amir Khalid: it’s an indoor market and it has heat (but no insulation). Almost no one will be there before 10 am, we may get a small lunch crowd in the cafe.
    Most of the vendors don’t show up on weekdays.
    @NotMax: yes.

  175. 175.

    SFAW

    @Kay:

    I have more respect for Trump- he’s just “fuck you! Of course I’m a crook!”

    I understand your point, but I don’t think Trump actually says that. [No, I don’t mean utter those exact (or similar) words.] My sense is that he says, in effect, that what he does is “standard business practice” for smart, self-made businessmen, and yeah, it may skirt the boundaries, but nothing he does is nor has been illegal. He’s so wrapped up in his delusions — he’s smart, he’s a good businessman, he’s the world’s best negotiator, his BMI is only 30, etc. — that he also believes in his own infallibility, and, similar to Nixon, “If I do/did it, it isn’t/wasn’t illegal.”

  176. 176.

    Betty Cracker

    @Immanentize: Sure. Just noting that in Florida, where we have a sizable population of folks who have fled (or who come from families that fled) corrupt Latin American socialist hellholes, the anti-socialism hysteria the GOP is selling may resonate more strongly than in other places.

  179. 179.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Baud:

    What Greenwald thinks is that his ass is next in line.

    There’s a happy thought for a cold morning.

  181. 181.

    MomSense

    @satby:

    You guys need an indoor farmers’ market for the winter. That’s what we do in Maine. We use grange halls, old mills, community centers – whatever large spaces we can find. From November through April/May we go indoors.

  182. 182.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    That’s part of what bothers me though. I once looked up Sherrod Brown’s assets and he has a pretty nice house, for Ohio. It’s in the upper middle for Ohio houses. Which is FINE. I didn’t actually think he has to live in a 70k house. It’s this fake “we are involved in The Struggle” thing I can’t stand. It would not surprise or anger me in any way if Bernie and Jane were worth more than 1 million. It’s not at all crazy amount for east coast property owners at their ages. But do they have to pretend they’re not? You can be an environmentalist and buy a plane ticket. This is silly. And vain.

  184. 184.

    VOR

    @chris:

    …maybe socialism = Denmark or Sweden. You know, the happiest countries in the world.

    Sweden, Denmark, and Norway are cited by religious people, like some of my family members, as bad places. You see, people have children without being married! They let gay people get married. And inter-racial marriages. Women have jobs outside the home. People use birth control regularly so children per family is low, and we all know God commanded us to have lots of children.

    Here is an article from Bill Kristol’s rag, the Weekly Standard in 2004.

    MARRIAGE IS SLOWLY DYING IN SCANDINAVIA. A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern–including gay marriage–is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.

  186. 186.

    NotMax

    @SFAW

    Love the anecdote he tells about the time he was playing a Greenwich Village club and the Smothers Brothers were playing a club across the street.

    Every night after their set, the brothers would cross over to catch his show. Asked if they showed up so often to steal his jokes, they are said to have responded, “No, we want to steal his timing!”

  187. 187.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker:.
    It is true that somehow Communism Evil has moved on to Socialism. I sometimes think being an all out Red would be more acceptable today.

    When I lived in Miami, the old Cubanos would actually show up and throw rocks (literal stoning) at people protesting Central/South American death squads (in El Salvador and Nicaragua) because Communism, Socialism!! They were Contra all the way.

    The irony of fleeing oppression to come to America to suppress free speech was lost on them.

  188. 188.

    MomSense

    @Kay:

    He boxed himself into a corner by going after Clinton personally and with his own rhetoric.

  189. 189.

    Immanentize

    @MomSense:
    I love the Grange Halls. Grew up in rural upstate in my earliest years and the Grange and the Fire Station were the two most fun community places around.

  190. 190.

    Kay

    @MomSense:

    When I saw the Obama’s house I thought “what a nice house! Good for them” – I liked that they didn’t pretend they were poor. Because… why would they be poor? Michelle’s whole story is about upward mobility. That’s a fine story. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and they weren’t.

  191. 191.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Kay:
    You’re probably right about Brown, but my brother’s 85k house in WNY would be worth $1 million in Denver.

  192. 192.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: It is almost impossible to live in a City in the Northeast and NOT be worth a million or more. I call it being house rich, otherwise poor.

  193. 193.

    chris

    @VOR: Canada must be a bad place too. A couple of (male) Mounties got married here in Nova Scotia about 15 years ago. Police officers!!! The end is nigh!

    (Also, the taxes that I pay for healthcare are far less than USians pay in insurance premiums. How ungodly is that?)

  194. 194.

    Kay

    @A Ghost To Most:

    Te me it’s like a really recognizable “nice older house” in Ohio.

    People would think it isn’t flashy or braggy, and they would approve :)

    Brown and his wife post pictures inside it all the time. I really don’t stalk them.

  195. 195.

    VOR

    @chris: Yep, Canada is considered to be a hellhole. You know, their healthcare is so bad all the Canadians have to come to America for treatment.

    In the real world, Canada beats the US on every measure of public health with far lower expenditures per capita. And Americans cross the border to Canada to buy prescription drugs.

  196. 196.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @A Ghost To Most: Location location location. If you moved our 12.5 acre Washington Co homestead with cabin a mile north into Franklin County it would go up another 50% easily. 15 miles north? Double at least, maybe triple.

  198. 198.

    A Ghost To Most

    @Kay:
    Sounds like my brother’s house. One of the nicer houses (accepting the cobblestone houses as a rank above) in town.

    The secret of that house is that every piece of wood in it is American Chestnut. The woodwork is amazing.

  199. 199.

    schrodingers_cat

    @chris: United States is not Venezuela, nor is it Denmark or Norway. Denmark and Norway are much smaller and more homogeneous than us, with the recent influx of refugees and the austerity policies, Denmark’s social contract is fraying. This is not my opinion but the reasoned analysis of a Danish economist I know personally. What works there may not necessarily work here, even if there was political will to adopt those policies.
    What I don’t like about the leftier-than-thous is their allergy to actual policies and reliance on slogans and theater.

  200. 200.

    satby

    @MomSense: it is indoors! But think large uninsulated quonset hut with blowers for heat. But I have my polar fleece on.

    @OzarkHillbilly: even on the coldest polar vortex days, I have to go out 5-6 times with the dogs. And the coldest days it’s one at a time in case one goes down trying to keep paws warm. I try to rush them, but they don’t get the danger, and I have to be prepared to carry them back in. Three of them weigh about 60 lbs, one weighs 100#. So yep, critter owners go outside in all weather.

  201. 201.

    Betty Cracker

    @Immanentize: That’s the Florida I know, where I watched the hardcore Cuban exile protesters turn into tottering granddaddies who raged about Elian Gonzalez and eventually had to march with walkers and oxygen tanks while their kids — my contemporaries who were born here a decade after Castro took over Cuba — seemed indifferent to the red-baiting.

    But the Hispanic population here is much more diverse than it was when I was a kid. I was recently talking to a friend who’s an immigrant from Venezuela. She’s been here for a long time now, but she had some interesting insights into how effective red-baiting still is among some Latin-American immigrants. This is a woman who despises Trump and would rather set her face on fire than vote for him.

    I don’t know how much of a factor red-baiting was in keeping the 2018 blue wave out of Florida, but low Latino turnout absolutely killed us, according to the data I’ve seen. We’ve got to figure that shit out and pronto.

  202. 202.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @A Ghost To Most: Talk about woodwork, a HS buddy’s house was built after the 1904 World’s Fair. The mantel piece was a finalist in the woodcarving competition (4th place iirc) They also had some phenomenal stained glass windows and a chandelier and much much more that had also been in WF competitions. Unbelievable house. And WAAAAAAAAAYYYYY under priced due to the fact that while all the houses on their cul-de-sac were upscale, it was in the middle of a lower middle class inner city neighborhood.

  203. 203.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I have to be prepared to carry them back in. Three of them weigh about 60 lbs, one weighs 100#. So yep, critter owners go outside in all weather.

    I think you meant to say “critter servants.” As it should be.

  205. 205.

    rikyrah

    @satby:

    The struggle is real: it’s 8° out with a wind chill of -15° and I should already be at the Farmers Market. And I don’t want to go ?

    Don’y blame you one bit, satby

  206. 206.

    geg6

    @Kay:

    OMG, this. Such disgusting hypocrites. All of them, the Sanders, the Bros and almost every single “Independent” I’ve ever come across. I despise them and their holier than thou crap.

  207. 207.

    Belafon

    @MomSense: She’s getting called out by Democrats, Democrats in +20 seats, one of which shares a border with Mexico. Waiting for the right time would be like waiting for the right time to call out racism.

  209. 209.

    geg6

    @Kay:

    here’s this Lefty self consciousness with them- I can’t get past it. It feels posur-y.

    Because it is a pose. Just like all his supporters.

  210. 210.

    bemused

    @debbie:

    This reminds me of a story from Bush Jr term about interrogators using waterboarding/torture/humiliation on prisoners. A group of elderly WWII interrogators spoke up how wrong on so many levels that kind of interrogation is. They would make the Nazis in custody comfortable, relaxed to get reliable, accurate information.

  211. 211.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: In my salad days** I hung out for some time with Baltimore’s Mr. Socialist, one A. Robert Kaufman, & even waybackthen (ca. 1970) Bob was adamant that

    If you want to advance socialism among blue-collar USAns, you don’t talk about socialism,

    You talk about the policies that a socialist administration would put into place – like the ones you mention – customarily prefaced with Wouldn’t it be nice if… And mostly your listeners would agree, because these are widely popular policy goals among those who labor for a living.

    Eventually – ah, eventually – (you’d hope) your listeners would say, Yeah, wouldn’t all that be nice? & you’d reply, Mmm, well you know, there is a political idea that would advance all of that – & if they asked you what, continue with It’s called “socialism” – & you’d still best be prepared to duck.

    How that’d work in the current toxic political environment…

    —
    ** When I was a green leafy vegetable drizzled with oil, vinegar & sundry herbs

  212. 212.

    NotMax

    @OzarkHillbilly

    Brought back memory of one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, designed as an everyman’s abode, with cypress clapboard siding as it was deemed easily affordable.

    Turns out cypress planks deteriorate quickly and need frequent replacement, and today cost an arm, a leg and a spleen.

  214. 214.

    chris

    @schrodingers_cat:

    allergy to actual policies and reliance on slogans and theater.

    Nobody’s paid any attention to them for 40 years so that’s hardly surprising. Actual policy requires power and now that they have a couple seats at the table you too may be surprised.

  215. 215.

    Betty Cracker

    @Belafon: Here’s an idea: how about Democrats don’t fall for the trap and opine on what another MoC says? When a reporter asks for a comment on Rep. Omar’s comment, they say, “Why don’t you ask her what she meant?”

    If standards were applied evenly, there wouldn’t be a reporter available to manufacture outrage about a freshman congresswoman’s soundbite because they’d all be camped out on Republican MoCs’ doorsteps with a 50-lb. binder filled with all the unambiguously racist, sexist, xenophobic and demented things the President of the United States has said. Maybe we stop playing their fucking game for a change.

  217. 217.

    bemused

    @Betty Cracker:

    I always want to ask those folks terrified we’ll turn into a socialist country how they feel about Social Security and Medicare.

  218. 218.

    schrodingers_cat

    @chris: Compare and contrast HRC and BS in the last cycle, she had actual policies, all he had was slogans and his knowledge on his singular issue, financial regulation was tissue thin. What does this have to do with power? HRC had done her HW unlike the shouty sloganeering St. S.
    The Green New Deal is more of the same. It is M4A of this cycle. Great slogan but actual policies articulated to achieve those goals are wispy thin.
    Leftier-than-thous are like disruptive students in the class who make the most noise and are surprised that doesn’t net them an A. And they will come and fight with you in your office hours how they totally deserve an A because of how awesome they and their ideas are, even if the work that they turn in shoddy at best.

  219. 219.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: and his dependence on his biography annoys me.

    I think a lot of Biden’s ambition comes from the fact that he has a sort of cult about himself and his family– which is weird but altogether too common in politics, the Bushes, the Romneys– and the son was supposed to be the One (and who was by all accounts a remarkable human being) has died, and Biden owes it to him to run. I don’t think that’s healthy, and more importantly I don’t think he has a clue as to how the party’s changed. Since ’16, since ’08, since ’02

    And while this may sound absurdly petty, the way he uses MoDo as a quasi-spokeswoman annoys me

    all that said, broken glass, etc

  221. 221.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker: I’ve been meaning to ask — do you live anywhere near the Peace River, now? The Judge I clerked for was from up that way and had a very nice swampy camp on the Peace.

  224. 224.

    tobie

    @NotMax: I agree with you about the uselessness of polls this far out. On the other hand, I’m tired of people telling me what the American people want. I have no clue and neither do they. Let’s have a sober look at 2018–what worked and what didn’t–since that’s the most accurate poll we’re going to get. I still think what counts most for the general is to figure out what strategy candidates used to win in swing districts. On what issues did a Davids, a Spanberger, a Neguse, a Slotkin, a Delgado campaign?

  225. 225.

    MazeDancer

    Anita Hill.

    Biden has not paid for that sin.

    He will now.

    And all the wrte guy pundits are missing this reality.

    As is Biden.

  226. 226.

    MomSense

    @Immanentize:

    I have performed on those little stages at grange halls all over the state of Maine. Those old buildings are great. The first time though was classic Maine.

    ‘Yuh, we’ve gut a stayage right heah you can yewooz’. We get there, go behind the curtain, and immediately set up a human chain of people to remove a hundred years of abandoned auction items and mechanical parts. After that we learned to ask them about the condition of the stage.

  227. 227.

    chris

    @schrodingers_cat: Yes, but that’s ol’ BS and I wasn’t counting him. He’s been at the table forever and accomplished nothing. I don’t think the new class will be the same.

  228. 228.

    Immanentize

    @MomSense: And in the summer — Chicken BarBQs! Our Grange was also famous for its Spring Cake Walk.

    ETA — I have a picture of my Mother’s parents and friends in a “revue” from the mid-1930’s from another little bitty rural upstate town. And there, in the front row of the picture, on the far right, is my beloved Grampa (a Mainer!), in blackface.

  229. 229.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MazeDancer: I agree, and I’d be okay with some other Dem standing up and saying it out loud, cause he’s clueless.

    Also, Iraq. To the Beltway, the Iraq War is as relevant to our current politics as the Treaty of Westphalia, it was in a macro-sense a huge part of the broad loss of trust in government and institutions (along with the ’08 crash), and specifically put a big hurt on HRC in ’08 and in ’16.

  231. 231.

    MomSense

    @Belafon:

    But there is nothing that can or will be done right now with Jared in charge of Middle East relations and all it is doing is feeding the both siderism that the media and GOP are so desperate for. This morning on MSNBC on the Ruhle show they had a panel discussing if she is the Democrats’ Steve King.

    We are not going to get fair coverage of this ever but right now is the worst time. It’s actually counter productive. And I disagree that there is never a good time. You actually have to organize and create a good time- build up some kind of base of support behind you. The run up to an election isn’t it. Even George HW made this mistake in 92 when they announced the end of loan guarantees to Israel if they continued with settlement expansion. He was right but no one had their backs.

  232. 232.

    Betty Cracker

    @Immanentize: We’re on a different river, but I know the Peace River well, and it is incredibly serene and beautiful, at least in places where the developers haven’t ruined it. Lots of nice swampy camps on the Peace! Our swamp compound is on the Withlacoochee River, which originates from headwaters in the same mid-state region as the Peace, only our river flows northwest to the Gulf while the Peace flows southwest.

  233. 233.

    tobie

    @jon: Strange times when the biggest thing for people like Merkley and Murphy to announce is that they’re staying put in the Senate.
    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: No doubt one reason Cuomo beat Nixon in NY was name recognition. One could make the same case for Feinstein’s win over De Leon in CA. And yet even in blue NY and CA the centrist won. A happier way to look at this is that even centrists were pushed further left.

  234. 234.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense: You actually have to organize and create a good time- build up some kind of base of support behind you.

    and maybe learn to talk about one of the most sensitive issues in American politics– and recent world history– with some tact.

  235. 235.

    Amir Khalid

    According to Auntie Beeb, inflight announcements on Air India must now be followed by a rousing “Jai Hind!” per a directive from HQ. Needless to say, the directive has had the heck mocked out of it on Twitter.

  236. 236.

    Immanentize

    @Betty Cracker: I love that area — I was only at the Judge’s place once, but so nice (although buggy). The Judge’s father was a watermelon grower in the Gainesville area and then his son went and piloted daytime bombing missions over Germany in WWII when J. Eaton was just 21 years old. What a world.

  237. 237.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I think Yglesias puts it well

    Matthew Yglesias @ mattyglesias
    -I think some liberals are looking at this obvious hypocrisy of the GOP on this Omar situation the wrong way around.
    Her remarks are a problem precisely because Democrats are the anti-bigotry, pro-sensitivity party.

    -Republicans tolerate anti-semites in their midst for the same reason they tolerate Islamophobes and racists and gay-bashers and everyone else.
    It’s not a particular offense to Jews, it’s just how they roll.

    -But Democrats *really do* believe in policing speech to avoid giving discomfort to vulnerable or marginalized groups and that’s an important part of their pitch to American Jews so they have to *do it in this case too* or it seems fishy.

    -All the other points people are making about this are true, however:
    Republicans are huge hypocrites, the attacks on Omar are drenched in overt anti-Muslim bigotry, and mainstream “pro-Israel” politics in the United States is in fact really bad and harmful.

  239. 239.

    MomSense

    @Immanentize:

    Wow. Those pictures are treasures even if they will ruin your political career. Damn it’s so crazy how common blackface seems to have been – still is I guess.

  240. 240.

    rikyrah

    Game Over: McConnell Concedes Pelosi Has Outmaneuvered Trump on Border Wall

    News crossed the wires last night that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has conceded the battle to stop a Congressional resolution to disapprove of – and end – Donald Trump’s fake border emergency.

    Four senate Republicans have now announced that they will vote with Democrats to block Trump’s move, and that puts the count at 51, enough to pass. As I explained on the day of Trump’s illegal emergency declaration, the Senate’s usual 60-vote threshold for ending debate on legislation doesn’t apply to Congressional review of presidential declarations under the National Emergencies Act. McConnell also does not have his usual power over the Senate calendar, since the law requires the remaining body in Congress to act within 18 days of one body passing such a resolution.

    The House passed its resolution blocking Trump’s declaration a week ago.

    Trump is expected to veto the resolution, of course, and there does not appear to be enough votes to overturn it. However, such a veto will mark the first time Trump has ever had to exercise that power, underlining the defeat of Mitch McConnell, who, until now, has always managed to scuttle legislation that Trump didn’t like, whether or not it had enough votes to pass. With this vote, for a moment at least, Congress will have stopped relinquishing its power to write and pass legislation to the president. For the first time in Trump’s time at the White House, both and his lackeys in Congress are powerless to stop something from getting to his desk.

  241. 241.

    rikyrah

    The insistence on silencing Muslim women of color while white men in Congress routinely engage in anti-Semitic & white supremacist tropes is telling. Targeting people who are critical of Israel makes a mockery out of democracy. Dems everywhere should be ashamed. #IStandWithIlhan https://t.co/sNprz9qzXk

    — Dorian Warren (@dorianwarren) March 5, 2019

  243. 243.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Immanentize: Ain’t necessarily so in Baltimore, not even in the nearer ‘burbs, which are largely 1950s-era row-house developments. My own modest interior-group rowhome ($54K in 1987) would maybe fetch $150K today – monthly payments (after refi to bring the interest rate down from the ionosphere) & taxes were less than the current cost of an efficiency apartment in an equivalent part of town.

    One of the reasons I stayed here is that real estate was half or less relative to any other decent-sized city in Boswash. (E.g., friends with a similar-size rowhouse in Forest Hills [Queens] sold it several years ago for $500K.) Also there was plenty to do here & if I wanted anything more hoity-tioity, DC is <1 hr SW & NYC <4 hr NE by bus or train.

  244. 244.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @NotMax: Some years ago I drove a friend from Baltimore out to Wriht’ss “Fallingwater.” On the way back we stopped for supper close by & ran into a guy who (claimed he’d) done repair work at the place. According to him, at one point when the water heater had gone up, it was discovered that the entryways into the room where it was housed were too narrow to admit a replacement unit [ETA – they’d installed the original & built the house around it]. Yeah, brilliant architect!, he cackled.

    You want to see a competently designed house contemporaneous home, go to Prague & tour Adolf Loos’ Villa Müller. That cat knew his shit, whereas FLW was often at a Loos.

  246. 246.

    JDM

    I’d go for a general election with, say, Warren against GOP Candidate Biden. It’d be nice to have an election with clear sides but no abyss involved.

  247. 247.

    J R in WV

    @NotMax:

    No, I looked it up, and as I suspected, cypress planks of the higher grades are very long lasting, and recommended for swampy damp areas. Like any lumber, lower grades aren’t as hard, are more penetrable and don’t last as well. American chestnut lasts really well, as does walnut.

    A very long time ago I pulled 40+ year old chestnut fence posts on an old family place, they made great firewood, were still hard, even the underground parts. Not big enough for any woodworking purposes.

  248. 248.

    NotMax

    @J R in WV

    All I can offer is the testimony of the original owner, still living in it, who took us around on a tour, including pointing out the condition of some of the cypress and how she’d had to replace nearly every one of the boards over the years, the ones closest to the ground level several times. IIRC, it was “Mr. Wright’s wishes” that the exterior siding be left untreated and unpainted.

    House also had as close to zero closet space as one can get.

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