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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Lady of the House wondering where it’s gonna stop

Lady of the House wondering where it’s gonna stop

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Who knows how nuts the Trumpkins will get trying to block impeachment, but we can do our part to help vulnerable House Dems do the right thing and impeach Dolt 45. Give here to the Balloon Juice 2020 House Fund, split equally among the 17 most vulnerable Democratic incumbents (you can also parcel it out among them however you like).

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90Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    I think the Republican party is going to break soon. There is just too much shit happening now. There is definitely a feeling of things breaking down. I don’t know how long they will remain silent.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    @cain:
    Then again, a good chunk of the party’s voter base and Congresional caucus has, for various reasons, been willing to misinterpret and/or ignore reality to keep faith with Trump. I’m not sure how well reality-based arguments would work with them.

  3. 3.

    NotMax

    @Amir Khalid

    It was the woebegone G.W. Bush administration which announced (paraphrasing) “Reality is irrelevant, we create our own reality” as policy, and Republicans swallowed it lock, stock and barrel.

  4. 4.

    Zinsky

    I’m being very selective where I put my electoral dollars in the 2020 race – Amy McGrath in Kentucky, Sholten in Iowa and others. I would encourage everyone to be very cautious with your money. Trump is going to have hundreds of millions from human vermin like Sheldon Adelson available to smear Democrats. We need to keep our powder dry to smear this reptile into prison!

    (BTW – the thread title is from The Rolling Stones’ immortal Brown Sugar, of course)

  5. 5.

    Cacti

    @Amir Khalid:

    Cult followers are immune to reason. The people we have to reach are the ones who sat on the sidelines or cast protest votes last time around.

  6. 6.

    patrick II

    I have seen numerous RNC ads attacking Elaine Luria on local TV since she has become a leader of the previously reluctant group of congress men and women who now favor impeaching Trump. They are spending money trying to damage her and intimidate others. It is helpful to give ourselves some to help her fight back.

  7. 7.

    Martin

    @cain: Yeah. The fact that nobody in the Senate is defending Trump is telling. We’re going to start getting color images of what’s happening to the Kurds, and that’s not going to help matters.

  8. 8.

    Janet Strange

    @cain: I cut and pasted a chunk of this post by our perceptive blogmeister and posted it on Facebook at the time. Note that it’s from only 3 weeks ago, and how much has changed drastically since then. I keep thinking, “John’s right. It’s all going to come crashing down, and pretty fast.” Reminds me of why I’ve been checking in here near daily ever since Terry Schiavo was the last straw.

  9. 9.

    Cacti

    @cain:

    I think the Republican party is going to break soon. There is just too much shit happening now. There is definitely a feeling of things breaking down. I don’t know how long they will remain silent.

    I think Trump is going to light the cult compound on fire with everyone inside, a la the Branch Davidians. Honestly, that would be the preferable outcome.

    The GOP deserves neither forgiveness nor absolution for this. His enablers need to go up in flame with him.

  12. 12.

    evap

    Doug, I just have to say that amount your many great titles, this is undoubtedly one of the best ever. Thanks!

  14. 14.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Amir Khalid:
    That can only work for so long before reality catches up to you. I’m reminded of the old saying that, “the market can stay irrational longer than I can stay solvent.”

    Either way, reality will bite them in the ass eventually. It’s just a question of whether they will come to senses before everything collapses or they drag us with them

  15. 15.

    Leto

    @Martin: We already are and I simply don’t see how the US will be seen as a reliable partner ever again.

    OT but I’m sitting on the recumbent bike at the PT’s office and my left knee sounds like a bowl of rice krispes. Or a kettle of popcorn popping at the movie theater. Good stuff.

  17. 17.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Mnemosyne:
    Thanks for sharing that. Two-faced is definitely the word I’d use to describe that character.

    “This weighs a ton. Travel’s a curse
    But here we strive, to lighten your purse”

    LOL

  19. 19.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Cacti:

    The GOP deserves neither forgiveness nor absolution for this. His enablers need to go up in flame with him.

    GÖPperdämmerung.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
    Some of these people are farmers watching the market disappear for their crops because of stupid things Trump did like antagonising the country that imports most of said crops. Yet their supportfor him has not wavered.

  25. 25.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Leto:

    We already are and I simply don’t see how the US will be seen as a reliable partner ever again.

    The same could be said for the UK as well. Or India. Of Brazil. Basically any place going crazy pants right-wing isolationist. It’s not just the US anymore

  26. 26.

    Big Mango

    Brown Sugar!

    Drums beatin’ cold, English blood runs hot
    Lady of the house wonderin’ when it’s gonna stop
    House boy knows that he’s doin’ all right
    You should have heard him just around midnight

  28. 28.

    zhena gogolia

    @rikyrah:

    Oh, my God, that is stupid. Now I really hope she doesn’t get the nomination. What does she think she’s playing with here?

  29. 29.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Leto:

    OT but I’m sitting on the recumbent bike at the PT’s office and my left knee sounds like a bowl of rice krispes.

    Definitely sounds like crepitus. Ugh. Has PT offered any recommendations?

  30. 30.

    Barbara

    @Amir Khalid: It’s actually not clear to what extent their support is wavering, because bullshit articles interviewing a farmer here and there, frequently identified by a politically connected local, don’t really capture much. There is no doubt many farmers still support Trump but those who don’t are unlikely to put themselves out there because the only thing worse than being wrong is admitting that you were wrong. I do not read articles of the “I went to Anytown, Iowa and spoke to three farmers and I can tell you support for Trump is still really strong!” because they are utterly and completely worthless.

  31. 31.

    Martin

    @rikyrah: Despite that, it’s not working. Dem polling continues to improve. If there’s ever a cycle where you could forgo big dollar donations, it’s probably this one where Trump and the GOP look corrupt from stem to stern.

  33. 33.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Barbara:

    “I went to Anytown, Iowa and spoke to three farmers and I can tell you support for Trump is still really strong!” because they are utterly and completely worthless.

    Aka Cletus Safaris. Those stories are especially unreliable because the NYT interviewed the same 5 Trump supporters

    @Amir Khalid:

    As Barbara pointed out, it’s not clear who’s still sticking by Trump and voting for him again in 2020 and who isn’t and might at the very least stay home this cycle. I haven’t seen any targeted polling on this, and those polled could always lie and not admit they were wrong, but still stay home

  35. 35.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @schrodingers_cat:
    Didn’t Hillary outraise Trump by a lot and still lose in the EC? I could be wrong, but small dollar donors have been able to match large donors, haven’t they?

  36. 36.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It’s not the nice liberal ladies she’s hoping to win over. It’s the Berniebros who are promising to shit in the soup if their Personal Jesus doesn’t get the nomination.

    But those assholes can’t be won over — they’re already saying “Bernie or Yellow Vest!” on Twitter — so it’s a pointless gesture.

  37. 37.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Mnemosyne:

    But those assholes can’t be won over — they’re already saying “Bernie or Yellow Vest!” on Twitter — so it’s a pointless gesture.

    Agreed. Seems like another own goal like the DNA test taken at T’s goading.

  40. 40.

    Cheryl Rofer

  41. 41.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mnemosyne:
    I just don’t see how Anne Hathaway’s I Dreamed A Dream or Eddie Redmayne’s Empty Chairs At Empty Tables can possibly be improved on. :-)

  45. 45.

    dmsilev

    @Mnemosyne: Sanders is already cutting back on his campaign schedule due to his heart attack. He may well start looking for a face-saving way of bowing out rather than finish third or worse in Iowa.

    (Yes, yes, allow me my fantasy)

  46. 46.

    different-church-lady

    OT: WaPo trying to make up for a screwy on-line headline for an op-ed earlier today:

    Warren pregnancy report shows how poisoned the media world is
    A conservative publication’s story about Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) lacked context but gave valuable political ammunition to the right.

  47. 47.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @NotMax:
    Probably. I’m not sure how to feel about Warren’s decision. I like her a lot, not just because of her personality, but because I like her focus on corruption, addressing student debt, and restructuring American corporate law. I like Harris for a lot of the same reasons. I wish she was vying for the top spot with Warren instead of Biden
    @schrodingers_cat:

    Seems like another own goal like the DNA test taken at T’s goading

    I don’t know how to feel about it. Biden hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory either. Harris got smacked down awhile back for saying to get rid of private health insurance completely (IIRC)

  48. 48.

    Cacti

    @dmsilev:

    Sanders is already cutting back on his campaign schedule due to his heart attack. He may well start looking for a face-saving way of bowing out rather than finish third or worse in Iowa.

    I’d say recent events have given him the best opportunity for a graceful exit that he’s ever likely to have.

    If he doesn’t quit now, it’s because he’s in it to harm the Dem candidate and give a boost to Trump.

  49. 49.

    Kent

    @Barbara: I have a bunch of farmers in my family. In PA, MI, and KS. Pretty much zero chance any of them are going to vote Dem. They sit in their trucks and tractors all day listening to Rush. Back in the day it was Paul Harvey. Then they go to white fundie churches on Sunday.

    Best case scenario they might just not bother voting. But these are not swing voters. Zero chance they will vote Dem.

  55. 55.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Cacti:
    And if Biden were a general in WW2, he’d be in disbelief that the German general that was his friend and saved his life in WW1 when they were both privates is now bombarding his position with artillery shells as well as encircling his forces

    Turnabout is fair play. Biden hasn’t responded well to the smears

  57. 57.

    Aziz, light!

    After Obama’s resounding win in 2008, many commenters on this blog were crowing about the death of the Republican Party.

    But most people who reflexively vote R will vote R again, about 47 percent of voters who go to the polls. Next year, it all comes down to turnout.

  58. 58.

    Cacti

    @Martin:

    Despite that, it’s not working. Dem polling continues to improve. If there’s ever a cycle where you could forgo big dollar donations, it’s probably this one where Trump and the GOP look corrupt from stem to stern.

    What color is the sky in your world?

  59. 59.

    Barbara

    @Kent: I have farmers in my family too, or rather, my husband’s extended family. Many are like what you describe, and others aren’t. However, a state like Iowa doesn’t swing 10 points in four years without some of those people being amenable to voting for both parties. How many? I have no idea, but more importantly, neither do journalists writing these bs articles.

  60. 60.

    Jeffro

    @Cheryl Rofer: You have to admit, trumpov is good at rallying the base. The DEMOCRATIC base, that is…

    Push hard and move quickly, Dems. Do a full House vote by the end of this week and get impeachment rolling. You can keep adding more charges each time he tweets/South-Lawns a new one.

  61. 61.

    Kent

    @rikyrah: Is there a bright line between big and small donors? Is Warren saying she won’t accept big donations? Or simply that she won’t do events that are EXCLUSIVELY big donor events like $10,000 plate dinners and whatnot.

    I’m just wondering out loud how much wiggle room we have here and if this is more for show than substance. Like if she does a fundraiser for all-comers and someone writes a $1 million check is she going to still take it? I would think so.

    I do have a problem with the sorts of fundraisers that set a high bar for admission so only the 0.1% get exclusive face time with the candidate. But I don’t have problems if they want to write big checks.

    Anyway, this is where someone like Obama can step in and help the fuck out.

  62. 62.

    Roger Moore

    @dmsilev:

    He may well start looking for a face-saving way of bowing out rather than finish third or worse in Iowa.

    If he doesn’t look out for himself, his heart will make the decision for the rest of him.

  64. 64.

    Kent

    @Barbara: It’s the farmer’s wives who I’d be looking at. Of course the Cletus safari reporters never talk to them. They only want to talk to the hayseed farmers with the John Deere hats sitting in diners.

    I have uncles who are famers who are right wing as all hell and sit around with their right wing buddies. But they are married to my aunts who work outside the home and drive long distances to nursing jobs and office jobs and retail jobs in nearby cities. They mostly just grin and bear it when politics comes up. But I gotta think a whole lot of them are unamused by Trump. The NYT Cletus safari reporters never talk to the farmers wives who work as nurses, teachers, and more urban office and retail jobs to help make ends meet.

  67. 67.

    Barbara

    @Kent: To your point, one of these relatives told me that he was shell shocked by the tariffs, that they basically zeroed out his profits for the entire year. He didn’t tell me how he voted, but he told me that his wife (a teacher) hates Trump with the heat of a thousand suns and asked me not to mention Trump to her because she gets so impassioned. I was shocked that he brought the subject up at all.

  68. 68.

    jl

    @Kent: There is a lot of vagueness in Warrens’ statement about fundraising. As far as I can tell from reading the links offered in this thread, Warren has not said she will turn down large donations, or discourage them for Democratic party fundraising. Not even clear to me whether her statement applies to her throwing and hosting them personally for her own campaign, or refusing to cooperate with Democratic party events. The most specific statements I can find are

    Going “behind closed doors with bazillionaires and corporate executives and lobbyists and scooping up as much money as possible. Or you think it’s about a grass-roots, let’s build this from the ground up.”

    “Yeah I’m not going to do the big-dollar fund-raisers. I’m just not going to do it,” Ms. Warren said. “The whole notion behind this campaign is that we can build this together. And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

    That is not very specific and a lot is packed in to the word “do”. Warren was heavily criticized from lefties for attending a big Democratic party fundraiser, when Sanders wouldn’t. Further Warren has been very quick to scoop up support from other candidates when there is an opportunity. Yesterday Sanders admitted he’s forced to scale down his campaign substantially because of his heart attack, and good opportunity to get some of the Sanders supporters who will look for someone else to support now.

    I think this is same as Warren’s strategy with health care policy. And with corporate media playing idiot gotcha games, parsing her every breath on whether she was let go from a teaching job because she was pregnant and trying to gotcha her on lying or being slightly inaccurate, being hypocritical or meta-hypocritical, or whatever nonsense, it might work.

    To be clear, I am not happy with Warren’s announcement today. I think it’s unnecessary. But enough wriggle room for hope that money can be raised if necessary. Every candidate has problems, and we have to live with them, And that includes my two preferred ones, Warren and Harris.

  69. 69.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Barbara:

    I think if enough people in the right number of places feel the same way as your relatives, then Trump will have a harder time trying to win the EC like he did last time. In NC, he was trailing all of the Dems that had name recognition and were polling near the top

  70. 70.

    Kent

    @Barbara: Yes. The Dumbfuck NYT reports seem to assume that “farmers wives” in 2020 are somehow like the Amish women who stay in the kitchen canning vegetables and taking care of babies and standing by their men. When in point of fact in this day and age most farm wives (and many farmers) work in town. In fact as farming is an aging profession, most farm wives these days are likely to be middle aged women, many of them educated, who work in normal urban professions like teaching and nursing and office/retail and who’s kids are long gone off in college or working ordinary middle class jobs in urban areas.

  71. 71.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    And here I was brought up to believe farmers’ wives spent their time cutting off mouse tails with a carving knife.

    :)

  74. 74.

    Immanentize

    Read the thread — Let’s be clear about the crime before we start rending our clothes in an ash pit:

    In a statement, Warren’s communications director, Kristen Orthman, said that the candidate would continue to attend fundraisers for the Democratic National Committee, state and local parties, and other Democratic candidates, and that those fundraisers would be open to the press. She also said that Warren — like almost every other Democratic candidate for president — would continue to turn down donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees.

  76. 76.

    Barbara

    @Roger Moore: The replies to various tweets of his followers exhibit a kind of magical thinking about his ability to keep going. In my experience people are vibrant and healthy until they aren’t. He didn’t have bypass surgery, and no one can know why, but there is no doubt that the impact of a health event like this tends to be magnified greatly by age. You do not have the reserves and resilience you do when you are younger, and based on outcomes in my own family, 70 is the real threshold for that multiplier effect. I honestly do not want to see Sanders work himself to death.

  77. 77.

    Immanentize

    @Barbara:
    And the recent death of Sander’s daughter in law, regardless whether they were close, must also be weighing on his sense of mortality and fragility.

    I do worry that some of his peeps would happily take a martyr at this point (cough -Sirota-cough.)

  78. 78.

    TomatoQueen

    @Yutsano: Crepitus is not nothing. Mine is mild in the knees and extreme in the hips, owing to severe degenerative joint disease, making it impossible to walk, and no fun at all trying to sleep when that hip joint goes pop, loud enough to hear across the room. I hope Leto’s will be mild.

  79. 79.

    Marcopolo

    @rikyrah: I realize you aren’t a Warren fan & you love posting these tweets supporting your position. I get that. And she is either tied w/ Biden or the front runner so she is going to draw much more heavy fire/attention. But honestly, the D primary has been going on for months now and all the evidence is that the two candidates who have eschewed doing high dollar donor outreach for grassroots, online fundraising are starting to lap the field money-wise.

    I am not any kind of omniscient seer able to make a prediction on where things will stand a year from now. Hell, might be Warren isn’t the nominee. What I do know is that both Warren & Sanders each had about 1M donors last quarter, that the vast vast majority of those donors are nowhere near maxing out and that those donor numbers will only grow going forward. At this time, none of the other D candidates are really in this game.

    As for being the lead fundraiser for the entire D party. Well, online D small donor fundraising seems to have kicked into another gear (maybe 2) this cycle. It looks like over 1 billion dollars will be raised via Act Blue in 2019-during an off election cycle year. For comparison, last year during the midterm election cycle ActBlue also raised about 1 billion. To put that in further perspective, at the end of 2019 Act Blue will have facilitated raising about 4 billion dollars total since its inception in 2004. Yep, half that money in the past 2 years.

    Let’s see, what else? According to The Q3 FEC reports that are being filed now, D’s are generally out raising R’s ( some spectacularly—see Mark Kelly in AZ), several progressive challengers are out raising conservative D incumbents, and generally the picture looks good.

    Do I think any potential D nominee could out raise Trump no matter whether they did big dollar donor outreach or not. No. Do I think Trump’s campaign (or the R’s in general) will actually follow “the rules” regarding campaign finance. No. And seeing as how the FEC doesn’t even have enough sitting members to even provide any kind of oversight or enforcement it doesn’t really matter.

    This is a long post so let me wrap up by saying large donor money in politics is a poison that corrupts the system. This decision by Warren helps with her goal of defining herself against Trump’s corruption. In that respect it is very smart. Remember Trump saying in 2015/16 that people should vote for him because he was rich & couldn’t be bought—yeah, look how that turned out. Finally, yes the D party has a challenge ahead as to how they will fund party/state party/etc… costs. Honestly, doing that via big dollar donations from wealthy donors needs to change. When the rubber hits the road do you really think folks like Steyer or Bloomberg are gonna be okay with higher taxes on the uber wealthy? I highly doubt it.

    Now, how about more comments in support of the candidates you are supporting?

  80. 80.

    Barbara

    @Immanentize: That is really sad. They have three children, and she was only 46. Having now seen this a few times, I have learned that it is absolutely not the case that cancer is always a protracted “battle” and that it can cause death pretty quickly after it is diagnosed. In my brother’s case, they never identified the organ of origination, just the brain and liver metastases that killed him within three weeks of seeking medical attention.

  82. 82.

    Immanentize

    @Barbara:
    It was pretty shocking. Only days. And she was a palliative care expert. I admit I wonder whether she decided on her moment. There is a strong justification for doing so.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    @Kent

    The posts detailing physical quilting mishaps will be epic!

    :)

    (I figure it was autocorrect which changed shoo to shoe.)

  85. 85.

    Kent

    @NotMax: Can’t wait to see what happens when the dogs and cat get ahold of the quilting supplies. That will be epic for sure!

    shoo-fly pie! Yes. I have Pennsylvania Amish in my family. My extended family is Mennonite but one of my mom’s cousins married into an Amish family so we have them show up for funerals and family reunions. And they actually do bring shoo-fly pie and quilts.

  88. 88.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @rikyrah:

    If you can’t eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them you’ve got no business being up here.

    Jesse Unruh, former California Treasurer & Speaker of the State Assembly.

    Guarantee them the same hearing any other citizen would get, no more, no less. If they still want to shovel ca$h at you, take it.

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