Susan Collins just got a great Democratic challenger:
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) drew a high-profile Democratic challenger Monday, as Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon announced her candidacy with a video that sought to undermine Collins’s carefully tended moderate image.
I upped the goal on the Balloon Juice Senate challenger fund. (Update: I had the wrong link up below but I fixed it now.)
Boudica
I don’t know if Sara is smiling, but I am!
MomSense
I can’t copy and paste comments on my wicked smaht phone but I posted her announcement video and some explanation of some of the places featured in the video. I like Sara a lot and I think she has a chance and she’d be a great Senator.
rikyrah
come on everyone….Little Susie’s GOTTA GO!!
germy
Doug! I owe you an apology. I remember thinking you were overly cynical when you expressed skepticism about Andrew Cuomo’s commitment to cannabis legalization. But you were right. He gave a speech, and then walked away to let the others fight it out. He said he didn’t want to “twist anybody’s arm” and so sat back and watched it fail.
(If I’ve got you confused with a different Doug here, then never mind…
James E Powell
@MomSense:
Thanks for your reply to me in the earlier thread. Here’s a link to Sara Gideon’s website with the announcement video.
James E Powell
@germy:
It’s impossible to be overly cynical when talking about Andrew Cuomo
Mary G
The ActBlue says it’s for Jackie Rosen and Kristen Sinema, who aren’t up for five more years??
AliceBlue
@MomSense: When was the last time Collins had a challenger?
germy
germy
@James E Powell: It’s not for nothing he’s called The Prince Of Darkness.
Doug!
@germy:
I’m skeptical about all things Andrew Cuomo so it probably was me
germy
Tom is another one who needs to be sent back to the private sector.
Doug!
@Mary G:
Thanks! Fixed it
MomSense
@AliceBlue: 2014 Shenna Bellows.
She was the former exec dir of Maine ACLU. She was at best a long shot but I think she got really bad advice about how to present herself. She used to go to a lot of community meetings when she was with ACLU and she was this young, cool sort of firebrand. Some idiot consultant told her she needed to look older or more respectable or some foolishness and when I saw her at a campaign event she was wearing terrible, ill fitting, sort of frumpy suits. It was so stupid. For decades we always hear the worry about young people moving away and here was an actual young person who wanted to stay. Jesus, go back to your cool young person look.
Ohio Mom
@MomSense: I just found/watched Sara Gideon’s announcement video and it gave me the good kind of goosebumps.
I spent part of this morning calling my Republican Senator and Rep’s offices and explaining to cluelessness interns exactly what a concentration camp was, how I know that because I lost family in the camps and grew up among survivors who were all permanently scarred, how the offices in Central America where people could apply for asylum were closed, creating the crowds on the border to score political points, etc., etc.
It left me all riled up and that video was an antidote. It’s good to see a glimmer of hope. Plus, it’s good to imagine Susan Collins defeated electorally and emotionally. Heh.
rikyrah
@James E Powell:
UH HUH
UH HUH
MomSense
@Ohio Mom:
She is in my favorite yarn shop in the video! Halcyon-it’s an institution in the Midcoast. She also stands in front of the famous crane at Bath Iron Works. Another absolute fixture in all our lives.
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom:
They were just playing with you. They knew better.
schrodingers_cat
@germy: It is sad when someone hyped up by the media as a formidable intellect has difficulty in mastering one fucking language.
Another Scott
Thanks for these thermometers.
What happened to that $3M or whatever that was raised for Collins’s [opponent]? I assume that is still out there? (Or am I confused about who that was for?)
The WaPo story says that she has to win the primary first, with the implication that she should win it easily. Personally, after IronStache, I’m nervous about getting too invested in people too far before the primary.
But it’s great that Collins will have to fight for her seat!
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
@schrodingers_cat: I sometimes wonder if the only books he’s ever read were the Ayn Rand ones.
germy
Belafon
And MJ Hegar has announced her run against John Cornyn: https://twitter.com/mjhegar/status/1142808441003622400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Betty Cracker
AP reports that most of the 300 children our government was abusing in that remote TX facility have been moved to other facilities. It’s good that the Trump admin felt enough heat to disband that particular concentration camp, but where are they now?
schrodingers_cat
@germy: Do we know that he has actually read them. I have only read one Ayn Rand book, Anthem. The other two doorstops were impossible to read.
schrodingers_cat
@Betty Cracker: Are they safe?
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Yes, where are they now? It’s not like that this group can be trusted with their safety. Or, with the tracking system to keep up with them.
Don’t forget – they lowered, if not outright cut out the background check requirement for those who wanted to keep the children. Can we say CHILD TRAFFICKING ANYONE?
Uncle Cosmo
@germy: Read? Audio books, while he was curling dumbbells with a baseball cap on backwards.
You’re quite welcome! :^D
Ohio Mom
@rikyrah: No, some of them don’t know anything. I try engaging them in conversation and sometimes it works. This morning I taught one of them what marginal tax rates were.
Today I ended with, When you are washing up tonight with soap, brushing your teeth, and then lying in your soft bed under your blanket, I want you to think about those children in those concentration camps, with no sanitation, lying on concrete under a Mylar blanket, and ask yourself, Why am I associated with the political party that is responsible for this?
I assure them they are a nice young person with their whole lives ahead of them and that they have time to examine their conscious and turn themselves around.
Unless I’ve already been through half a dozen interns, then I’m out of patience.
Does my motherly guilt trip work? I don’t know but it is worth a try. Most eor have to hear things numerous times before it sinks in (lots of research showing this).
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
I totally believe that they are being lowballed about the deaths of the migrants. In the back of my mind…I think that we will ultimately find mass graves???
joel hanes
@Another Scott:
What happened to that $3M
It’s well over $4M now, and Ady Barkan is still alive and I presume will ensure that it gets to Gideon.
https://secure.actblue.com/donate/fund-susan-collins-future-opponent
Part of it came from me. Fuck you Susan Collins, you worthless pretender.
Faithful Lurker
@Ohio Mom: Thank you for trying to teach them. Somebody should have explained these things to the interns a long time ago. If not their parents, then I bet each and every one of them is a church going christian…suffer the little children and what you do to the least of these you do to me and etc. etc. I don’t have the patience and end up yelling at them which does no good at all. I was blown away by the prosecutor in the case of the man accused of leaving water for migrants. She said his crimes were giving water to the thirsty, feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. I bet she’s a good christian too. Absolutely amazing.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
That’s my fear as well.