Stacey Abrams builds massive political network ahead of 2020 decision @MaggieSeverns & @JamesArkin https://t.co/7zNkHgQLtY
— John Bresnahan (@BresPolitico) March 30, 2019
… Abrams has traversed the country meeting with top Democrats since her narrow loss in the Georgia governor’s race. She’s met with every leading candidate for president, and become a regular draw on the big-ticket fundraising circuit, donors and fundraisers told POLITICO. Abrams headlined major donor events for the Democratic National Committee, the progressive donor collaborative Way to Win and former Sen. Barbara Boxer in recent months, and has discussed her political future with top Democratic donors.
At the reception for Abrams hosted by Boxer, held at a five-star Beverly Hills hotel in late February, local Democratic leaders and entertainment industry donors heard her talk about her work against voter suppression and about her brother’s struggle with addiction. After the event, she was mobbed by attendees.
“We must have had several hundred people there but everyone felt she was speaking to them,” Boxer told POLITICO. “I think every single person in that room will help Stacey with whatever it is she wants to do.” …
In contrast to Beto O’Rourke, who wrote Medium posts and took a road trip after his loss, Abrams has been keenly focused on the nuts and bolts of building her political base. She’s attended dozens of events across the country, according to descriptions of her itinerary from sources close to Abrams and others who’ve spoken with her. She also drew high marks for her performance delivering Democrats’ response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech in February…
Throughout her national travels, Abrams has attempted to draw attention to her mission on voting rights and her gubernatorial race. “Wherever she goes, she shares the stories of those who faced these suppressive tactics with new audiences,” said Caitlin Highland, an Abrams spokeswoman…
More from @staceyabrams on @TheView: "I'm not a socialist. And I like capitalism. I think markets need to be regulated…avarice tends to win….I grew up poor, and I don't ever want to do that again."
— Tom Watson (@tomwatson) March 27, 2019
And I, for one, am looking forward to seeing where she decides to go next. Great NYMag cover story by Rebecca Traister:
… She is a serious introvert, yet her work requires glad-handing extroversion; she is excruciatingly aware of the electoral challenges that face her as a black woman who grew up what she calls “genteel poor” in rural Mississippi, yet she pushes forward politically with the drive and confidence of a white man; she devours romance novels and soap operas, yet she is also a science-fiction, math, and tax-law geek; she can come off as one of the most relatable politicians out there, yet she is a total egghead who drops million-dollar vocabulary words, once sending me to the dictionary to confirm what panegyric means (I mostly got it through context!). And she is a woman who, having just run in a historic election that many of her fellow Democrats expected her to lose, is now being counted on to win, and perhaps save her party, by prevailing in an equally difficult Senate contest, or maybe the race for the presidency. The deepest irony, of course, is that what Abrams wants to do is fundamentally rebuild the electoral system that failed her, just as the system itself wants to pull her in…
Nonnormative as she may be, Abrams is an almost old-fashioned Democrat, with her ideological (and personal) roots in the civil-rights, labor, and women’s movements. Her parents, a librarian and a dockworker, both of whom would later get divinity degrees and become pastors, were civil-rights activists from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. As an undergraduate, she was trained as an organizer at the A. Philip Randolph Institute of the AFL-CIO; she gave her State of the Union rebuttal in an Atlanta union hall.
A graduate of Spelman College, with a master’s in public policy from the University of Texas and a law degree from Yale, Abrams worked as a tax attorney and deputy city attorney for Atlanta before being elected, in 2006, to the Georgia statehouse. She assumed the minority leadership position — becoming the first black woman to lead either party there — in 2011. In the midst of her legal and political career, Abrams has published romance novels (under the name Selena Montgomery) and founded several businesses, including one that made formula-ready bottles for babies and another that helps small companies get paid more quickly by buying their invoices.
Where Abrams is the most passionate is in her willingness to rumble over remaking electoral systems that are rigged to deny the country’s most vulnerable their only real route to civic power. It may not be as sexy as free college, but it’s definitely radical — and as Abrams likes to point out, without full enfranchisement, we’ll never get elected officials who’ll back policies that materially improve the lives of people who aren’t well off and/or white…
After a high-school friend gave her a novel by the black feminist writer Octavia E. Butler, Abrams developed a passion for science fiction. She’s a Trekkie who will authoritatively rank series — “The Next Generation and Voyager are about even; I think Voyager is mildly superior, although Picard is the quintessential captain. Then I would do Discovery, Deep Space Nine, and Enterprise. I don’t understand why Enterprise was a show.” These days, she’s into Doctor Who, having grown up on the Tom Baker version. “Right before this campaign started, I was sick and ended up watching the Doctor,” she says. “Then, over New Year’s, there was a marathon. Now I’m watching all the new ones. I’ve seen seasons three, four, five, six, and I’m in the second half of seven.” Abrams watched three episodes of Doctor Who to chill out the afternoon before she gave her State of the Union response…
As an adult, Abrams made a conscious decision not to hide her braininess, unlike so many extremely smart women who’ve been told that their intellectual prowess is off-putting and unattractive. She knows the perceived costs of this. In her book, she writes about how “older women of every racial category” blame the fact that she is single on her achievements, while men cite her “tendency toward strong opinions” as a romantic turnoff. (In our first conversation, back in 2015, she told me, “I like to be successful at things, and I was not good at dating and so I just stopped,” one of the most deeply human observations I’ve ever heard come out of the mouth of a politician. Four years later, she says she is very open to the possibility of a relationship.)But I think she’s also counting on something else: Maybe her confessions about her cerebral predilections and the attendant social unease that besets so many smart little girls will resonate with a whole lot of smart grown-up girls…
As part of her decades-long project to assume high office, Abrams carefully studied the history of the Democratic Party in the South, and became convinced that Democrats have spent too much time focusing on middle-of-the-road or right-leaning voters at the expense of others. “When you go after someone who has a deep ideological belief set that is contradictory with your own, it’s conversion,” Abrams tells me while sitting in the book-lined living room of her townhouse in Atlanta’s Kirkwood neighborhood. “Conversion is hard. Conversion is miraculous. We have entire religions built around the idea of conversion. Politics is not a religion. Politics is about persuasion.”
Abrams believes that persuasion works best on those predisposed to share Democratic values, which doesn’t mean it’s easy. “Your untapped population is people of color,” Abrams told me in September 2016, eight months before announcing her candidacy for governor. Never having been asked to register, they don’t think they should, she says. “You have to go knock on their doors. Go to rural communities, to depressed communities, to communities where there is absolutely no trust in politics or in politicians. That is an expensive endeavor.”…
These days, you can hear Abrams trying to talk herself into running for the Senate: “There are infrastructure issues across the South, the Southwest, and the Midwest. Depopulation of rural communities … The notion that you solve for the effects of depopulation by just encouraging everyone to move does not work. And that’s not just a Georgia issue. This is a North Carolina issue, a Montana issue. It’s going to be an Ohio issue. Lack of access to the internet — this should be treated the same way we treated rural electrification in the 1920s.”
“More than anything,” she says, “there are the courts.” She knows the composition of the Supreme Court is key to protecting voting rights, collective bargaining, reproductive and environmental rights — everything that matters to her constituency. One more blue senator could make all the difference…
Stacey Abrams on "Identity Politics" is so, so good. She is so brilliant and has an ability to explain concepts to folks in a way I hope they can understand. Please take 30 seconds here and know this. It will help you in the primary as we weed though folks who do not understand. https://t.co/ppovkBo4q7
— ?️?Lisa Talmadge ??️? (@LisaTalmadge) March 29, 2019
schrodingers_cat
I love Stacey. She is awesome.
Van Buren
Along with “Younger than 60” I would like to add “grew up poor” to my list of ideal qualifications for our nominee.
JPL
When she ran for governor, she help to flip house seats and state government seats. I want her to run for Senate because she can get out the vote and possible turn GA blue.
JPL
@Van Buren: She was not poverty stricken. In fact the other Stacey lived in poverty moving several times to different trailers housing to avoid eviction.
schrodingers_cat
@Van Buren:So no FDR then, or Kennedy.
rikyrah
I love Ms. Abrams.
Period.
Mary G
Superstar! She would be wasted as a vice president. I will support her whatever she decides to do. And Rebecca Traister is such a compelling writer.
SiubhanDuinne
I will joyously volunteer for her, whatever office she seeks or movement she leads. She is beyond impressive.
Also, this caught my eye:
I’ve known for a while that she wrote romance novels, but her pen name didn’t really grab my attention until now. Doesn’t Selena Montgomery look an awful lot like Selma-Montgomery? That had to have been a deliberate shoutout to the Civil Rights movement.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I didn’t notice the pen name and I think you’re correct. She used the proceeds to help pay her tuition at Yale.
Betty Cracker
That was the best definition of “identity politics” I’ve ever heard.
West of the Rockies
She has some excellent qualities. This sounds a bit like the Mayor Pete rollout though that JC presented here, which means in about a week someone, somewhere will start looking for flaws.
I think we could do far worse; she could be a superstar. For now, I prefer Harris and her broader experience.
bemused senior
Speaking of looking for flaws, I hope M^4 has a look at this tweet.
nativeprof
The Republicans clearly want to face Sanders, and the polls are not looking good for anyone except Biden, who seems unlikely to recover from last week’s news. Abrams seems like our best shot. She is a great communicator (like Beto), has great ideas (like Warren), can build an inclusive infrastructure (like Harris), has an inspiring story (more than anyone in the field), but without their weaknesses. I love Mayor Pete and really didn’t like that hit piece a couple days ago, but I love Abrams even more. It seems like Abrams, Warren, and Buttigieg are the decisive top tier, with Sanders most likely to get the nomination and doom us.
Also I know it’s stupid to consider, but her romance novels and passion for Star Trek make me love her even more. Her speech on the Mall back when she was in college is spellbinding.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
I’ve just ordered her (non-romance AFAIK) book Leading from Outside. She describes it in the Preface as “part memoir, part advice, and part alchemy.”
JPL
@bemused senior: Thanks
West of the Rockies
@nativeprof:
I didn’t like the Mayor Pete hit piece either. “Oh, here’s someone who checks a lot if boxes and inspires people. Let’s knock him down!”
Betty Cracker
@nativeprof: I think Abrams is unlikely to run. My best guess is Harris will be the nominee. But I also very confidently predicted that Hillary Clinton would trounce Donald Trump in a landslide, so…
burnspbesq
I hope she decides to go for the Senate. An actual tax geek on the Finance Committee could do an incalculable amount of good.
SiubhanDuinne
@burnspbesq:
That’s my hope as well.
JPL
@West of the Rockies: It’s time to drop the opposition research on bernie. His staff is saving the republicans a ton of money.
West of the Rockies
@burnspbesq:
She could follow PBO: a term in the Senate and then the big show.
Brachiator
@nativeprof:
I don’t know. Anyone who would rank Discovery along side Deep Space Nine is obviously suspect. :)
More seriously, Abrams definitely is a solid, interesting individual. I hope she continues to rise and do well.
SiubhanDuinne
@West of the Rockies:
Exactly. And in 2028 she’d be a youthful 55, with a decade of Senate experience.
West of the Rockies
@JPL:
I hope that fool goes down fast this time.
Karen
@nativeprof: No. Sanders will lose the primary, switch back to being Independent, then be the spoiler. He took Russian and maybe Republican money, why wouldn’t he this time? Why is he allowed to switch back and forth?
Joe Falco
I was happy to vote for her this past November, and I hope she decides to run for the Senate. I believe she’ll do a world of good for down-ticket races whether she runs for Senate or POTUS (and is the nominee of course), but, personally, she’d be a huge improvement to the Senate. Whether it’s on the issue of electoral reform, taxes, healthcare, etc., she’ll be miles above Perdue.
rikyrah
@Karen:
Running as an Independent takes money and discipline, because you have to get on the ballot in all 50 states.
sdhays
@Joe Falco: Let’s not sell her short. A moldy turnip would be miles above Perdue.
Brachiator
@Van Buren:
That’s not a qualification. That’s a largely irrelevant biographical detail.
West of the Rockies
@Karen:
Well, that little birdie was clearly A SIGN!
Oh, pointy bird, oh, pointy, pointy
Anoint Sanders’ head, anointy-nointy
Hildebrand
I think Wilmer has already maxed out his potential voting block. I just don’t see him picking up additional interested folks, especially with so many excellent choices in the field.
I think he benefited (far more than the berners want to admit) from being the ‘not-Hillary’ candidate, and this time he has no place to grow his now stale candidacy. He really doesn’t have much to offer that other candidates don’t do better.
Emma
@Betty Cracker: Your prediction was correct with the information you had. The whole Russia-vote suppression-dirty tricks thing was not common knowledge then. Plus, who could have predicted white Americans would go apeshit for a cheap carnival barker?
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
I’d reverse it and say “Grew up not wealthy.”
Don’t have to be dirt poor but not dirt rich either. Yes that leaves out someone like JFK, but think of all the great presidents to come from wealthy families. JFK, FDR….. I’m out after that. How many of the rest are from average monetary families? Lincoln…..
cmorenc
@Emma:
The Russian dirty tricks wouldn’t have been quite enough to put Trump over the top without the extraordinarily timely assist by Jim Comey. And even had Clinton won, along about now we’d be getting the Barr special counsel report on Hillary’s emails – the FULL 800+ page report, with an explicit public recommendation that she be indicted the moment she is no longer POTUS. Because after all, Barr is a man of integrity and consistency to principles requires that he stick to his thesis that a President cannot be indicted while in office – however, while noting in his report that*nudge* *nudge* *wink* *wink* it’s up to the Justice Department whether that should continue to be their policy, and BTW a US Senate acting responsibly might be able to do something to accelerate that “still in office” impediment irrespective of the Justice Department position *cough* *cough*
Gin & Tonic
@Karen: I’m too
busylazy to look it up and see how many, but I know at least some states have some kind of “sore-loser” law where if you run in and lose a primary you then can’t get on the ballot as an independent or third-party candidate for the same office.Leto
@Brachiator:
I would quibble with her on this too. Voyager was good (better than most people’s sentiment) but it’s nowhere near as good as DS9. DS9 had multiple strong women, POC, excellent story telling, and some of the best character development seen in the ST universe. While Picard was the better diplomat, Sisko was the better military leader.
I prefer my captains unassimilated… /s
Kelly
Somewhat off topic
The Oregon legislature has a bill in process to tighten up the vaccine exemption law. Oregon has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the nation. The anti-vaxers are well organized, passionate and vocal. The Oregon Republicans have decided to make vaccination a freedumb issue. Knute Buehler the most recent R candidate for Guv an orthopedic surgeon was vocal about vaccination freedumb. I sent the following note to my Republican wing nut legislators. I don’t know if it’ll do any good but I gotta work with legislators I’ve got not the ones I want. R70%/D30% district. I’m asking any Oregon jackals to contact their legislators.
*
I support the bill to limit vaccination exemptions. Vaccinations are second only to sewage treatment in improving the health of billions of people over the last few hundred years. Vaccine avoidance makes no more sense than running sewage down the middle of the street. The very small population that truly needs to be exempt due to genuine medical conditions, children too young to have had their vaccinations and people with very weak immune systems such as cancer patients are in danger from superstitious vaccine avoiders.
Please vote in favor of House Bill 3063.
*
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Hildebrand: I read that Wilmer believes he can get the most votes (a plurality) in early primaries because there’s a big field and he has name recognition. Then he hope to parley that into momentum to win.
That scared me. Is it plausible?
Roger Moore
@Hildebrand:
I think Bernie’s “economics first” message is going to have a lot less resonance this time around. White liberals have been shifting rapidly to the left on matters of race, to the point that they’re more likely to blame discrimination for blacks’ lack of success than blacks are. That seems like exactly the wrong environment for Bernie.
joel hanes
Remember when the received wisdom was that Democrats had a shallow bench ?
cmorenc
If Abrams becomes the democratic POTUS nominee, we’re going to quickly find out how many ways the GOP can shout “WHAT? ANOTHER UPPITY N-CLANG IN THE WHITE HOUSE SCHEMING TO STEAL ALL YOUR HARD-EARNED SHIT?”, but in code words, albeit code as subtle as a steam shovel. It’ll be like Obama’s “birth certificate” only different.
JPL
@Roger Moore: CA is an early state and hopefully his momentum will halt there.
joel_hanes
@rikyrah:
you have to get on the ballot in all 50 states.
IIRC, at least one state is passing a law that Presidential candidates must disclose their taxes.
Wilmer seems strangely reluctant to do so.
cmorenc
@joel hanes:
Hey, I still remember when the received wisdom in spring 2016 was that the GOP had such a deep bench running for POTUS.
Leto
I just finished Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America. This book took a deep dive on how Republicans adopted a minority-majority rule (ideological principles). It’s a good companion piece to Jane Mayer’s “Dark Money”. Basically, I feel, we’re still in for a decades long fight which won’t be helped by Trumpov’s/McConnels Federalist Society court packing. Still, we gotta fight. Fuck’em.
Joe Falco
@cmorenc:
The Georgia Republicans already started on that as part of the governor’s race with anything having to do with her owing the IRS back taxes. She’s not delinquent (and there’s more to the story than that), but that didn’t stop the GOP with calling her a deadbeat among other things.
Chyron HR
@rikyrah:
You don’t have to be on the ballot to tell your supporters that mankind must be punished for denying your divinity.
Betty Cracker
@Emma:
In hindsight, I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming, or at least have the sense to worry that it would be a very close race. That’s the great thing about hindsight, I guess. Le sigh.
Kinda O/T but related: Yesterday evening, a bunch of my relatives (including several Trumpsters) were texting back and forth on a family group chat about an upcoming event. My daughter was fishing while I was texting, and she caught a gigantic fish, so I took a picture of her holding it up before she let it go (it was a mud fish — not good for eating!) and texted that to the group, just to share this astonishing thing that happened.
Two Trumpster uncles replied with snide comments about Democrats, and I was thinking what the actual fuck is up with those assholes, who usually don’t dare bring politics up with me because they’ll get an earful. It took me like an hour of fuming and considering angry replies before I realized my daughter was wearing a faded, 11-year-old Obama t-shirt in the photo, and that’s what set them off. Jackasses!
Amir Khalid
@cmorenc:
The GFLP* had a crowded bench in 2016. Quite different from a deep bench, as we all found out.
*Gesichterfressendeleopardenpartei. I’m trying to make it a thing.
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That is a plausible scenario if the primaries were held today. But by next March, the false bump that Sanders and Biden are getting from name recognition alone will be long gone.
Doug R
@Brachiator: I liked Voyager’s premise of being stuck so far from home, it was very much the “where no one has gone before. I found DS9 to be claustrophobic, with the occasional entertaining Ferrengi episode drawing out the contrast even more. The show lost me before the season on the ship.
I thought Enterprise was great in being in the spirit of exploration of the original show, the episodes with the Andorrians were particularly entertaining. That time travel storyline really bogged the story down however.
Discovery got off to a shaky start, but the second season has really kicked it up a notch, a beautiful touch was the episode a couple of weeks ago with a “previously on STAR TREK” with footage from The Cage and a cut from Jeffrey Hunter to Anson Mount.
stinger
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, it does — I’ll bet you are right about that.
Not a big reader of romance novels, but I’ve got one or two by BJ authors, and I will look for a Selena Montgomery now!
Mandalay
Something I find really disappointing about all the Democratic candidates except Elizabeth Warren (who has released eight years of returns up to 2017) is their vagueness and evasiveness about showing us their tax returns.
All them have known for years about Trump and Sanders refusing to provide their returns. And they have all known for months – if not years – that they plan to run in 2020, yet they are unwilling/unable to show us their tax returns up front?
I’m not expecting to see their 2018 return yet. But it should be a trivial matter for all of them to show us seven years of tax returns up to 2017. Shame on all of them (except Elizabeth Warren).
tobie
Totally out-there–have Yarrow and Corner Stone disappeared from BJ?
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Former Soviet stooge Sanders, and current Russian stooge, Sanders might hang in there and win some elections. Then we would have our second Russian Stooge President. No big deal!! /s
ETA comma
zhena gogolia
@tobie:
Yarrow told Adam he’s dealing with family stuff. I’ve asked about Corner Stone but gotten no answer.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mandalay: I
From The Hill, today:
I don’t fault any of them for not having released their returns yet. By the time of the first debates (June?) I hope they all will have done so.
Brachiator
@Leto:
Ha! Very good!
Also, Sisko rolled with the Prophets.
JCJ
@Leto:
Locutus 2020!
Barbara
@SiubhanDuinne: I was going to say that they might be waiting for tax day to get some symbolic effect.
trollhattan
@burnspbesq: @SiubhanDuinne:
Agreed. I’d prefer more depth of office experience (a wish I extend to some declared candidates) and more base-building before a run, but think she has a bright future and we can certainly use her leadership. She’s very relatable in the overused “candidate I’d most like to have a beer with” sense.
Now who does that remind me of…?
tobie
@zhena gogolia: thanks. I’ve been missing yarrow’s tick-tocks, even if the phrase no longer meets the moment exactly.
Wapiti
@Kelly: Good letter. I like your tie between vaccinations and safe handling of raw sewage as the two things that extend our lives the most.
Ruckus
@joel_hanes:
Doesn’t seem strange to me at all. He really doesn’t want people to know that his talk is all that, just talk. He walks a far different walk than he talks. I really don’t think he wanted to win as bad as Trump wanted to win. I don’t think that was why he ran at first last time. But his ego is far, far bigger than his record as a politician and keeps getting in his way.
Leto
@Brachiator: That was another really good storyline: how do you deal with your professional and religious obligations? How do you balance the Prime Directive and being the “chosen one”?
@JCJ: At least he’s upfront about who he works for :)
Mandalay
@SiubhanDuinne: Thanks for the correction/update, and kudos to Gillibrand and Inslee.
Well the first debate would be the drop dead date for me. But in the meantime candidates who don’t release their own returns are impotent to go after anyone else for failing to release their tax returns, including Trump. Having all the Democratic candidates release their returns in the next few days would be inspiring (and put Sanders in a tricky position since I’m assuming he will keep stalling).
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
A mile wide and a
millimetermicron deep.Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
Too thin to plow, too thick to drink?
Ruckus
@SiubhanDuinne:
She is my favorite as of now. In order
1. Abrams
2. Harris
3. Warren
4. Mayor Pete
Any of them could be VP for the winner and I’d be fine with that.
Yes Abrams doesn’t have federal office experience but that doesn’t worry me, president is one of those jobs that there really isn’t any reliable predicate prior position for. Not only have there been a limited number of job holders, each person has a lot of leeway on how they do the job effectively (and of course some have had not one even remote concept of effective. Or job.) and the job has changed a lot over the time that it’s existed, even during the 30% of the countries existence that I’ve been alive. I’ve hired, employed, and yes fired a number of people over the last 40 yrs, I’ve seen people with no to very limited experience do extremely well and people with supposedly a lot of experience do shit. The biggest predicate of a good employee is both a willingness and ability to learn, and to dive into the deep end and give it everything. I see this in Stacy Abrams. I see history and thought in Harris and Warren. I see a bit more in Abrams.
Kelly
@Wapiti: Thanks, this is yet another fight I’m astonished we’re having.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
One could have plowed that bench for decades and nothing positive would have grown from it.
Brachiator
@Doug R: @Doug R:
I hated the premise. It was little more than Gilligan’s Island in Space. You knew that every episode had to end in failure. And I didn’t like the idea that the crew was disconnected from their universe. No one could get promoted, move on, or leave the ship in any meaningful way. But I liked most of the cast, except for Kes and Neelix, and they found a way to make the premise work. And while they may have brought on Seven of Nine to be eye candy, the character became much more than that, and added to a show with a good ensemble of intelligent, interesting women as primary characters.
That’s too bad. Pound for pound, DS9 was the best Trek series. It had a strong cast and often great acting. More than any other Trek series, DS9 gave you characters with complex motivations, not simplistic heroes and villains. And I loved how, for example, the Jem’Hadar could kick almost everyone’s ass, but were themselves the vassals of the Dominion.
I found Enterprise to be dull and dropped it after the first season. People say it got better, but by then I didn’t dare. None of the characters were particularly engaging, and there were a number of times when I thought “wow, if they take this episode in a certain direction, this could be really cool,” only to see the writers choose the idiot option every time. I detest the idea of unisex Vulcans in which males and females are almost interchangeable.
I try to like Discovery, but everything they do to try to shoehorn this series into the original Trek has been unconvincing and awkward. I hate shows that use nostalgia and fan service as crutches, so I roll my eyes when Discovery reworks past Trek episodes.
I really like Captain Pike and the actor Anson Mount (who I hear is not returning to the show). But here Discovery ran head on into “The West Wing” problem. Originally, that show was going to be about Rob Lowe and the staff, which was kind of a stunt. But the second they cast Martin Sheen as the president, the show had to be about him. Once you added Spock, Number One and Pike to the show, Discovery should have been about them. Or the adventures of Captain Saru.
More on Trek than politics, but it’s early and too much political news is unpleasant (Ferris Mueller’s Day Off Report)
Ruckus
@Kelly:
I’m not. Republicans are desperate. They have no real leaders. They have place holders and demigods, but their “leaders” are in the background, pulling strings, demanding and paying for people to shit on each other so that they can get power and money without attention. They reverse anything that liberals desire in the hope that enough people will follow them. And so far it’s working. But the world is changing, as it always does and it’s becoming far more open and far less pale and far less male. That is the conservative’s worst trifecta. They are losing because they went all in and have not just been trying to slow any progress, but to regress to a very basic, very limited government. But a growing population requires a better and a growing government. Because an unregulated growing population means more pollution, more disease, more poverty, more strife and therefore more dying. Conservatives want to conserve what they consider a better way of life but that is very much at odds with reality and reality is going to bite them on the ass sooner than later, primarily because their way is at odds with the future.
schrodingers_cat
@Brachiator: We agree on DS9, Voyager and Enterprise. What’s your opinion about TNG. TOS, I had seen some reruns as a kid but recently I saw most of the first season. Gender dynamics are a bit problematic but otherwise it holds up pretty well.
West of the Rockies
@Brachiator:
I know she’s a fan favorite, but I’m tired of Ensign Tilly’s constant babbling and cutesiness. Obviously, YMMV.
Mnemosyne
I wrote the most postcards in 2018 for Stacey Abrams, so I’m willing to follow her wherever she goes. Giving her SOTU response speech with an audience was a stroke of genius that I can’t believe no one else had thought of before.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
G and I ended up watching a random episode of TOS that was pretty good with everything but the main female character, who was wearing a bizarre bright orange faux-fur bikini top that made her look like she had skinned a Muppet. And, of course, she was a scheming femme fatale willing to switch sides at the drop of a phaser because Reasons, I guess?
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
I liked TNG. I liked the characters and how they dealt with one another. Picard was a model captain. There was one episode I saw again recently, where Ensign Ro is a “ghost” (stuck in another dimension) and encounters Picard. She thinks she’s “dead” but note that Picard still intimidates here. A nice touch.
TNG had some great episodes, great SF, not just great for fans. I also recently watched “The Lower Decks,” a very touching show that showed junior officers and how they viewed the command staff. Well done stuff.
One thing that I did not like about TNG was how sometimes characters got away with stuff that should have led to serious demotions or other punishment. But you can’t really be too harsh on your main cast.
I grew up with the original Trek and forgive some of its worst excesses. But again, the best TOS is among the best science fiction. In Western myth and fiction, there is sometimes a triad or trio of heroic characters. So, you have King Arthur, Merlin and Lancelot. You have Robin Hood, Little John and Friar Tuck. A leader, a strong man or perfect knight, and a wise counsellor. In Trek, you have Kirk, Bones and Spock. Always and forever.
Maybe Janeway, Seven of Nine and B’Elanna Torres are a heroic trio.
Dan B
@Wapiti: I like the analogy but would change the word to Sanitation. And keep the raw sewage running down the street. Just a suggestion.
Brachiator
@West of the Rockies:
Yeah, I don’t particularly like Tilly.
I like Michael Burnham, Saru and Original Recipe Philippa Georgiou (and have long admired Michelle Yeoh for her Hong Kong films)
Dan B
@Kelly: As a Warshingtonian is my input if any value? I’ve got a pitch that I grew up when everyone got Smallpox vaccinations and when the Salk Polio vaccine became available everyone lined up trembling with hope their kids woukd be spared and all too aware of how other families had not been.
The measles is closest to Portland but its in our state and we want our neighbirs to be bettee neighbirs than we have been.
Uncle Cosmo
@Ruckus: Did you type “demigods” when you meant “demagogues”? Do we cite Oldtimer’s Syndrome or shall we fob it off on Otto Korrekt or FYWP?
TEL
Of all the long-shot candidates (including Buttigieg and O’Rourke) she is the person I am the most impressed with. Abrams came into politics because of her own experiences in being disenfranchised and trying to fix one of the most difficult things about our current system – how to reverse decades of this disenfranchisment, and involve people who have given up. I was especially impressed with this being the reason why she ran for governor, and wasn’t as interested in running for senator. I think part of Abrams political courage and effectiveness stems from this not being about her at all – she believes this part of politics needs to be repaired, and has committed her professional life to this. (Not saying the other candidates aren’t equally committed, but I do believe we need to get as many people voting as possible before we can fix anything else.)
Mike in Pasadena
Mentioned on another thread that Stacey was really impressive on the View last week. Articulate, clear, never took offense, parried well when necessary, and very thoughtful and intelligent – in that way she reminded me of BHO except perhaps more cheerful and relaxed.
A Good Woman
Regarding Star Trek; before Enterprise appeared on screen I did an online survey, very detailed, whose results I sent to Berman and Braga. TOS and TNG captured first time male viewers. Voyager drew in first time female viewers. DS9 was the perennial bridesmaid, coming up as #2 in nearly every category. It stood out for its story and character arcs. Fan commentary made it clear that they enjoyed arcs peppered with stand-alone episodes, and DS9 created an expectation that this would continue in future Trek series.
I predicted that Enterprise would not survive for 7 years if the “shotgunning” of individual stand-alone episodes (Braga’s stated preference) that marked Voyager carried over to Enterprise. I watched a handful of Enterprise episodes and quit. It survived 5 seasons, and started to seriously improve in Season 5 (per my reading about it), but by then lost much of its audience. I have not watched Discovery so have no opinion about it.
J R in WV
@Mike in Pasadena:
Abrams knows that a black person can be elected president in this country. Obama just believed it. Knowing seems likely to make a candidate “more cheerful and relaxed” to me. Same for Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, they aren’t biting off an impossible task!