Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Come on, man.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

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

The words do not have to be perfect.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Consistently wrong since 2002

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

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

Accountability, motherfuckers.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Florida Man! The Best Sport Utility Vehicle Salesman Currently Serving in the US Senate Edition

Florida Man! The Best Sport Utility Vehicle Salesman Currently Serving in the US Senate Edition

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Florida Man goes to Washington, DC. Continues to be dumb as a box of rocks. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Senator Florida Man!

Shot:

Chaser:

Some people are born this stupid. Others aspire to it. And yet others have it thrust upon them. Senator Rubio has done all three. If it wasn’t for Norman Braman financing Senator Rubio’s career, lil’ Marco would be doing what he’s almost qualified to do for a living: selling cars for the Braman Auto Group in Miami.

 

Reader Interactions

140Comments

  1. 1.

    RepubAnon

    I’m not sure Marco could master much beyond a “fries with that?” career. Or perhaps selling vinyl siding door-to-door.

  4. 4.

    Gravenstone

    From your opening sentence I was expecting this to be about Matt Gaetz. Florida does not lack for idiots in Congress (or the Senate).

  8. 8.

    Ruckus

    At his best Marco could possibly sell used cars. Not that he’d be best at selling used cars. He’d have to learn to lie better. And to do that he’d have to learn what the world looks and is like around him. And once again that is terribly difficult for someone like Marco to do, seeing as he has his head stuffed up his exhaust port all the way. It’s in so far it might just be permeant.

  9. 9.

    Amir Khalid

    I have a very important question* : What kind of shoes is he wearing?

    *Important in the context of Marco Rubio.

  10. 10.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Li’l Marco is one reason I no longer think Senator Ivanka is such a crazy idea. Another is Rick Scott.

  18. 18.

    john carter

    The Republican “dumbing down” of America(ns) has reached beyond their intended proletariat. But they are too stupid to realize.

  19. 19.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rikyrah: that headline alone could cost him a pardon, trump hates the idea that people are grifting on, or off of, him

  21. 21.

    Amir Khalid

    Seriously, I don’t know what news report Marco Rubio read or saw. How did Rubio misunderstand it so badly as to mistake a reporter’s byline for the site of the transformer explosion? It’s my understanding that he is a native speaker of Spanish.

  27. 27.

    JoyceH

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Li’l Marco is one reason I no longer think Senator Ivanka is such a crazy idea.

    They’re not thinking of Ivanka for anything so plebeian as the Senate. Nothing but the best for Daddy’s little darling, they actually think she’s going to be president. Because she’s sooo classy and so beloved, dontchaknow.

    And somewhat off topic, but I don’t understand why no journalist seems to have looked into something peculiar. Cohen ponies up $130,000 of his own money to pay off Stormy Daniels, and then Trump pays him back – $420,000?! WHY isn’t anyone looking into the OTHER people that Cohen paid off and was reimbursed for? There’s got to be at least one, and maybe more.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @hilts:
    Republicans can’t be very good at judging executives’ performance. A woman who had been sacked from the CEO job at a tech company for her spectacular incompetence ran for the party’s presidential nomnation, offering that job as her main qualification — and nobody in the party laughed at her.

  29. 29.

    Another Scott

    Let’s dispel this notion that Marco Rubio doesn’t know what he’s doing. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is trying to change this light bulb.

    Or something.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  30. 30.

    Mary G

    @Steve in the ATL: They want to send troops into Venezuela to “restore order” and distract from the 9,000 damaging stories about Republicans that come out every day, plus take the oil.

  31. 31.

    Another Scott

    @JoyceH: I think he was asked about that at the public hearing.

    He said he had to claim it as income on his taxes, and I think he had to take out a mortgage to get the money to pay “Daniels”, so there were fees, etc. But even then, there seems to be some excess to be accounted for…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  34. 34.

    The Dangerman

    @Steve in the ATL:

    WTF is he tweeting about Venezuelan electrical power issues anyway?

    “Bullshit Bingo” and “Baffle Them With Bullshit” had an offspring; talk about Venezuela, Socialism, AOC, etc., to distract from the fact that Trump just proposed huge cuts to Medicare/Medicaid

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @JoyceH: @Another Scott: I’ve been thinking about the pay-offs to Stormy– how would she declare that kind of pay-off on her own taxes? That would also explain the odd amount, a nice round $100K after taxes.

  37. 37.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mary G: aren’t there enough sicarios in the area to handle that?

    Too bad W used up our military in the Middle East, leaving no gas in the tank for South American adventures.

  48. 48.

    West of the Rockies

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I don’t use that nickname because Trump used it; I don’t want to provide tacit endorsement of his effort. YMMV.

    Was Marco a car salesman? I can picture that… “So, what’s it gonna take to get you to drive home this little beauty? You don’t find a lot of ’76 Gremlins with this kind of luxury everyday, ya know!”

  51. 51.

    Jay

    The Great Senator for The Orchids of Asia sees great personal opportunity in Social Media.

  52. 52.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @JoyceH:

    Because she’s sooo classy and so beloved, dontchaknow.

    Which is why she and the other spawn have no chance. Trump was elected because he’s a frothing, dimwitted, incoherent, rude, mean-as-shit white supremacist. Not that they aren’t monsters themselves, but the kids aren’t ranting monsters who scream in public about how they’re owed everything right now and how dare anyone not worship them. Trump beat that out of them so he could be the permanent center of attention. The only people who think Ivanka is presidential material are pundits.

  58. 58.

    hilts

    @Amir Khalid:

    Republicans can’t be very good at judging executives’ performance..A woman who had been sacked from the CEO job at a tech company for her spectacular incompetence ran for the party’s presidential nomnation

    I’m still at a loss to comprehend how someone as monumentally incompetent and lazy as Donald Fucking Trump was able to win the Presidency. All of his supporters deserve to rot in Hell beside him and his criminal children.

  59. 59.

    Wapiti

    @Frankensteinbeck: Yeah. And Ivanka can :only: be President, because she won’t be able to get a security clearance to do anything in the US Government, except by Presidential fiat. I likewise would not doubt that Kushner has passed secrets and this has been captured by US or allied intelligence.

  61. 61.

    GregB

    I like the idea of not projecting Trump’s petty nicknames so I prefer to leave Micro Rubio alone.

  63. 63.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    When my sister was a young girl, she (unintentionally) came up with some fine spoonerisms. My favorite, by far, is when she had just caught sight of our glamorous aunt, fresh from a color job at the local beauty parlour, and announced to all who would listen: “You know my Aunt Elinor? She dyed her head rare!!”

  64. 64.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @hilts:

    I’m still at a loss to comprehend how someone as monumentally incompetent and lazy as Donald Fucking Trump was able to win the Presidency. All of his supporters deserve to rot in Hell

    You have answered your own question. Republicans are bad people.

  65. 65.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Wapiti: Elected members of Congress, because they’re constitutional officers, automatically get clearance when they need it.

  66. 66.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    his entire political career, however, has been funded by a guy from Miami who owns a large number of car dealerships.

    And here we essentially have the problem in a nutshell: we aren’t picking our leaders on merit (of any kind, much less multiple kinds), we’re having them picked for us by a bunch of numbskulls who at best have a skewed view of how the world really works and how it should be governed, and at worst, well, think that it’s perfectly fine for people like Marco Rubio or Donald Trumpov to be in positions of power. And they’re willing to spend gobs of money to put Marco & lil’ don in those positions just so they can keep making gobzillions more money.

    Btw Twitter Dick Nixon beats on Rubio as a recurring theme and he was not kind today, which is to say he was simply on point. Almost makes one wonder if the ‘both sides’/shiny object media weren’t our media, just how quickly ol’ Marco would have been drummed off the national stage and back to hawking term life insurance on late night TV or something…

  69. 69.

    Gin & Tonic

    @West of the Rockies: Gremlins always make me thing of that classic line from the Mothers Live at the Fillmore East album: “Let’s say we hop in the trunk of your Gremlin and get our rocks off.”

  70. 70.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: No argument here. As I’ve long argued here, the real fallout from the Citizens United ruling was it didn’t open the floodgates of funding for the Republican Party. Rather it allowed the funders to basically replace the Republican Party, leaving it a hollow shell. So you have a Koch GOP, a Mercer GOP, a DeVos GOP, a Friess GOP, an Adelson GOP, and then at the state and local levels you’ve got a bunch of regional GOPs, like Braman with Rubio and Art Pope in North Carolina. Whether he recognized it or someone else like Stone did, it was this largely unrecognized and uncommented on reality that allowed the President to walk right in and take the base of the party away from the GOP because there was no actual functional party to stop him.

  71. 71.

    John Revolta

    You guys can scoff. Scoff away, say I!
    But I know something I didn’t know even two short years ago. I know- know for a fact– that there are over 60 million people in this country who would vote for Ivanka Imelda for President, no questions asked.

    Tell me I’m wrong.

  73. 73.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: ‘buying direct and cutting out the middleman’, as it were. Except in theory, previously, the limits and party apparatus meant that there had to be some modicum of adherence to the rules, to standards, to something resembling guiding principles. And now we just have the principle that if money = might, then might makes right. Double ugh.

    Also noting that a Koch/Mercer/DeVos/Adelson etc GOP is basically the same thing, after the same interests, and with the same lack of common sense/skill sets for them to deal with the real world. Or rather, lack of ability to select for quality when it comes to buying henchmen to deal with the real world.

  74. 74.

    The Lodger

    @NotMax: Xavier Onassis
    Our construction crew, Brad Nailor and Molly Boltz
    Our purchasing agent, D. Lois Price
    Our spiritual advisors, Father Neil Daily, The Rev. A. D. Seiple, and professor of church development Dr. Philip DePew.

  77. 77.

    Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    “that allowed the President to walk right in and take the base of the party away from the GOP because there was no actual functional party to stop him.”

    Had there been a sane functioning Party, I doubt they would have been able to stop him.

    ReThugs have been marching right, breeding generations in a Faux News bubble and embracing wingerism for so long, that the inmates took over the asylum. Teabaggers have been running the ReThug Party at all levels for years. As the ReThug Primaries showed, and Primaries have show since, their base and Party Orgs want The Insane Clown POSus. They arn’t interested in a Quiet Parts ReThug.

  79. 79.

    waratah

    Adam, you were not supposed to make me laugh. I sprained a muscle on my right side and back. It really hurt to laugh. That is your best ever Florida man.

  85. 85.

    joel hanes

    @Jeffro:

    lack of ability to select for quality when it comes to buying henchmen

    They seem to make up for it in quantity of hench tacitly purchased.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    Every time I think about the Trump Administration I think “and this is with a good economy!” Then I stop thinking about it, because as bad as they are now they will be 100X worse when we go into a recession.

    So- tick tock :)

    Do Democratic Presidents always get stuck with financial messes left by Republican Presidents? Yes. But it would be worse if Republicans got stuck with Republican financial messes. That would be catastrophic. At least now we have a clean up crew.

  91. 91.

    Another Scott

    Mayhew/Anderson bait: An interesting conversation with DeLong and Carville and Hunt. A sample:

    Brad DeLong: I said: pass the baton, right? I said: pass the baton.

    And yet as the thing spreads out into the Internet, it gets turned into “surrender”, “abandon my beliefs”, “bend at the knee”, all kinds of other things. [It was pass the baton.]

    You pass the baton for a lap in the race. [It is a long race.]

    What will be possible legislatively in 2021 depends on a lot of things. We cannot now forecast them. I’ve given up forecasting what the American political system will do. I gave that up in December, 2000.

    [The American political system is] simply not rational at all. It will do whatever it does, in whatever crazy way. And we don’t really know what the state of things we’ll be at the start of 2021. [We cannot yet know] what we should not do, what we should not do, [for that lap]…

    Al Hunt: Yeah, you’re right. I guess what you’re saying is that despite all the Republicans being what they are—like with Norman’s analysis of Susan Collins—I think Olympia Snowe is different by the way—That’s not going to change.

    I guess I would say that incrementalism, whether it’s the Clinton Budget Act, which as you say, played a huge role not only in ushering in the prosperity of the 1990s but also in social programs like expansion of he EITC. Or the Affordable Healthcare Act, which for all of its imperfections and it was enacted in a really sloppy way because they had to enact it in a sloppy way. They lost their supermajority. We’re a lot better off on health care in 2019 then we were in 2009. [We are] not as well off as we’d like. You can build on it.

    But the argument to kill Obamacare and come up with a whole new system—I traveled to a lot of suburban districts last fall, and I want to tell you [that] if you tell those suburban voters who voted Democratic and we’e terribly important in that new house majority, that you’re going to lose your health insurance and we are going to give you a government program instead… That is what some of our [candidates]—Bernie’s argued for that, [and] Harris walked it back but that’s what she started off. Right—they are going to suddenly not become as enthusiastic for the Democratic Party,

    Brad DeLong: But if you offer them the ability to join Medicare as an option if they prefer it to what the private insurance companies are offering, [they will be enthusiastic]. The ability to join Medicare as a backstop…

    Al Hunt: The public option [as] a Medicare Supplemental or Medicare Advantage…

    Brad DeLong: Let’s drag on the Obama administration.

    When it became clear there weren’t 60 votes for the public option in ObamaCare, then the right thing to do was [not to drop the pubic option and proceed].

    [The right thing to do was] to back up, pass Medicare-for-all through Reconciliation, and then say to the Republicans: now that [our Reconciliation Bill means we give] people a choice between their current insurance and Medicare, are you sure you wouldn’t rather vote for this exchange system that is [called] RomneyCare? We were pushing [it] because we thought it would get a bunch of Republican votes, [and it was better to do this on a bipartisan basis].

    With respect to getting the recovery [going], was it not incredibly “premature” in December and January of 2010 for Obama to say [that the government has] spent too much money on recovery and now we need a big spending freeze?

    Was it not a mistake [not] to say: if you won’t come on board with cap and trade, we’ll pass a carbon tax through Reconciliation and then bargain back to a better regulatory system?

    Lots of interesting things to think about.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    jimmiraybob

    Attorney General: “So wait a minute. What you’re saying is that you want us to put water on the crops.”
    Joe: “Yes.”
    Joe: “For the last time, I’m pretty sure what’s killing the crops is this Brawndo stuff.”
    Secretary of State: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes.”
    Attorney General: “Water. Like out the toilet?”
    Joe: “Well, I mean, it doesn’t have to be out of the toilet, but, yeah, that’s the idea.”
    Secretary of State: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.”
    Attorney General: “It’s got electrolytes.”

    I rest my case.

  94. 94.

    VOR

    @Amir Khalid:

    A woman who had been sacked from the CEO job at a tech company for her spectacular incompetence ran for the party’s presidential nomnation, offering that job as her main qualification — and nobody in the party laughed at her.

    Well, their Presidental Candidate was a guy with a string of failed businesses, at least 4 bankruptcies, responsible for taking down a major sports league, famous for cheating on all 3 of his wives, a self-admitted sexual abuser, and now barred from serving on a charity’s board.

    I remember the press used to say Fiorina’s real base of support was in Silicon Valley and I just laughed. Everyone in the computer industry knew people at HP and had heard stories.

  95. 95.

    Salty Sam

    @Amir Khalid:

    There’s actually a guy by that name.

    There is doctor in Austin Tx named Richard T. (Dick) Chopp. He is a Urologist, for reals…

  96. 96.

    dexwood

    @John Revolta:
    Won’t bet against you. Stopped behind a Subaru at a stoplight a few weeks go that was covered in pro life and pro gun bumper stickers, but the freshest, cleanest sticker, right in the middle, said Ivanka for President 2020. Made me wish I was driving a tank.

  98. 98.

    debbie

    @rikyrah:

    Along with Michael Cohen, I believe. Which would piss Trump off more? Stealing from him or lying about him?

    Christ, he is getting exactly what he deserves!

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    They’ll go completely unhinged, though. They freak out if gas prices rise 20 cents. Trump, specifically, freaks out.

    Without a good economy Donald Trump is just a loud, dumb racist. It’s MUCH more essential to him than other Presidents- Obama won re-election with a slow-recovering economy.

    It would be devastating to them and if he stays in office is is near-inevitable. What goes up must come down, and here lately it comes down HARD. I don’t know what they’ll do. This is what they’re like in GOOD times.

  107. 107.

    randy khan

    @JoyceH:

    So the Cohen payment stuff is fascinating. The explanation for a big chunk of it is that they grossed it up to cover the income taxes associated with the payments. That wouldn’t have been necessary if they treated it as an expense reimbursement, but they treated it as legal fees, basically as a way of hiding what he’d been doing. So they paid him more than double what he paid, which was necessary to make him whole if he paid the taxes. (The math is a little funky, but someone in the top bracket living in New York would need to be paid more than double to make up for the taxes.) In any event, it was part of the effort to cover it up.

    Another chunk, although not as large as you might guess, was treated as a bonus. It’s kind of strange to get a bonus for legal work done, but I guess Cohen went above and beyond.

  109. 109.

    randy khan

    @Another Scott: The key point is that there would have been no need to pay anything extra at all except that they wanted to conceal the purpose of the payment. That’s the smoking gun, so to speak.

  111. 111.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott: [The right thing to do was] to back up, pass Medicare-for-all through Reconciliation, and then say to the Republicans: now that [our Reconciliation Bill means we give] people a choice between their current insurance and Medicare, are you sure you wouldn’t rather vote for this exchange system that is [called] RomneyCare? We were pushing [it] because we thought it would get a bunch of Republican votes, [and it was better to do this on a bipartisan basis].

    If DeLong thinks there were fifty votes for “Medicare for All” in that Senate, he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. Mary Landrieu, Mark Pryor, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman, Tim Johnson, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Jim Webb, Claire McCaskill, Evan Bayh. You would have had to have all of them go along with this hardball play. Max Baucus, who dragged out the ACA for a year because he didn’t want to damage his relationship with Chuck Grassley? Byron Dorgan? Kent Conrad? Mark Begich? I honestly don’t have a sense of them. And once opposition became “bipartisan”, I wouldn’t have counted on the likes of Feinstein and Bob Casey. Maybe Carl Levin and Robert Byrd?

    Was it not a mistake [not] to say: if you won’t come on board with cap and trade, we’ll pass a carbon tax through Reconciliation and then bargain back to a better regulatory system?

    See above.

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    I really liked the original essay. I love the idea of “passing the baton”. Rather than grimly gripping the baton and refusing to give it to the next runner, which I think we see way too much of :)

    It’s a really generous and humble way of looking at power. They were in power a LONG time, that branch of the Democratic Party. They can step back for a bit and let someone else lead. It doesn’t mean they have to be abolished or silenced or anything dramatic like that- they can just not insist on being the exclusive, expert Holders of All The Answers.

  114. 114.

    different-church-lady

    Some people are born this stupid. Others aspire to it. And yet others have it thrust upon them.

    In Rubio’s case, it’s more like stupid has been thrust upon us.

  117. 117.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    It’s probably an impossible request and it will never happen, but what about just not defining “direction” for a while and see which group ends up as the predominant voice? Maybe he doesn’t have to “pass the baton” at all. Because it can be hard to figure out which voices are authentic when everyone is loudly insisting they KNOW which is the “real” voice.

    What if we just had a primary and said “oh, look at who won! That must be the majority!” THEN we can decide what to call it.

  118. 118.

    trnc

    @JoyceH:

    there seems to be some excess to be accounted for…

    SOME excess? Um, yeah.

    The additional money covers the expense of money laundering. No, I’m not kidding.

  122. 122.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: you’re nicer than I am. I see an old Clintonite having a midlife crisis and adopting Green Lanternism instead of a red convertible. I know Carville and Rendell could never forgive Obama for taking a third term away from Bubba, maybe DeLong’s in that club.

  123. 123.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Debbie(Aussie): It is maybe a crime. Part of the problem is we have no idea what his father in law has authorized him to do. If the President is giving him access to material he wouldn’t otherwise need to know and have access to and the President has told him he can share if he feels the need to do so, then it wouldn’t be a crime because the President has the authority to declassify and disclose whatever he wants to whomever he wants. And to authorize others to do so.

    In terms of who may be trying to get to the bottom of this, the answer is both the House Oversight Committee and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the counterintelligence task force that the Special Counsel inherited when he was appointed. We know that the Special Counsel has expanded his investigation to look into what the Saudis, the Israelis, the Emiratis, and the Chinese were doing to influence the President, his campaign, and people in his orbit.

  125. 125.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: and that’s just the Senate. Per Wiki, there were 54 members of the Blue Dog Caucus in the House he thinks would’ve passed Medicare for All and a carbon tax if Obama told them to, a whole bunch of them from coal state. Nancy Pelosi had a 37 vote margin.

    In the summer of 2009, The Economist newspaper said “[t]he debate over health care… may be the pinnacle of the group’s power so far” and quoted Charlie Stenholm, a founding Blue Dog, as saying that “this is the first year for the new kennel in which their votes are really going to make a difference”.[21]
    The Blue Dog Coalition suffered serious losses in the 2010 midterm elections, losing over half of its seats to Republican challengers. Its members, who were roughly one quarter of the Democratic Party’s caucus in the 111th Congress, accounted for half of the party’s midterm election losses.[22] Including retirements, Blue Dog numbers in the House were reduced from 54 members in 2009 to 26 members in 2011 and two of the Coalition’s four leaders (Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Baron Hill) failed to secure re-election.[23][24]

  126. 126.

    StringOnAStick

    OT but I got a knee replacement today, in at 6 am and on our way home by 1:30, still feeling reasonable even with the nerve block gone. They’ve got this stuff down now for sure.

  131. 131.

    Duane

    @Kay: WhenTrumpov ruins the good economy Obama left him, we should hope Democrats are in charge. The Republicans aren’t much help in a recession. Great at getting in one though.

  132. 132.

    Jay

    “Unpublished footage obtained by The New York Times and previously released tapes — including footage released by the Colombian government, which has blamed Mr. Maduro for the fire — allowed for a reconstruction of the incident. It suggests that a Molotov cocktail thrown by an antigovernment protester was the most likely trigger for the blaze. At one point, a homemade bomb made from a bottle is hurled toward the police, who were blocking a bridge connecting Colombia and Venezuela to prevent the aid trucks from getting through. But the rag used to light the Molotov cocktail separates from the bottle, flying toward the aid truck instead. Half a minute later, that truck is in flames. The same protester can be seen 20 minutes earlier, in a different video, hitting another truck with a Molotov cocktail, without setting it on fire.”

    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/03/10/us-blamed-venezuelan-president-burning-aid-trucks-wrong

  133. 133.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Whether he’s engaging in revisionism isn’t what I took as the most important part of what he was saying.

    The point I took from it was: It’s been clear a long time that Republicans will fight everything that Democrats want to do. The way forward isn’t to try to water things down to try to get a few of them to support it, but to ram as much stuff that you campaigned on through that a Democratic majority will support (and that will mean that people like Manchin will have too much influence if we don’t have a large enough majority). It will be messy, and Reconciliation has downsides (like bills only having a 10 year life), but it will finally let Democrats bargain and work from a position of strength.

    “Make the Republican’s very anxious to bargain—as opposed to very anxious to block.” – as he said earlier in the interview.

    Yes, a lot of the ACA negotiations was within the Democratic caucus. But that was because they were desperate to get 60 votes so that they wouldn’t have to use Reconciliation. A lot more becomes possible when you only need 50+1 votes (and you have a lot more than 50+delta in your caucus).

    It’ll be interesting to see how quickly things can change if we just flip a few seats in the Senate…

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  134. 134.

    Jay

    @Duane:

    The problem is that the Democrats get little credit from the MSM or the Public for fixing the mess,

    And the ReThugs get little blame from the MSM or the public for fucking things up.

    Sometimes I think that the “Clean up Party”, ( every country has one), after a big enough mess, should run a minority campaign with the meme, “They’ve fucked things up so bad that we arn’t gonna even try to fix it. All we want is enough seats to be the opposition and highlight more of their fucking up”.

  135. 135.

    Duane

    @Jay: Obama doesn’t get near the credit, thanks even, for doing what he did to fix the economy.
    I’d appreciate it if next time Republicans wouldn’t actively sabotage economic recovery.

  137. 137.

    Mustang Bobby

    Braman’s dealership is four blocks north of my current office, which means if he wasn’t in the Senate I’d see the little twerp standing in line at the Publix deli ordering his pastrami on white bread and complaining that the Starbucks doesn’t know how to make a real cafecito.

  140. 140.

    jonas

    @john carter: Being intelligent, thoughtful and circumspect are elitist liberal values. Real ‘Muricans are evidently dumb as rocks and twice as dense.

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