I haven’t seen the whole interview yet, but The Post has a top five points compilation up on YouTube:
I’m glad she said this:
“The Mueller report is about an attack on our elections by a foreign government. And we want to know about that. We want to know about that in terms of being able to prevent it from happening again. So it’s bigger even than Donald Trump.”
There was a tinge of sarcasm in that last sentence, as was fitting. She’s absolutely correct, and while I don’t think it was Trump’s strategy to make it all about himself (that’s his default setting), he largely succeeded, which is just one of the many ways he’s failed utterly to live up to the oath of office.
Anyhoo, boy, did Pelosi ever hit the nail on the head here, when asked to describe Trump’s abilities as president:
Pelosi: “I think that there’s nobody in the country who knows better that he should not be President of the United States than Donald Trump.”
Stahl: “You think he knows it himself?”
Pelosi: “I think he does, yeah.”
No wonder Trump rushed to Twitter to lamely attacked Pelosi as soon as he saw the program. The truth hurts.
On the future of the party, Pelosi said this:
I think our future is strong enough, is built on a strong enough foundation to withstand everything, including the current occupant of the White House. I don’t think for two terms, though.
Agree with that too.
Meanwhile, moments ago, Elizabeth Warren just busted out a plan to manage public lands. I don’t know if she’ll win the nomination, but she seems to be writing the 2020 party platform. Works for me!
Open thread!
Tony Jay
The fact that Nancy Pelosi scares the bile-laced shit out of that scummy orange perv makes me happy inside.
She’s coming for you, Donny. And she doesn’t give a single flying fuck that you know it.
SFAW
Well, that’s interesting that she has some policy positions, but there’s just something about her that bothers me. I don’t know what it is. She’s just not likable or something. And she seems over-prepared.
Mandalay
It looks that way to me as well. I haven’t researched every policy from every candidate, and I’m probably wrong, but my impression is that Warren has provided more detailed policy than all the other candidates combined. She isn’t fooling around.
Of course that’s not reason enough to automatically support her, but it does invite the question of other candidates: when will we see the details of the policies you want to implement? Throwing red meat out there is one thing; explaining how you are going to implement your red meat (and pay for it) is a lot tougher.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
Unrelated to the Speaker: I don’t know if you’ve provided any more despatches from Old Blighty, but what’s the likelihood that your
EmperorPrime Minister will use the recently-granted six-months extension to consider another vote? I’m assuming “zero,” but wanted to hear your take on it.ETA: Well, technically, read your take on it, but you know what I meant.
SFAW
@Mandalay:
Via class warfare, of course.
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
Now that you mention it I have just finished screaming at the moon over the events of the last few weeks, but I was waiting for an open thread to drop it. Wouldn’t want to OT on the excellence of Madam Pelosi and her stilletto-dance around Lard of the Onion Rings.
Patricia Kayden
I would love for Pelosi to rethink her anti impeachment stance. But I love her toughness and ability to go up against Trump without flinching. She certainly has helped to stiffen Schumer’s spine.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
Good point.
Apologies to the jackaltariat for diverting from the Speaker.
Mandalay
We finally have a candidate who is even worse than Gabbard:
Exactly what the nation does not need: a “leader” who will sit down and negotiate and find what works, and reach across the aisle to our Republican friends. Has this spineless idiot even been awake for the past two years?
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
I’m thinking — well, hoping, actually — that she made those comments to remove it from the Traitor-in-Chief’s limited vision. His unleashing of his moronic hordes of flying racists, via twitter, might prevent or distract from the real work the Dems are trying to do. I don’t think she is philosophically against impeachment, especially of The Traitor, but I have no special insight on this.
SFAW
@Mandalay:
Great, another “bipartisanship uber alles” moron.
Gin & Tonic
@SFAW:
I hear you. But hey, did you hear about this guy Pete something, mayor of some dipshit town in the Midwest? Now he’s got charisma. Too bad Warren doesn’t, nor Harris, nor Klobuchar, nor ….
MattF
@Tony Jay: Also, the RW generally seems to have lost their sense of direction in attacks on Pelosi. She was a Fox prime target a few years ago– but now, I think, not so much, because it just doesn’t work, the insults don’t stick. She has their number. Trump’s bluster and bullying towards Pelosi reflects that.
Barbara
@Mandalay: “How to shoot myself in the head politically right from the get go and make sure nothing, dear voter, ever improves for an ordinary person such as yourself!” How can someone be so stupid?
Gin & Tonic
@Tony Jay: Dude, every thread is an open thread.
Betty Cracker
@Mandalay: The first quote sounds like boilerplate bipartisan crap that any candidate might say in a momentary lapse. But the second is disqualifyingly stupid, IMO.
Swalwell’s district is on the opposite side of the continent from me, so I haven’t followed his legislative career closely. However, I do know he was an anti-Trump firebrand on Twitter and seemed to understand that his GOP colleagues were derelict in their oversight duties in the couple of appearances on the cable shout-fests I’ve seen. So I’m surprised he’s barfing up Broder’s ghost.
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Gin & Tonic: Funny how that works, isn’t it?
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
@Mandalay: It’ll be interesting to see Swalwell’s fundraising numbers; I’m predicting a billionaire/bundler scheme with few small-dollar donors.
Gin & Tonic
@Betty Cracker: Swalwell’s district is Cook D+20. He won his last race 73-27, Kamala took his district 70-30. This is fucking malpractice.
Tony Jay
@MattF:
Indeed. You’d almost think that the idea of running against Pelosi loses its luster when the push-back she can do via Humpty Trumpty comes with so much natural traction. The bombs she can drop will take out anything or anyone standing within a shockingly large distance.
Lovely thought.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: And anyone who imagines that it’s OK to take conservative political stances at face value needs to be slapped up and down a few times. The conservative behavioral repertoire doesn’t include sharing power.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Clearly you’re not a Notre Dame fan
Barbara
@Gin & Tonic: This is “my daddy was a Republican I know there are good Republicans out there” unicorn fever dreams, if I had to guess.
ThresherK
@SFAW:
This knowing, pointed line by Sady Doyle is my leader-in-the-clubhouse about how our media will cast women in this campaign.
Warren is bursting with what we might call “charisma” in male candidates.
I’m waiting for Chris Cilizza, et al, to say it in earnest.
Tony Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
Is it though? Is it really?
Ah, bugger it. I’ve got to leave the laptop pretty soon so I might as well. If Betty doesn’t mind me mucking up her nice thread with damned, dirty Brexit muck, that is?
MattF
@Tony Jay: You can be polite and mark a post as OT. I do that. A lot.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
If you actually care about how a Front Pager, or a post’s author, feels, then we might need to revoke your
PressJackaltariat credentials.Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: Not a bit! I always enjoy your take on the Brexit follies!
Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho
@Gin & Tonic: Yup. I thought he was smarter than that. I was mistaken.
opiejeanne
@Barbara: That is exactly what it is: his parents are Republicans. His remarks surprised me, after seeing him on Rachel’s and Lawrence’s shows so many times, ranting about Trump and the other Republicans, and he knows how awful they are in California, the ones that are still in office.
West of the Rockies
@Tony Jay:
Remember when Nancy was too old and listless to do the job?
She is s frickin’ treasure.
misterpuff
@Betty Cracker: According to his visits to MSNBC, he’s from a family of Republicans. So its baked in.
Wants to run on Gun Control and be bipartisan….something doesn’t add up.
Or Presenting self as possible Veep candidate.
O. Felix Culpa
@ThresherK: Excellent article. Thank you for the link.
opiejeanne
@Gin & Tonic:
What does this mean? His district is in Alameda/Contra Costa counties.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
They have republicanitis, which is where they still believe it is 1951 and Ike is president and all republicans are fine people who want nothing but the best for everyone. It is a disease that affects white people who have been asleep, and effectively deaf and blind for the last 40 yrs.
Mike in Pasadena
Today is the 15th. Hey Barr, where’s Mueller’s report?
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Brixit posts make me feel like we are not alone
WaterGirl
@misterpuff: Maybe he’s hoping Biden would choose him as VP of some bastardized-worse-than-the-devil unity ticket?
Tony Jay
OT – Brexit News – Relax, Don’t Do It
Well Goodness gracious me, a lot can happen in just a few weeks, can’t it? You go more than two years with not an awful lot of action on the national defenestration front and then BOOM! suddenly it’s like a Poltergeist convention in here and there’s a pizza-pile of conventional wisdom twenty feet high oozing its collective brains out on the cobblestones below. It’s hard to keep up, but as my good Mother always says, that’s why the good lord invented coffee and barbiturates.
So, where were we? Ah, yes, I remember. The heady days of early April…
After Theresa May’s rather out-of-the-blue declaration that she would be throwing years of partisan exclusivity overboard and inviting Labour Party Leader and Designated Media Hatesponge Jeremy “The Venezuelan Hitler” Corbyn to Downing Street for talks on a possible Brexit compromise, quite a few people prognosticated that this was pretty clearly just another in a long line of clumsily executed political feints designed to frighten the Tory Party’s Extreme Right-Wing back into the fold. “Get voting for my deal or I’ll let this grubby little Marxist rub his Das Kapital all over your precious Brexit”, type of thing. Other people insisted that, no, she was just seeking political cover for another ‘Crisis on the Cliff-Edge of No-Deal’ drama that would plonk all of the blame for the Government’s failure onto the Labour Leader’s narrow shoulders and let the Tories slither away from any lasting responsibility for their colossal upfuckery, her final and most personal gift to the unforgiving Party of Raw Power before stepping down to spend more time with her husband’s hedge-fund millions.
In fact, there were infinitely more theories about what May’s decision to hold cross-party talks meant than there were expectations for their success, because the simple fact of the matter was that, once the shock of the announcement itself wore off, no one, whatever their politics, nationality or mental condition, believed for a single solitary second that she meant any of it. This is a woman with epically negative levels of credibility, whom even her political allies lament possesses all the negotiating finesse of a smothering pillow. Whatever she might have to say or do to get through the next day, or week or month has zero bearing on her ultimate plan, and that plan has been out in the open for about six months. She wants her Deal and Her version of Brexit, and those are the only terms on offer. Her inability to understand that Other. People. Know. This. Theresa. It’s. Not. A. Secret. isn’t her only failure as a politician, but it’s a stonkingly relevant one.
But we digress. As a result of May’s re-enactment of the Nazi/Soviet Pact (with Corbyn playing both of them, natch) and the Government’s vague promise to come back to Parliament should the cross-party effort (inevitably) fail, the immediate pressure was off the few dozen Tory MPs who would have to buck their Party’s increasingly theoretical notion of discipline in order for Parliament to take control of its own workings, leaving them free to indulge their innate twatishness and make Hillary Benn (changeling son of deceased Socialist firebrand Tony Benn and Chairman of the Select Committee for Exiting the EU as Slowly as Possible) cry tears of moderate-centrism by voting down his motion to authorise the next round of Indicative Votes. Drama in Parliament indeed.
The plan had been for MPs to spend Monday, 8th April debating and voting on a shrinking number of alternatives to the Prime Minister’s phantom deal until they ended up with a compromise that could gain a majority, but the procedural vote to allow this to happen ended up tied with 310 for and 310 against. Enter Speaker John the Bear-Cow, heroic defender of Parliament’s rights and privileges against the Undead Claw of Government. This time, however, he caused a right old hubbity-hub by voting with the Government to reject the motion, on the pretty justifiable grounds that big changes to national policy should only pass the House if they can win a majority, and the Living Avatar of Neutrality shouldn’t really be the swing vote in making that happen.
(We can pause here for a moment while our American Juicers return their seats to an upright position and signal the steward for a refill. Rest assured that at that exact moment, in a cash-filled cardboard box somewhere in the Capitol area of DC, Mitch McConnell felt a very great disturbance in the Force and munched on another green leaf of democracy until his shell stopped trembling – but it took a while.)
Back in the UK, Brexiteers wobbled their wattles in approval of The Bear-Cow’s wisdom, but were very soon wattle-slapping in crimson indignation as the Cooper-Letwin Bill – which made the Prime Minister legally obligated to seek a Brexit extension from the EU in order to prevent Britain from defaulting into a No-Deal on April 12th – passed by 313 votes to 312. Yet more drama. Political correspondents were left emoting breathlessly in front of jittery cameras, skin gleaming and eyes glazed at the sheer onanistic Meaningfulness of it all. This was Politics at its most pugilistic. Two opposing forces, battered and exhausted, trading meaty punches that left Government and Parliament alike staggering on the canvas with Brexit itself in doubt. Baby Jeebus in polished spats but they love a good political rumble do our politics intelligensia, especially one they can cover as an Event rather than a Things that has Real World consequences. OTOH, if it makes Quitters cry, I’ll allow it.
What made the Sultans of Quit really furious was that Parliament had agreed to speed-pass the C-L Bill through all of its readings so that it could be sent to the House of Lords ASAP and get similarly rushed through that august nest of knights, knobs and known paedophiles to end up on the Queen’s chicory-and-beech bureau that same evening, be signed, and immediately become Law. This was a mockery of democracy, they said. Go fuck yourselves, said everyone else. With less than a week until the next emergency meeting of the European Heads of Government it was important that Parliament officially took the threat of No-Deal off the table and made it crystal clear that the UK’s elected representatives wanted and expected its Government to stop using it as a threat. With the actors playing Boris the Bore and Darth Rees-Moggius retiring from front-line gaslighting in advance of a Tory Leadership election, it was left to z-list Quitlings like egg-shaped stupidity bomb Mark Francois to belly-flop into the empty post of Spokesman for a Nation in Chains and spark a hundred thousand identical Twitter threads simply entitled “Why? #thesefuckingclowns” by announcing that 17.4 million is a bigger number than 1, so boo-sucks and God Bless Brexit. Catnip for the Quitters, yes, but he then proved himself tragically out of step with his fellow Tories by quoting that Jesus fellow’s last words on the cross, which led to much eyerolling amongst the Presseratti, while inadvertently causing the Honourable Members for Carfax and Whitby to go up like fireworks on the benches behind him.
In any event, the best the Brexiteers in the Lords could do once the Bill had been express-posted over to them was filibuster the hell out of it with basically the same speech over and over and over again, bemoaning how rude it was to expect them to pass this Bill overnight just to save the country from plunging out of the painstakingly constructed global trading/financial/diplomatic order and becoming a howling wasteland of empty factories and roving hordes of unemployed librarians. Fair point, but once the first nine had got it out of their systems and returned to Mordor on swift black steeds, the usual whispered conversations were had, and the slightly less creepy apparitions who were in favour of passing it agreed to wait until Monday for the final reading. Honour was satisfied and they all went off to Foxy Roxy’s for tequila and vinegar-strokes. Parliamentary sovereignty for da win.
The talks between Labour and the Government then grumbled on pretty much as people had expected. Labour set out what its version of a ‘successful’ Brexit policy would look like, which I won’t bore you with here because there’s no such beast afoot in forest or field. Yes, a second referendum or confirmatory vote was one of the possibilities Labour brought to the table, but since Jezza the Joo-Hater didn’t mount the meeting table with “A People’s Vote or I’ll Hide The Remote” carved in blood on his naked bum-cheeks and dry hump a EU flag while playing the first bars of Ode to Joy on a child’s penny-whistle, the usual suspects in the ‘liberal media’, like the Fuck The Fucking Manchester Guardian (hereforafter referred to as the FTFMG), declared him a treasonous sell-out who should stop making them hit him and step down at once in favour of someone they’d feel more comfortable having a drink with in an exclusive London restaurant while talking long into the night about low taxes and how dishy David Miliband is.
Oddly enough, though, now that the long-lasting Labour policy of keeping the Party together while the Tories punched themselves repeatedly in the junk had born fruit, a very strange and un-British thing was happening. Despite the tired old propaganda Labour was maintaining a form of message discipline and making it clear that they were more than willing to keep on working towards a compromise, but to do that they needed the Government to do more than just smile and nod and turn the conversation back to “Yes, but isn’t our Withdrawal Deal just lovely?” Even weirder, more and more senior(ish) Tories outside of the ranks of Sworn Heirs to the Iron (Lady) Throne were starting to speak out on how acceptable and reasonable they found many of Labour’s arguments to be. It was almost like Corbyn and his team knew what they were doing…. which wasn’t in the script at all. Time for another ratfucking splurge of “Labour anti-semitism scandal!” headlines reliant on stolen e-mails lovingly curated and parcelled out by those fine, upstanding fellows at the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times. It’s almost like… strangely familiar… can’t quite put my finger on…. Dillary? Pillory? Ah, never mind, I’m sure it’ll come to me eventually.
Back at the Bunker, with no cards left to play and time running out, Theresa May packed her Midsomer Murders lunchbox (plain crow-breast sandwiches, no crust, two apples, single bottle of salt water, shitloads of prescription medication and a pre-written note to explain why she’d downed the lot) and left these shores for another mission behind enemy lines, this time to negotiate the extension she didn’t want on terms she had no control over. The European heads of Government she was going to negotiate with (So that’s how you spell grovel in Esperanto? Dankon!) would much rather have been discussing a united front against Russia, trade with China, or a hundred other issues of actual importance to the lives of half a billion people, but here they were again being asked to prop up the crumbling outer husk of a once important power that couldn’t – or wouldn’t – rein in its own extremists. In the old days partition and laughably one-sided trade agreements would have been on the cards, but Europe doesn’t operate like that anymore, especially not in situations where one or both of those outcomes will happen under their own stream anyway unless someone gets a grip and reality gets a look-in.
So what we got then was a strictly two-track theatre production with Britain playing the role of Speechless Invalid Confined to Bed With Malady while all of the other 27 nations took turns coming onstage to display whatever emotion (or lack of) their domestic audiences would find most agreeable, while the dedicated bureaucrats cobbled together the real deal over coffee and a Continental Breakfast. Much fun was had back in London as the BBC continued its mission to stick microphones under the noses of as many Brexiteers as are sufficient and necessary to fill a 24/7 Infotainment loop forever and ever, prompting the tiny alien worm that dwells within Jacob Rees-Mogg’s ill-fitting human shell to threaten the E.U. with various acts of internal sabotage should they grant May a further Brexit extension, while the Tory Leader of the House of Commons, Andrea Leadsom, possessing as she does the single most finely honed political intellect since Lord North, suggested (out loud) that the German Government was on the verge of reopening the Withdrawal Agreement to remove the parts the extreme Quitters didn’t like, which came as news to the German Government, and was clearly what Frau Merkel and Prisoner May were chuckling over while looking at the German Chancellor’s tablet. Quite how Britain was going to manage vetoing the E.U. Budget and putting the kibosh on a European Army when – according to Brexiteer propaganda, at least – the UK was an emasculated vassal-state completely bound by Brussels Bureaucracy, was a question that the Media could have asked Old Moggie to expand upon, but they didn’t, and so the vile stench of Europhobic hooliganism was allowed to drift across the Channel and up the finely flared nostrils of Le Petit Roi Emmanuel I, who stamped his hand-stitched patent leather heel at the effrontery of Les Rosbifs and demanded that they be punished by… agreeing to the same 30th June withdrawal cut-off May was asking for. Incroyable.
In the end, and because France’s furious rage was always more flash than bang, May didn’t get her short extension. Indeed, after a day during which various high-ranking European negotiators and bureaucrats got up in front of the Media and uniformly ‘implied’ – as in, said over and over and over again, with emphasis added, so strongly that you’d need a brain made of cork in order to miss the very clear message contained within – that the compromises Labour was suggesting May agree to were just fine with them and why didn’t she piss off back to the Land of Mist and Fog to do just that, the Heads of Government announced that Britain would be getting not an extension, but rather a ‘flextension’. Less pornographic than it sounds, it just meant that Britain would be given up to Halloween (lovely bit of trolling there, bravo) to get its act together, but if it managed to do it sooner it could go and do one at a moment’s notice.
Yay! Another stay of execution! I’m still a European citizen and the impetus to Leave Right Now ebbs further each day we stay in. Plus, two whole weeks of nothing to do with Brexit since Parliament voted to go on its Easter Recess as soon as May returned from her latest European Humiliation Tour. Blessed release, though in the absence of anything real to report on I can expect endless wankery about Labour’s internal divisions and multiple fallatory emissions asking (rhetorically) if the clean-limbed and modestly-scented Paladins of the Arseholes Formerly Known As The Independent Group are just the bestest and most popular thing ever? Bleaugh.
However, there’s the little matter of elections to the European Parliament due to be held on 23rd May to throw up a few delicious little issues.
1) The Tories DO NOT WANT to take part in the Euro Elections. For one thing they’ll get utterly slaughtered. Forget the Marne or the Somme, we’re talking cartoon levels of political choppy-choppy here. Their own Base either won’t vote or will decamp to Farage’s new Brexit Party or to the full-on fascism of modern UKIP, and everyone else will be unified in voting – against – the Tories. And these elections will need a manifesto for each Party – what the hell are the Tories (and to a lesser extent Labour) going to put in there that won’t lead to civil-war?
2) Parliament comes back on April 23rd, which means it has a month to agree some kind of compromise withdrawal deal or else Britain HAS to take part in the elections. If there is no movement in the cross-party talks between Labour and the Tories then that would mean the Government itself having to open it up to more Indicative Votes, which would again fracture the bloody hell out of the Tories.
3) Plus, on 2nd May we have Local Elections taking place all over the country, with the Tories expected to take a massive battering in those as well. It won’t affect the balance of the House of Commons, but it would be a clear signal of the mood of the nation and that can’t bode well for the Party in power. Plus, the natural result of the two main parties butting heads on an electoral battlefield has to have real consequences for any on-going cross-party negotiations, not to mention how distracting they will be for the respective Party leaderships.
4) On the 9th of May the EU meets to discuss its long-term future, and Britain is specifically not invited. Much red-meat there for the Europhobic nutcases, but also deeply humiliating for the Government. Taking back control? Do me a favour, Theresa.
5) On the topic of a 2nd Referendum or Confirmatory Vote, current law states that it would have to get moving through Parliament by mid-May at the latest or it couldn’t take place before the Halloween ‘Cut-off and Bye-Bye Go Die’ date for the Flextension. I’d expect that a LOT of things will start coming to a head by then.
6) Oh, and finally, the Supply and Consent deal between the Tories and the DUP that allows the Tories to form a Government lapsed when this double-length session of Parliament was ended. It’s still up in the air whether the Nutters from Norneyelund would agree to another one without substantial bribery/concessions from May’s Government, and I can’t see currently where the political space for that exists. What happens if May can’t get her next Queen’s Speech/Budget through Parliament? I think that’s technically game over, man. Game over.
Right, that’s all I’ve got the energy to say about it all. Things have happened, other things will happen and some of them even need to happen, but at the end of the day, someone is going to fuck up, and it’s unlikely there’ll be enough cake to go around, and that means WAR!
Back to your regularly scheduled sniping over which prospective Democratic candidate for President (sit down, Wilmer) is best/worst/can say ‘Nyet’ convincingly (sit down, Wilmer). And no GOT spoilers outside of clearly labelled threads or I will go Hound on your #@$#ing selves. /s
Amir Khalid
Some Democratic presidential candidate should come out and say it: “It would be wonderful to be able to reach out to the Republican party and work together with them for the betterment of America. But we have to live with the reality: the betterment of America, for all Americans, is not what the Republican want.”
WaterGirl
@Mike in Pasadena: You forgot “Hey, Bernie, this is the day you said you would release them – where are your taxes?”
Ruckus
@Mike in Pasadena:
It’s April 15, BS where are your tax returns?
cmorenc
@SFAW:
Yeah, what the heck is it with the scoldy pontificating professor-lady and her ivory-tower policy positions? When what voters really want is a real man who consults his guts rather than policy papers to make decisive decisions on things needing a decider. Or perhaps a candidate who leads through sheer charisma like Beta O’Rourke or Pete Buttigieg who fit in neat sound and visual bytes, instead of having to wade through turgid position papers that are a PITA to read. Or, since 2020 seems to be the season for female D presidential candidates, how ’bout Kamala Harris, cause she was a tough-ass prosecutor lady, ’nuff said, no need to dive into her positions beyond that.
Geez, I wish I was only being smart-ass sarcastic here, instead of all-too-accurately capturing the state of media coverage of the various D campaigns.
Gin & Tonic
@opiejeanne: I am not up on county-level politics in CA, sorry, I just mentioned a fact I looked up. Cook Political Report rates CA-15 as D+20. If you believe that’s wrong, take it up with Cook, I guess.
Mandalay
@Barbara:
Right. Having visited the My Plan for America page of his campaign web site, I can’t decide whether he’s a well meaning idiot, or a slick con man. His “plan” is just three paragraphs of pink unicorn pablum which probably took 15 minutes to dream up and type.
Perhaps Swalwell has delusions of grandeur because he won his district by a massive margin, but he needs to raise his game and get a lot more specific on his policies PDQ. It’s all fine and dandy “calling for a mandatory national ban and buyback of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons“, but if he can’t provide a realistic explanation of how he would get that through Congress it’s meaningless (and borderline dishonest) to even raise the issue.
At the moment he is coming across (to me) as a clueless amateur who is promising stuff that he can’t possibly deliver.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Speaking of things that make Trump unhappy, today is Apr 15 in my time zone. Wasn’t Apr 15 the day Barr promised to release the Mueller report (albeit with everything but the title page blacked out in crayon)? What day is it in Barr’s time zone?
opiejeanne
@Gin & Tonic:Thanks. I wasn’t disputing what you wrote, I just asked what “Cook” meant. I was thinking Cook county, not Cook Political Report (because this is the first I’ve heard of them).
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Tony Jay: Seriously, I think we value your Brexit commentary so most of us are happy to see it whatever the purported subject of the thread. Except possibly a “no politics” thread, though I would argue that for Americans, British politics is so foreign that reading about it is more like watching a Game of Thrones episode [*] than actually reading about politics.
[*] Disclaimer: I’ve never actually watched a Game of Thrones episode.
Major Major Major Major
@SFAW: hey, wait, I care about how a front-pager feels!
Barbara
@opiejeanne: I became friendly with someone who worked in the Bush White House as a liaison for immigration reform (which Bush to his credit actually tried to pass), through my kid’s school. Well, immigration reform did not pass and he left the White House shortly after that and went back to California with his family. He was at one point the head of the California Republican Party, or maybe just their head spokesperson. I guess after having to respond one too many times to some outrageous racist behavior from one of the local parties he finally couldn’t take it anymore and now works for some kind of non-partisan think tank. I vividly remember seeing his name in an article about some Orange County Republican women’s group that thought it was funny to pass around the proposed redesign of the $5 bill during the Obama administration, showing a picture of Obama eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds. I don’t think things have actually improved since then so I would not be looking to California Republicans for real solutions to real problems anytime soon.
Major Major Major Major
@cmorenc:
Really, you’re gonna go with one of the names the alt-right calls him?
dmsilev
@Barbara: Most of the remaining California Republicans are people like Devin Nunes and Kevin McCarthy, so yeah, not exactly shining beacons of bipartisanship. The sane ones left the party years ago.
SFAW
@cmorenc:
Yeah, me too.
Ruckus
@Mandalay:
He’s actually running for high school senior class president. Promise the world because you know and expect to have absolutely no power.
Is it possible he’s grifting here, hopefully (for him) raising money and profile and he expects to get what maybe 2% of the vote? Or he’s been bought and paid for as that 2% drain on the total vote in 2020 and his run in his D20 district was a complete sham? He’s actually a republican? Or the next BS? But too ashamed to admit it……
Gin & Tonic
@opiejeanne: Sorry, I thought Cook PVI was pretty well-understood here. It’s kind of a shorthand way of describing a Congressional district. The Cook Political Report is (I think) generally viewed as pretty well-informed and fairly neutral.
schrodingers_cat
I wish we had a parliamentary system with Nancy Pelosi as the PM. I like her far more than most people who have announced the intention to run for President.
SFAW
@Major Major Major Major:
Which one? Freddie deBoer? Now THERE was a Front Pager to write home about. Or something.
schrodingers_cat
BTW has Warren ever explained why she was an R until her mid to late forties? Why did she become a D?
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Me too. You break it down so well in language that I can understand.
rikyrah
@Mandalay:
Got no time for someone spouting this kind of foolishness.
Major Major Major Major
@opiejeanne: Cook is a good and common(?) source for figures like “D/R +n district.”
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
I read your posts and just get frustrated.What I wouldn’t do to have been able to have elections to truly get rid of Dolt45 far ahead of 2020.
I hope the Tories do get slaughtered.
But, Labour has done itself no favors by keeping that twerp Corbyn.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
@Barbara:
The CA republicans are desperate though, as in not stupid enough to not see that their power is
graduallyrapidly falling into Grand Canyon levels of nowhere. I mean they send ME emails thanking me for being a republican. I send them back emails with every other word being about how fucking stupid and horrible they are. I’m serious, every other word is fuck. At least they are smart enough to get the message.catclub
@MattF:
I would put it on all the new shiny women Democratic reps that the GOP can get their hate on towards.
Instead of X will support the Pelosi democrats, so vote against X,
it will be X is in the same party as Ilhan Omar and AOC.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@schrodingers_cat: Is this the new line of right-wing attack that we’re internalizing? Is there actual evidence of conservative politics in her record? What?
Can you point it out for me in her Wiki article? I’m not seeing it.
I’m not attacking you, but there is an already-established pattern over the last few months of opposition research on our primary candidates suddenly popping up and circulating in the left blogosphere, out of the blue. It is very clear that the troll farms are up and running, and please let’s be careful about repeating rumors.
Major Major Major Major
@SFAW: Alain, obviously. Certainly not myself.
schrodingers_cat
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: She was an R until mid 90s she has said so in interviews herself.
Politico had an article recently. I scanned it.
gene108
@Mandalay:
Lincolns cabinet were all good, loyal, Republicans. They just opposed each other for the 1860 Presidential nomination.
Team of rivals fits Obama hiring Hillary as SoS.
kindness
It’s odd in that this morning I saw a lot of comments in articles talking up that Nancy didn’t defend Cong. Omar enough from Trump’s not so veiled death threats and that Nancy sucked as speaker again. I get really tired of the Intertubes Wurlitzer. Not sure it they are all trolls or just BernieBros swinging for Nancy’s kneecaps. I love me some Nancy and think she’s a treasure.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@schrodingers_cat: And her political stances on issues we care about? What specifically are we objecting to?
opiejeanne
@dmsilev: When we lived in Alameda County many years ago we had a “sane” one but he was an exception even then. The other type in the Bay Area were being turfed out following the 101 California shooting if they were dumb enough to refuse to listen to the survivors, and several were. One refused to meet with them and he was gone in the next election, in a district that had leaned R for years.
Tom Campbell. He has since left the Republican Party. He lost the party nomination for US Senate to Michael Huffington, who was soundly thrashed by Feinstein. Huffington was an outspoken critic of gays, and as soon as he lost the election came out of the closet and divorced Arianna. The Huffingtons make my head hurt.
catclub
@Ruckus: send them a dime so they will keep sending you mail and wasting their money doing it.
schrodingers_cat
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I am not objecting to anything. I would like to know about what brought about the transformation from R to D for her. We all know about JGC and Terry Schiavo. These stories interest me, about any former R, especially one running for President.
chopper
@Ruckus:
that’s what i’m waiting for. wilmer promised they’d come out today and we all know he never breaks a promise to release his tax returns.
opiejeanne
@Major Major Major Major: I learn so much here.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: googling it, there’s an interview from a few years ago where she said,
e.g. https://m.mic.com/articles/121553/elizabeth-warren-republican-past-gop#.iFIfxDdMF
I’m sure she’ll be asked about it soon though.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: Rs dumped Keynes long before the mid 90s. Was she asleep during the Reagan years. To find Rs being somewhat sane about economics one has to go back to Nixon.
Mike in Pasadena
@Mike in Pasadena: Wahington Post: Mueller report expected Thursday. Post credits the DOJ with that bit of news.
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
In politics one has to vote for who’s on the ballot. That may be the best that wants to be in politics there. We have no room to talk either. We have DT/McConnell, here in CA there’s Devin Nunes, a walking block of worm infested wood. At lest we’ve got a number of candidates running to replace the shitheads with actual people who aren’t playing the second incarnation of the devil.
chopper
@SFAW:
oh man, freddie boners. that was a fun time.
Major Major Major Major
@kindness: defending Omar by name on Twitter on Friday became a litmus test on left-Twitter.
Major Major Major Major
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t get the impression she was following politics closely at the time.
opiejeanne
@schrodingers_cat: Sorry, who is JGC? I know who/what Schiavo is.
Ruckus
@catclub:
Email. Costs far less than a dime.
And besides I don’t want republican cooties. There are enough of the real thing around, I don’t need a reminder of that.
rikyrah
@kindness:
She only made sure that the security was increased on the Congresswoman and her family and her offices. You know..small stuff..
schrodingers_cat
@opiejeanne: Our blog father, servant to the his Greatness the Late Tunch.
NY Robbin
@Mandalay:
Gag!! It sounds like he’s running for president of the green room at Hardball and Morning Joe’s.
opiejeanne
@schrodingers_cat: Oh! How could I miss that?!
Honestly, maybe I need more sleep. I feel like I’m only half awake and it’s after 9am here.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
I believe that she’s been asked about it a bunch and she hasn’t shied away from explaining it. Lots of people were republican for a long time who changed parties because while the republican party really hasn’t changed in my lifetime the things they publicly promise and desire have. CA was republican for the first half of my life and it’s only now that we have been getting rid of most of the last hold outs districts and in state government, in which democrats hold a supermajority. As I said CA republicans are desperate, they are an open oozing wound and most everyone knows it.
Barbara
@Ruckus: In the world of insurance, we call this unmitigated adverse selection resulting in a death spiral.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just going by the “meh” reaction to Trump’s tweets I have a hard time seeing him reelected. His whole act is based on being a shock politician and the audience is bored now from over exposure.
kindness
@rikyrah: Mind you I’m referring to the Internet wunderkids for whom no one is pure or good enough. Nancy has made every call properly in my view considering the larger screen she is playing to.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Many people Warren’s (and my) age do go back politically to Nixon. It was a different time and some of the Democrats weren’t all that and a bag of chips either. But they learn. She obviously did, many have not. HRC learned as well, at a younger age. A lot of people followed their parents in politics and a lot did exactly the opposite. Vietnam was a major swing point for a lot of people politically. There is a reason that raven says “Fuck LBJ.” I’m not saying that LBJ was the limit for EW or HRC but for a lot of people he was.
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
WTF? This is a post about Speaker Pelosi!
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: Rs have been pretty horrible about economics and most of that rot began with Reagan
1. Government is the problem
2. Regulation is bad
3. Tax cuts solve everything
4. Demonization of unions
5. Cutting taxes increases revenue, the so called Laffer curve etc.
6. He started defanging the regulatory apparatus put in place to rein the capital markets after the great depression and so on..
The list is endless. Elizabeth Warren’s specialty is financial regulation, so the question of how she was an R during Reagan and later is a valid question.
Ruckus
@NY Robbin:
Nice one.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
Well in CA they are desperate. They lost Orange county. That’s past the beginning of the end for them. Their flop sweat smells like desperation and AXE. And that’s never been a good smell. Ever.
Uncle Cosmo
@Betty Cracker:
C’mon, Cracker, you’re smarter than that. Swalwell’s safe in his deep-blue district with >70% of the vote, but the wide world outside is another matter. If he’s going to catch fire, he needs a way to create separation from the bevy of other contenders. He’s betting that there’s enough hankering among rank&file Democrats for the LIGOD (Largely Imaginary Good Old Days) of (somewhat) responsible bipartisanship with (marginally) responsible Republicans to get him traction. It’s a long-shot but for a Rep largely unknown outside the Peoples Republic of California it’s not a stupid strategy. If his candidacy fails to take off in the next 6 months (& he ought to know by then from the fundraising $$$ & polling) he just heads home & files for reelection with no harm done & a bit of national exposure to show for it..
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
I agree 100%.
That was not the perception a lot of people had for a long time. It’s not the perception a lot of people still hold. But then a lot of people think that economics is how well are they doing, not how well is the over all economy, what direction is it going in. Ours has been unhealthy for a lot longer than I’ve been alive, it has always deflected from overall to how well are the rich doing. And they ain’t doing all that bad in the land of steal from everyone to enrich the few. But the rich have mined all the easy to vacuum up loose change and have been getting more and more desperate for every penny. And a lot of people don’t have any loose change left. And the republican party is the party of the economy. Not the real economy, of everyone, obviously, they are the party of economy of the rich. Which is one reason BS is almost hilarious, he argues about the real economy but really supports and enjoys that republican economy.
Tony Jay
@SFAW:
Curses! Foiled again!
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
@schrodingers_cat:
I see that I really didn’t answer your question. EW and HRC and a lot of others saw that republicans were lying about the very thing that made them attractive in the first place. Republicans have always lied about that because if they didn’t their support would have dried up long ago. Truly study economics and how it works and the lies become obvious. EW has and they did.
ThresherK
@O. Felix Culpa: No problem. Glad you enjoyed it.
hueyplong
@Uncle Cosmo: Caught my attention, so as to eliminate him.
Admittedly, few candidates attempt to appeal to me.
Betty Cracker
@Uncle Cosmo: Running to the right in a Democratic primary seems like a dumb strategy to me, especially when Democrats are as fired up as they are about Trump’s daily assault on the rule of law and Republicans’ abetting of same. (shruggies)
Miss Bianca
I was honestly not expecting to be as impressed with Warren as I am. She’s at the top of my personal candidate pile, with Harris a close second.
Mandalay
@Uncle Cosmo:
Swalwell doesn’t need to wait that long. He already knows that he has about as much chance as Bristol Palin of becoming the Democratic nominee.
The most charitable explanation I can find for Swalwell running is that it should provide him with very useful experience for running in 2024 or later. Even the weaker candidates surely learn a lot about fundraising, presentation skills, campaign organization and winning hearts and minds.
If he emerges from the campaign as well as Martin O’Malley did against Hillary Clinton he’ll be fine. He just needs to watch out that he doesn’t become a joke candidate in the process (e.g. Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb in 2016).
SFAW
@Tony Jay:
I hope you were twirling the end(s) of your moustaches when you wrote this.
Miss Bianca
@Tony Jay: OK, who else here thinks that Tony Jay should enjoy FP status for as long as the Brexit shitshow goes on (and on and on and on)?
patrick II
Pelosi is at once an excellent tactician but with a broad ideological and strategic vision. Her tactics are always in the context of what is important to make people’s lives better. It is a rare combination. Yes indeed, Mr. Trump, the Russian attack is more than about you.
patrick II
@Mandalay:
Ask President Obama how that worked out.
Miss Bianca
@Barbara: Yeah, my daddy was a Republican too and I KNOW there are no good Republicans out there, so what’s his damn excuse?
patrick II
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t know, but I’ll take a shot. In her late 40’s would make her conversion in the late 90’s. She is an economist who had seen the bankruptcy of Reagan policies, was watching Clinton run a surplus with higher taxes, and saw more Republican supply-side B.S. coming with whatever Republican was going to win (Bush most likely). Unlike many other Republican economists who treat economics as religion, she can do math, and her ideal for a successful economy isn’t just bankers getting rich, but people doing well generally. She is a decent person. So, she reevaluated, that’s my guess.
WaterGirl
@Miss Bianca: You are not alone in that thought, but Tony Jay graciously declined in a thread last week.
Sab
@schrodingers_cat: In 1980 they passed a big bankruptcy bill. Lots of young lawyers worked in that area because the old guys didn’t understand it much better than the novices.
She started working in that area and was involved in academic research projects, talking to a lot of the debtors. She seems to have come to the realization that her own family’s financial problems weren’t just rare bad luck but were sort of systemic and not atypical.
ETA: why did Warren stop being Republican
Uncle Cosmo
@Betty Cracker: It’s the only way he can possibly get noticed – too crowded in the dump-Trump region of the spectrum.
More than that though, IMO there is a significant fraction of Democrats who just want it all to go away – go back to the way things (allegedly) were. Damn few of us are willing to fight it out with the Trumpists day after day after fucking day – & never stop fighting them. Even if we drive them back under their rocks, damn few are willing to take our shift day after day after fucking day standing over those rocks with a loaded shotgun ready to blast them whenever they sneak a look out. Damn few of the melanin-deficient Dems are willing to undertake the long, hard, slow effort to drag this country toward justice. I’m not a bigot! I have lots of black/Latinx/LGBTQ friends! Life is hard enough as it is, why does it have to be even harder? Can’t we all just get along? Etc.
Lots of people grew up saying Please God, make it didn’t happen! There’s a clientele for white male candidates in the Democratic (& larger) electorate who pitch the notion that everything will be better & easier if we can just find those
magical unicorns“good Republicans” who we can agree onmost somea few basic things with, & just turn back the clock…NB I am not agreeing with this. I am only saying that it’s not nearly as stupid a strategy for running for the Democratic nomination as it might seem.
Uncle Cosmo
@patrick II: EW is a lawyer, not an economist – & lawyers are notoriously bad at any math that doesn’t involve billable hours (JK). Read Sab’s comment above for a more plausible take.
Just Chuck
FTFY, Eric.
patrick II
@Uncle Cosmo:
Thanx U.C. I should have wiki’d first.
J R in WV
@opiejeanne:
John G. Cole, owner of the blog you are commenting upon… I know his middle name, but I’ll stick to the Middle Initial in case the G is a secret.
Msb
Tony Jay’s summary was brilliant (though I like The a Guardian more, and Corbyn less, than he does).
And Speaker Pelosi was great on 60 minutes. Does anybody know whether she consulted experts on how to deal with a narcissist? The things she says make great sense to normal people and drive him crazier than usual. Brilliant. And she never takes her eyes off the prize.
Adam Geffen
@SFAW:
“but there’s just something about her that bothers me. I don’t know what it is. She’s just not likable or something. And she seems over-prepared.”
This describes well how I feel about Mayor Pete. Which bothers me a bit. He’s gay. I’m gay (queer). I feel like I should be supporting the gay guy in the running. It bothers me that I don’t like him for vague (irrational?) reasons. ~shrug~ I mean I don’t not-like him. I just don’t like him.
Re Warren, I’ve been a fan (dare I say fan-boy) of her since I was a wee lad in law school. She was already at Harvard Law by that point and was prominent for her work in bankruptcy and commercial law, that’s what got her on my radar. She is just so f’ing smart.