Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This blog will pay for itself.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

White supremacy is terrorism.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

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

The revolution will be supervised.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

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

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

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

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Monday Morning Open Thread: Strong Women Are Our Hallmark

Monday Morning Open Thread: Strong Women Are Our Hallmark

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And some happy news out of London — from the Guardian, “Michelle Obama gets rock star reception at London O2 interview”:

With homemade signs and spontaneous Mexican waves, it was an audience fit for the most famous musician. Speaking to a 15,000-strong audience of mostly women at the O2 Arena in London, the former first lady Michelle Obama called on those who were unhappy with the Trump White House to “roll up your sleeves”.

She was welcomed on stage at the event on Sunday night – part of an international book tour – with a standing ovation and screams. Asked by the US television host Stephen Colbert how she liked her reception, she said it gave her hope in difficult political times.

“I think it’s a testament to how much we all have in common around the world,” said Obama. “The fact that people are finding themselves in the story of this little girl, Michelle Robinson, on the south side of Chicago … is not a testament to me and my story, but it’s a reminder that we’re OK, folks. We’re going to be OK.”…

“I have to remind people that Barack Obama was elected twice in the United States. That really did happen,” she said. “That wasn’t make-believe. The country actually did accomplish it and half the people who voted in the last election, if they could have, they would have voted for him for a third term.

“We have to remember that what is happening today is true, but what happened before was also true … that should give us some solace at some level.”…

Reader Interactions

171Comments

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

    Three Women Of Color Selected For DNC Senior Leadership Roles

     https://www.essence.com/news/three-women-of-color-selected-for-dnc-senior-leadership-roles/

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “We have to remember that what is happening today is true, but what happened before was also true … that should give us some solace at some level.”…

    And it does.

  8. 8.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Amazon faces new headache as Nashville deal enrages locals left and right

    Nashville has a way of bringing people together – usually through music. This time it’s through a shared antipathy for the $100m-plus in subsidies this booming city has just handed to Amazon, the world’s most valuable retailer.

    The ink has barely dried on a deal that the state of Tennessee and the city awarded Amazon and there are now only a few small hurdles remaining before Amazon starts moving in to a downtown office complex planned for Nashville Yards.

    But an unusual alliance of free-market libertarians and union-backed activists is determined to hold the politicians and executives responsible for the deal to account. Their hope is that it will serve as a warning to others looking to hand public money to profitable companies in return for the promise of new jobs.

    “This is one area where libertarians and socialists can agree on something: this is a bad idea,” said John Mozena, president of the Center for Economic Accountability, a free market advocacy group and a self described libertarian.

    Local activist Odessa Kelly agrees. A parks and recreations employee and member of the union-backed Stand Up Nashville coalition she says the deal is symptomatic of an approach that is failing the city while handing millions to a company that doesn’t need it.

  9. 9.

    Baud

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who was an organizer for Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, said she will back whoever the Democrats nominate for president in 2020 — but she would clearly prefer someone other than former Vice President Joe Biden.

    The freshman congresswoman, who became a rising star in the party after scoring a shocking victory against a high ranking Democrat last year, said she hasn’t picked a 2020 candidate to support.

    “I truly do not have one yet. I truly do not,” Ocasio-Cortez said on the Yahoo News podcast “Skullduggery.”

    But the prospect of a Biden run doesn’t “animate” her, she said.

    “I’m very supportive of Bernie’s run. … I haven’t endorsed anybody, but I’m very supportive of Bernie,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding, “I also think what Elizabeth Warren has been bringing to the table is … truly remarkable, truly remarkable and transformational.”

    ……

    “I don’t know. I mean … I will support whoever the Democratic nominee is,” said Ocasio-Cortez.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-skullduggery-2020-024318540.html

    That’s all I ask.

  12. 12.

    Elizabelle

    I am happy Tiger Woods won. Was rooting for him. It’s a lot to come back from his back injuries, and I hope he is a wiser person after his family’s dissolution and the sex addiction treatment, all problems he brought upon himself and his loved ones. One can see his talents and flaws.

    Would just as soon he steered clear of golf cheater in chief Trump, though. Cheats at golf and on women. Anything he can.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    Report: Voter Rolls Are Growing Owing To Automatic Voter Registration
    ….

    Advocates say this is an effective way to expand the electorate, and the Brennan report appears to back that up. It found that registrations rose between 9 and 94 percent in seven states and the District of Columbia, owing to their automatic registration systems. The increase was greatest in Georgia (93.7 percent) and lowest in the District of Columbia (9.4 percent)

    https://www.npr.org/2019/04/11/711779753/report-voter-rolls-are-growing-due-to-automatic-voter-registration

  16. 16.

    raven

    @Betty Cracker: Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump was asked about former Gamecocks football coach Steve Spurrier during an interview Tuesday with the South Carolina Radio Network.

    Spurrier was a coach in the USFL, briefly a rival of the NFL, in the 1980s when Trump was a team owner.

    “I think Steve Spurrier is a very good guy. I really liked him a lot. I watched him (at South Carolina),” Trump said. “I don’t know what happened the last little while, but I watched him over here. But I think he’s a very good guy and a sweetheart.”

  18. 18.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    “I have to remind people that Barack Obama was elected twice in the United States. That really did happen,” she said. “That wasn’t make-believe. The country actually did accomplish it and half the people who voted in the last election, if they could have, they would have voted for him for a third term.

    I remind myself of that a lot. We’re still that country.

    I’ve been stretching out listening to my audiobook copy of Becoming, partly because the moments when I have the time and inclination to listen to an audiobook are limited, but also because Michelle’s voice calms me and gives me hope, and so I kind of like stretching out my time with this book as long as possible.

    Yeah, I’m a fanboy. Tough toenails. Someone on this blog said something along the lines of “Barack Obama is a great human being but he definitely married up” and I agree.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: Does Spurrier hang out with the racist piece of garbage Trump, and did Spurrier’s wife brain him with a golf club after finding out he was shagging the neighbor’s 21-year-old daughter? If so, he can fuck off too.

  23. 23.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Interesting short piece:

    In both the case of white colonial control over non-whites as well as in the case human control over nature, what is certain is the fragility of white/human control over the colonial/natural world. That the fragility of this domination gives birth to such fantasies of decline and reversal is more an indication of an incurable psychology of domination. That is, what we are dealing with are people whose viability is predicated on being dominant.

    Humans who cannot see themselves other than in a relation of domination with the natural world and whites who, despite their protestations of being anything but racist, find it hard to be in anything but a dominant colonial position vis a vis non-white people.

    It is only for such people that even a minor dent to the fantasy of domination that sustains them ends up being imagined as a catastrophic threat of disintegration.

    Hadn’t ever linked the 2 in my mind before.

  24. 24.

    Bruce K

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: There are days when I find myself thinking: maybe Obama ran for President too early. Maybe he should have stuck it out in the Senate for a full term, and then run. Because if he went head to head against the likes of Donald Trump, it’d be like a sledgehammer hitting a cockroach.

  29. 29.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @OzarkHillbilly: From the article:

    In his novel 2007 the Australian naturalist Robyn Williams (2001) also takes us into a world where a more generalised process of reversal is under way: whales sink Japanese whaling vessels, pelicans occupy Heathrow airpot, cows invade Tullamarine airport in Melbourne, Amazonian pythons attacking developers’ bulldozers, etc.

    Or elephants killing rhino poachers? I’d love to think the elephants are organizing, and doing so successfully, against the poachers.

    But yeah, that article is right. There’s definitely a segment, could be in the neighborhood of 40% judging by Trump support, who think that any non-white having basic rights of existence is a terrifying existential threat to whiteness.

  38. 38.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Our age of shifting complication is drawn to myths of rooted simplicity. Which city dweller, navigating between shallow digital profiles, could not be moved by the idea of a woman, once briefly a model in New York, who wanted nothing more than to run a sheep farm at one of the world’s furthest corners, and to save the valley she grew up in from imminent peril?

    That is the modern Icelandic saga of Heida Ásgeirsdottír, who, at the age of 20 gave up on a potential career on the catwalk – she had been press-ganged into it by scouts and photographers, and by a fairy-godmother aunt who worked at the Elite model agency – to return home for lambing season; to become, as a recently published book of her life has it: “A shepherd at the edge of the world.” Twenty-one years later, she says she has never for a day regretted it.

    Heida, that biography, became a bestseller in Iceland, and has just been published here. It undermines fairytales of all kinds. Ásgeirsdottír’s granitic father used to tell her, when she was a skinny kid trailing around after him in the hills, that she would one day take over the farm, just as soon as she found a husband to look after the land. That sounded a lot like fighting talk to Ásgeirsdottír. She never found a husband, never wanted to, but she took over the family farm anyhow in 2004, aged 26, when her father was diagnosed with the cancer that killed him two years later. She has run it alone ever since.

    I’m gonna have to read the book.

  41. 41.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I guess. We loved it when Obama roasted Trump, but in the end, Trump got the last laugh, didn’t he? Obviously, you and I and most of the rest of us tried to stop him, but collectively we failed. Why shouldn’t people like Biden try to play nice with the Republicans after witnessing all that first hand?

  42. 42.

    Baud

    The NYT is garbage.

    Trump’s Attack on Ilhan Omar: How the 2020 Democrats Diverged in Response

    To my knowledge, no Dem has criticized Omar for her remarks (unlike the other two episodes). Remarkable unity, wouldn’t you say? Not if you’re a NYT headline writer.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    @Baud: I don’t agree that Trump got the last laugh.

    I think he cheated his way into the Oval Office. I do not believe his Electoral College margin in the swing states, much as many studiously do not want to open that can of worms.

    Trump is a jackass, and none of us deserves to have his ass parked in the Oval Office. Albeit, it’s possible this could rid us of the Republican party, as it presently stands, a lot sooner. Always have to look for the bright spots.

  44. 44.

    prob50

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Or elephants killing rhino poachers? I’d love to think the elephants are organizing, and doing so successfully, against the poachers.

    Naw, the elephants would probably be divided and end up battling over direction and leadership A splinter group will threaten their attempts at unity. Inter party squabbling will ensue between “Tuskers” and the more traditional members of the “Trunksters”. Bitter Pachyderm purity divisions will open the path and an outside coalition will form between the jackals and the hyenas in an attempt to seize power. This coalition will initially fall just short, mainly due to their inability to get behind a single candidate for President as no one nasty and brutish enough to satisfy each group emerged They will eventually agree to get behind an outsider who shared many of both groups vicious and predatory traits. This turn of events led to the election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency. of the United States. In order to fulfill campaign pledges to both groups many important Cabinet and regulatory position are now being held by vicious jackals and hyenas. And the rest is just history

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @raven: Thank you!

    @Baud: Maybe Trump was a black swan event, so the circumstances of his electoral college victory offer limited instruction on what to do going forward?

  47. 47.

    satby

    @Baud: was it a failure or was it sabotage?
    Either way, we need to coalesce once the primaries are done and focus on who the real enemy is.

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud:

    Trump got the last laugh, didn’t he?

    Says who?

    ETA and to clarify, trump might be a lot of things, but tough is not one of them.

  49. 49.

    Baud

    @Elizabelle: I don’t disagree with anything you said. But the fact is he’s in the Oval Office.

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m not saying we can predict how to behave going forward based on Trump. All I’m saying is that we haven’t collectively been successful in defending our people when they take on Republicans.

    Trump is the latest and the worst. But you could look to Bill Clinton losing Congress after two years, Bush’s “win” in 2000, Obama losing the House in 2010, and now Trump. There’s a pattern that needs to be broken if we are in fact going to move forward.

  50. 50.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Twitter isn’t the Democratic Party, thanks be to Dog, but plenty on that platform are loudly meeping about the timeliness, quantity and quality of Democrats’ condemnation of Trump’s attack on Rep. Omar. The usual crybabies.

  55. 55.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Last month, Dennis Bridges, a CPA who runs an accounting firm just north of Atlanta, had to break bad news to a client. Bridges specializes in doing taxes for truck drivers around the country, and this tax season he’s had to tell dozens of truckers that after years of being able to count on receiving tax refunds that they in fact would owe thousands of dollars. This particular client from New York owed $4,000. It could have been worse: about 20 percent of Bridges’ trucking clients have owed more than $5,000.

    When Bridges’ firm called the driver to deliver the news, the line first went silent. Then the driver “went into a panic,” Bridges recalls. “He was just asking, ‘Where on earth am I going to get the money to pay this thing?’” For years, he had received an annual refund in the ballpark of $1,500.

    “They got screwed,” says Kevin Rutherford, a small fleet owner who hosts Trucking Business and Beyond, a daily satellite radio show, and also runs an accounting service geared to drivers. After the tax bill became law in late 2017, Rutherford asked his clients and radio listeners for their 2017 and projected 2018 tax data. Using their numbers, he ran about 50 scenarios, finding that for “most company drivers, losing the per diem would mean they’re going to pay more tax.” Only a handful of scenarios came “close or about even” to the filers’ past returns. “It depends on how many kids they have and a couple other things, but for the most part, it was a pretty big loss,” he says.

  58. 58.

    JPL

    @debbie: That’s surprising, but the damage is done. Maybe someone mentioned that if a person attempted to murder her, he’d be blamed. Now if it happens, he’ll say not me.

  59. 59.

    Betty Cracker

    @debbie: He unpinned it. The assassination-bait tweet is still in his timeline, though. Now he’s offering unsolicited branding advice to Boeing.

  60. 60.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I don’t want to argue, but I think you are conflating things that don’t quite fit together. Like it or not, the fact that Obama was not on the ticket in 2016 meant the election had very little to do with him, it was about trump v Hillary. That is what 95% of the electorate were voting on.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie: I love redemption and mercy. And gratitude.

    Good morning to you and jackals. Afternoon, so off for a walk.

  62. 62.

    satby

    I follow most of the Democratic primary candidates on Twitter, I suspect most of us on Twitter do. They all tweet lots of good stuff every day, but it seems what gets shared here and on other social media is the negative attack stuff about individual candidates. It struck me that we’re all getting addicted to rage just like the Fox bot MAGAots are.

    I haven’t read Aravosis in years but I agree with this:

    John Aravosis [email protected]
    So the Bernie Bros were all over Pete Buttigieg’s youtube livestream today of his announcement that he’s formally running. Trashing him in the comments, spreading conspiracy theories. Nice behavior for the candidate who demands no criticism of himself.
    2020 is going to be ugly.

    Ugly turns voters off. We have great candidates (except two ?). All of them would be an improvement over the train wreck we have now.

  67. 67.

    satby

    @Baud: he and his bros, with some heavy lifting from trolls. I don’t intend to give them any oxygen.

    Oh Kindle, sometimes your autocorrect is just ludicrous.

  79. 79.

    Betty Cracker

    Have any of y’all followed the Sanders-CAP/ThinkProgress kerfluffle this weekend? Sanders accused CAP, Neera Tanden and ThinkProgress columnists of smearing him, fomenting party divisions and therefore objectively working to reelect Trump. As near as I can tell, the thing that set him off was a piece that observed (as we figured out here months ago) that he dropped the “millionaires” line from his stump speech once he amassed more than a million bucks himself.

    He sent a nasty letter to that organization — a couple of excerpts:

    “Center for American Progress leader Neera Tanden repeatedly calls for unity while simultaneously maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas. I worry that the corporate money CAP is receiving is inordinately and inappropriately influencing the role it is playing in the progressive movement.”

    “I will be informing my grassroots supporters of the foregoing concerns that I have about the role CAP is playing.”

    What a fucking crybaby. That “grassroots supporters” line is too precious. Sanders’ 2020 strategy is clearly to divide the Democratic Party base and hope he can eek out a plurality to clinch the nomination — which could very well be a losing strategy for the general.

  81. 81.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Well, they’re meaner than they were. It’s interesting, the shift. The CAP attack was really ham-handed, IMO, just random bullshit thrown against the wall and for such a minor offense by Thinkprogress- I don’t think anyone cares that Bernie is a millionaire except Bernie. If that’s the Thinkprogress “attack” on Bernie it’s a pretty dumb attack.

    I wonder if they think he should be polling better. I think he should be. They seem sort of rudderless without Clinton as a target. Bernie was in Michigan saying these same things he and his supporters said after 2016, that Democrats lost Michigan, but Democrats did quite well in Michigan in 2018.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think it’s funny he threw Warren and Booker in there too, as people who are also vicitimized by Thinkprogress – I just feel like this is very clumsy and blatantly bullshit and I wonder why they aren’t more confident going into this. How much did that campaign require Clinton and the DNC as the enemy to push against in 2016? We’ll find out.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    It’s a weird primary campaign. In Michigan: “Trump lied to you!” – this campaign for the Democratic nomination is wholly directed at 20,000 Trump voters in Michigan? What is the assumption they’re operating under here? That they have the primary sewed up? Bernie polls at 17, half of Biden for God’s sake, and Biden hasn’t even announced and every bit of media he has gotten has been negative.

  94. 94.

    Kay

    Kenneth P. Vogel
    ‏Verified account
    @kenvogel
    21h21 hours ago
    More
    NEW: In a warning shot to the Democratic establishment & its allies, @BernieSanders accuses the CLINTON-linked @AmProg & its sister org @CAPAction of smearing him & other progressive Democratic presidential candidates. “This … needs to stop,” he writes.

    I love the all-caps CLINTON. Oh, we get it! No need to scream. The she-devil is back!

    So they’re re-running 2016, except meaner and clumsier.

  95. 95.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I think you’re onto something when you say Sanders should be polling better. The Democrats I know offline who were Sanders voters in the 2016 primary (all of whom voted for Clinton in the general) have either moved on to other candidates or haven’t made up their minds, which is interesting.

    Maybe Sanders gets that and he’s going to be as divisive as possible to keep the core group together in the hope that a divided field will leave him with the largest group. Otherwise, wouldn’t he be trying to reach out to non-core supporters? But he and the people he hired haven’t lifted one finger to do that — just the opposite. It has to be deliberate, IMO. I don’t credit them with much political savvy, but I am confident they can all add, so that’s the only explanation that makes sense.

  97. 97.

    TS (the original)

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Holy shit — check out Michelle Obama’s audience

    And it adds to my joy to know that the president* in London would get these people and thousands more out in the streets protesting his presence

  100. 100.

    satby

    @Kay: a song for Wilmer
    He only knows one note to play, and he can’t adjust for the current campaign. I hate that the primaries are almost two years long, but I wish we could vote him off the island right now.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    or haven’t made up their minds

    That’s my question. Why haven’t they made up their minds? The other candidates are part of the “Democratic establishment”- this is clear choice and I was told repeatedly they chose Bernie. They shouldn’t be looking around. It’s Bernie or The Democrats, in Bernie’s own telling of this contest.

    I thought he was a coward by the middle of 2016 with the weasely way he attacked Clinton and I still think he’s a coward. He keeps himself apart from this stuff, like he’s above it. It’s bullshit. If he’s running against the Democrats he should do that, and own it, personally.

  102. 102.

    JPL

    @Betty Cracker: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was/is a big Bernie supporter but she hasn’t even endorsed him yet. She plans on supporting the democratic nominee.

  103. 103.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    Howard Dean is not very bright. He may be the single most over-rated Democrat in the history of the Party. He did ONE fucking thing right- he came out against Iraq early. He’s been riding that ever since. He’s not even that liberal! That’s the part that kills me.

  105. 105.

    satby

    @rikyrah: that’s an odd tweet. Paul Krugman’s 4/11 column basically called out Sander’s on his M4A based on underpants gnome theory principles. Not falling for spin, in other words.

  106. 106.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Betty Cracker: That’s what I think his primaries strategy is too.

    I hadn’t thought about how much he needed Clinton to run against. I underestimated the anti-HRC factor even after 2016 until someone here pointed out you could read the Obama-Trump voters through that lens. Both times, that vote could have been anti-HRC.

  108. 108.

    Spanky

    Thought experiment:

    A) What actions might Bernie take if he had NO INTENTION of actually winning the nomination, but wanted to sow chaos and discord in the Dem process?

    B) How’s he doing?

  110. 110.

    zhena gogolia

    Middle of the night thought: We are in a fight against fascism. Everyone who has announced a presidential run as a Democrat is joining us in the fight and saying things that people in the country need to hear. (I exclude Sanders from that category, because he is being helped by Russia to become the candidate so that fascism can win again in 2020.) I really don’t understand why people are so passionate about trying to “take anyone out” at this stage of the game. I’m leaning toward Harris, but I want to hear what all the candidates have to say. The idea that it’s “embarrassing” or “gushing” to highlight a candidate’s announcement speech (every candidate has been front-paged here the day they announced) is beyond weird to me.

  111. 111.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Kevin Drum: Do Democrats Have an Immigration Policy to Offer?

    Dan Balz says no one has a great immigration policy on offer:
    ………………
    That wouldn’t be surprising. It’s a tough problem, after all. Still, there’s this:
    (shows graph of SW border apprehensions, 2009-2019)
    There was no crisis on the border until Donald Trump entered office and set about to create one. So maybe the only policy we really need is “Get rid of Trump.”

    It’s also worth noting that Democrats have supported several compromise immigration plans over the years, but Republicans have always crushed them. So maybe we actually need two policies: “Get rid of Trump and get rid of Republicans.” I realize this isn’t the 50-page white paper that we all expect from Democrats, but sometimes you really only need a sentence or two.

    We could do the same with deficits.

  112. 112.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @Baud: They invited him to speak at their conference last year and he participated.

    Of course he couldn’t help being an asshole. He was scheduled to speak on criminal law reform, but at the last second he refused to do so and instead gave his usual 50 year old diatribe against millionaires and billionaires. They gave him a golden opportunity to grow, to branch out, to reach beyond his core group economic populists to people focused on social justice and to POC and he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

  113. 113.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    Of course he couldn’t help being an asshole. He was scheduled to speak on criminal law reform, but at the last second he refused to do so and instead gave his usual 50 year old diatribe against millionaires and billionaires.

    I don’t know if it was being an asshole in this case, it’s just the only thing he knows about.

  114. 114.

    Betty Cracker

    @OzarkHillbilly: True. Of all the candidates, Castro’s immigration policy seems the most fleshed-out, but even he hasn’t nailed down all the specifics, which I think is okay this early. But yeah, what Drum said: getting rid of the person who actually caused the crisis is a big chunk of any solution.

  115. 115.

    Amir Khalid

    @prob50:
    Do you know who leads an elephant family? The grandmother. I don’t pretend to speak for you, but when I think of a grandmother in leadership, I think of someone like Nancy Pelosi.

  116. 116.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: The people who attended were upset and angry. They take the subject seriously and felt they could have spent their limited time on a competing presentation.

  118. 118.

    rikyrah

    @Bruce K:

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: There are days when I find myself thinking: maybe Obama ran for President too early. Maybe he should have stuck it out in the Senate for a full term, and then run.

    Nope.
    Barack Obama ran when he had to run – when this country had fallen into the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
    Black Firsts don’t get chances when things are going well.
    They get chances when things are SO BAD that folks can purse their lips…’well, we can give the Black guy a chance’.

    If things were going well, Barack Obama would not even had been a consideration.

    We have George W. Bush to thank for Barack Obama. …plain and simple.

  120. 120.

    rikyrah

    @Betty Cracker: \

    What a fucking crybaby. That “grassroots supporters” line is too precious. Sanders’ 2020 strategy is clearly to divide the Democratic Party base and hope he can eek out a plurality to clinch the nomination — which could very well be a losing strategy for the general.

    We need to lay waste to this muthaphucka. Plain and simple.

  121. 121.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Self-Checkout: A Union-Busting Technology

    Personally, I refuse to use the self checkout. Maybe if they pay me to do it I’ll consider it (but I doubt it) but this reminded me of something I saw yesterday when I was driving thru town: A self serve ice station. It’s not open yet but appeared to have both cube and block dispensers. My first thought?

    “There go good jobs for drivers.”

    My 2nd thought?

    “What idiot corporate exec decided to put it here?”

    It’s on the main street, almost the heart of town, and far far away from where all the tourists drive down 185, right past the Walmart and gas station where they get their gas, beer, hotdogs, and chips. 95% of the tourists will never know it’s even there, so for all the floaters getting off the river at the end of a hot summer’s day in need of ice for the plentiful beer they already have stashed at camp, the gas station and Walmart will still be where they go for ice.

  122. 122.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kay:

    I don’t think anyone cares that Bernie is a millionaire except Bernie.

    I would care if I gave a frying flock about him. Members of Congress don’t exactly take a vow of poverty, & BS is in his 29th year sucking at that sugar-teat. IMO if he hasn’t managed to salt away at least a million samolians in that time, it’s prima facie evidence of fiscal incompetence so vast he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the US Treasury, even as a tourist.

  123. 123.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: I am probably in the minority in that I don’t expect a comprehensive immigration plan that has an actual chance of working in a way that would satisfy an majority of Americans from any of the candidates. I would like an end to needless cruelty, both the separation of families and the threat of deportation for dreamers. I would like an increase in immigration judges to hear asylum cases in a timely fashion. I would like to see employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers actually be charged with a criminal offense, tried, and convicted. Beyond that….

    I just don’t know.

    eta to finish a thought

  124. 124.

    germy

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’ve seen Self Checkout threads on LGM before. The comments always devolve into an argument between two camps: those who prefer self-scanning, and those who hate it.

    There’ll probably be over 300 comments over there before they’re done, and lots of hurt feelings.

  125. 125.

    Denali

    I really don’t get Bernie supporters. He is too old, not a Party member, and too far left. He has no chance of defeating Trump. Why are they paying attention to him?

    I like the idea of a wide field of Democratic candidates. We really do have a choice to make. But doesn’t every candidate need donations to continue? People can only give so much- unlike corporations. I think we need to remember this.

  126. 126.

    bemused

    Speaking of strong women, the documentary “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins” is out in some theaters. I fervently wish she was still with us and raising hell.

  127. 127.

    Betty Cracker

    @OzarkHillbilly: Personally, it seems like it’s been so long since I’ve contemplated what an ideal state would be that I feel rusty thinking about it in those terms (in my defense, it’s not my job!). It’s been “how do we stop Republicans’ monstrous policies?” for ages. Trump’s actions are exponentially worse, but Republican immigration proposals have been mean-spirited and counterproductive for as long as I’ve been paying attention.

  130. 130.

    joel hanes

    @Kay:

    Howard Dean is … did ONE fucking thing right- he came out against Iraq early.

    Howard Dean is no liberal.

    But I think his 50-state strategy counts for another, that it was responsible for electing Obama the first time around, that abandoning those local organizations (for which I have always blamed Rahm) was one of the greatest bits of political malpractice I have ever witnessed, and that if the Dems had stuck with the 50-state strategy, and consistently nurtured their local organizations Trump would not be President today.

    So I count two.

  131. 131.

    germy

    In the first quarter of 2019, President Trump raised a self-reported $30 million for his reelection campaign, blazing past the fundraising totals of Democratic candidates. It appears his plan to file reelection paperwork on the night of his inauguration has paid off: In addition to the $30 million raised by the campaign, the Republican National Committee has reportedly raised $46 million for their 2020 candidate. According to RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the campaign’s had eight seven-figure days in 2019 and 100,000 new donors since January.

    http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/trump-raises-usd30-million-in-q1-smashing-democratic-numbers.html

  132. 132.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: As Drum points out, DEMs have supported several different compromise (w/ GOPers) immigration plans that have time and again been shot down by hard line RWNJ’s in their party. Always always always it is about race.

  134. 134.

    rikyrah

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I would like an end to needless cruelty, both the separation of families and the threat of deportation for dreamers. I would like an increase in immigration judges to hear asylum cases in a timely fashion. I would like to see employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers actually be charged with a criminal offense, tried, and convicted

    These aren’t hard desires. These aren’t impossible. They are very possible. Especially charging the employers.

  135. 135.

    geg6

    @zhena gogolia:

    The idea that it’s “embarrassing” or “gushing” to highlight a candidate’s announcement speech (every candidate has been front-paged here the day they announced) is beyond weird to me.

    I have no problem with Mayor Pete’s speech being highlighted on the front page the day of. However, he had been the subject of many (maybe not front page, which I don’t remember at the moment) comments and threads where some commenters have been more than just supportive but positively gushing with a great sensitivity to any and all questions or criticisms. He is not the only candidate to have a cadre that are a bit too, let’s call it, attached to a particular candidate this early. But, from my own point of view, those somewhat fanatical supporters are definitely embarrassing themselves in much the same way Bernie supporters do. They do not want to have to answer questions or hear criticism, when all candidates, especially those less well-known and with shorter and narrower track records, should be questioned and criticized. YMMV.

  136. 136.

    joel hanes

    @Amir Khalid:

    a grandmother in leadership

    There’s some evidence that the reason for menopause and the reason that human lives can extend long past the childbearing years is that children with living grandmothers do much better on average.

    In Ursula LeGuin’s most polemic work, _The_Word_For_World_Is_Forest_, she depicts a human-alien society which is governed by its old women. And even in _Dune_, in which feudal barons fight for power and influence across an interstellar empire, the long term political thinkers and planners are the old women of the Bene Gesserit.

  137. 137.

    CliosFanboy

    @Kay: he also created (or used) the 50-State strategy, which was the way we SHOULD have gone in 2009 and after.

  138. 138.

    bemused

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Hell yes! There are a few clips from the doc on the utube which made me smile and even more impatient to see the whole doc.
    One of my favorite Molly stories was about Molly and a group strategizing how to protest a KKK group who were going to march in a Texas city. What they finally came up with was all of them dropping their pants and mooning the KKK as they marched by. If only there was video.

  139. 139.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @joel hanes:

    50-state strategy

    We used an “all-county” strategy in New Mexico in 2018, to great effect. Swept ALL statewide and congressional races. We plan to do the same in 2020.

  140. 140.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: Here in New England, one of the major grocery chains is called “Stop & Shop” – its corporate parent is a Belgian(?) conglomerate called Ahold Delhaize(?), which also owns Giant Eagle, Hannaford and some others. Anyway, the Stop & Shop workers are unionized, and last week they went out on strike because of pension/benefit issues. A lot of people in the area were surprised, but as of the weekend most of the stores were physically closed, I guess while management tries to work out how many scabs they need. It’s my regular source for groceries, but I’ve also never used the self-checkout and will continue not to.

  145. 145.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: Not really. They were always this nasty. Only difference is media courtesans are starting to notice.

  146. 146.

    zhena gogolia

    @geg6:

    What I’ve seen (and I was a participant) was people pushing back on what seemed like a coordinated attack by the Sanders campaign on a particular day, where they kept pushing a hit piece by a Sanders supporter. I really have not seen rampant Buttigieg-worship. He is not my top candidate, but I am glad he’s getting a lot of airplay to talk about the things we care about. But some people seem to have a visceral need to crush him, I’m not sure why. I don’t see that happening with any other candidate, including the similarly thin-resume’d O’Rourke.

  148. 148.

    Major Major Major Major

    @geg6:

    those somewhat fanatical supporters are definitely embarrassing themselves in much the same way Bernie supporters do

    Yes, surely this is a phenomenon that has been observed here only on the subject of the primary, and only for these two candidates.

  149. 149.

    WaterGirl

    @geg6:

    I have no problem with Mayor Pete’s speech being highlighted on the front page the day of. However, he had been the subject of many (maybe not front page, which I don’t remember at the moment) comments and threads where some commenters have been more than just supportive but positively gushing with a great sensitivity to any and all questions or criticisms. He is not the only candidate to have a cadre that are a bit too, let’s call it, attached to a particular candidate this early. But, from my own point of view, those somewhat fanatical supporters are definitely embarrassing themselves in much the same way Bernie supporters do. They do not want to have to answer questions or hear criticism, when all candidates, especially those less well-known and with shorter and narrower track records, should be questioned and criticized. YMMV.

    I don’t agree with much of your characterization here, particularly the bolded parts. As one of the people who supports Buttigieg (though I also support Beto and Harris) please name the fanatical supporters here who are definitely embarrassing themselves and who do not want to answer questions about Buttigieg. Are you referring to me? satby? Betty Cracker? zhena?

    Because blanket comments like you just made pretty much paints all of Buttigieg’s supporters here with the same broad brush of your characterizations.

    What I see are several of us pushing back when Buttigieg is misrepresented and his comments are mischaracterized or taken out of context. I believe that everyone who has supported Buttigieg here believes that we should get to talk about candidate strengths and weaknesses but that those conversations should be honest rather than based on misrepresentations of positions.

  150. 150.

    WaterGirl

    @rikyrah: Good point. It’s also important for us to remember that (and I think this is true) none of the Democratic candidates has promised not to take PAC money in the General Election.

  151. 151.

    WaterGirl

    @zhena gogolia: I think it happened with Beto when he first started running and then he was replaced with Buttigieg when it was clear that Buttigieg was running.

  153. 153.

    Major Major Major Major

    @WaterGirl:

    What I see are several of us pushing back when Buttigieg is misrepresented

    For example, when the blog owner shared on the front page, of this apparently rabidly gushing blog, an anti-Buttigieg hit piece written by a sanders partisan.

    @WaterGirl: sarcasm! I want everybody to get along!

  155. 155.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Spanky: I think he’s positioning himself quite well and making the best tactical choices for his candidacy at this point. Incidents like the CAP whining will get him a burst of donations from the usual suspects, receive condemnation from people who don’t like him anyway, and be unnoticed/forgotten by the rest of the primary electorate, which is most of it.

  156. 156.

    Citizen Alan

    @germy:

    At the local Wal-mart, they’ve basically taken the “self-checkout or human being” question out of our hands — outside of peak business time, there’s rarely more than one or two checkout people handling long lines of customers. Kroger is better about it, though, and I always use the people checkout lanes there.

  157. 157.

    dexwood

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    When I’m standing in line to check out with a human, I’m often approached by a store employee or manager letting me know there’s no waiting at the self-checkout. I always ask if I get an employee discount for using that “convenience”. They always look startled and struggle to respond. Fuck ’em.

  158. 158.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    Agreed. As I keep saying, when Trump is gone, everyone who put him in the White House will still be here working for the same agenda.

  159. 159.

    WaterGirl

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I want everybody to get along!

    Me, too! I believe that all politics is personal, but disagreeing about our Democratic candidates does not have to involve personal attacks.

    We are all on the same side, but some days here you would never know it. To me, it makes no sense to make personal attacks while at the same time saying “but of course we will come together and support the Democratic candidate who wins the primary”. Right after we hose all the primary blood off the sidewalks, we will put the past behind us and sing kumbaya.

  160. 160.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Major Major Major Major: How big is the “people who know who Neera Tanden is” demographic? Everyone who knows what this fight is about and thinks it’s awesome is already a Bernie Sanders supporter posting “dank memes” on Twitter.

  162. 162.

    Shana

    @Kay: For the most part I agree with you about Howard Dean but he did one things as head of the DNC that I think doesn’t get the credit it deserves. He instituted the 50 State Strategy, funding state parties and their organizers heavily. I was active in Virginia at the time and it made an enormous difference. I know part of what happened to Democrats in the Commonwealth was timing and mood of electorate but if Dean hadn’t funded field operations in every state we wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of it nearly as effectively. It was a game changer.

  166. 166.

    NotMax

    @Gin & Tonic

    Joke from grammar school days:

    Did you hear? Stop ‘n’ Shop and A&P are gonna merge. The new stores will be called Stop & P.

  167. 167.

    J R in WV

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Or elephants killing rhino poachers? I’d love to think the elephants are organizing, and doing so successfully, against the poachers.

    That was great. And then a pride of lions ate the bastard!!! Payback, monsters.

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    And that photo of the arena full of people to see Michelle Obama… wonderful. The floor was full, the lower level was full, the boxes were full, the tippy top bleacher seats were all … FULL.

  169. 169.

    dww44

    @Shana: While I’m sure that this thread is dead, as are most that I happen on of late, I want to confirm/endorse your comment. Howard Dean came to this state in 2006-2007. To my small now minority-majority city in fact. I actually got to see him. I know of no other DNC chair who got out into the state outside of the Atlanta metro area and met Democratic voters on the ground. I thought and still think it was a mistake for him to have been removed and replaced by whomever Obama put in his place. I honestly cannot remember who that was? Further, my mostly non-partisan spouse maintained, from the time of the event until now, that the Dean scream was a made-up misrepresentation of the man and his candidacy.

  170. 170.

    dww44

    @joel hanes: Because even in a smallish city, but city nevertheless, the only bib-box choices are Walmart and on-line at Amazon. These days I don’t do Amazon, because they are the monopolistic behemoth in the making. Not Walmart. Don’t care for the latter’s politics, but they have actually been made into a better retail outfit by Amazon.

  171. 171.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy: Pro-self-checkout = anti-labor, anti-self-checkout = ableist (against people with social anxiety). Intersectionality is hard.

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