Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Joe Lieberman disappointingly reemerged to remind us that he’s still alive.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Second rate reporter says what?

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Fani Willis claps back at Trump chihuahua, Jim Jordan.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

This fight is for everything.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

We still have time to mess this up!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Election Year Open Thread: Stacey Abrams Knows Her Worth

Election Year Open Thread: Stacey Abrams Knows Her Worth

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The Washington Post did an anodyne and extremely predictable beat-sweetener on “The Power of Stacey Abrams” last week, and it completely unhinged that portion of the Very Serious Commentariat which would predictably come unhinged at the very possibility that a voting-rights activist might be getting serious attention. Give Jen Rubin her due, she can hear the dog whistles:

There is now a whole genre of right-wing punditry declaring, in hysterical and angry tones, that Stacey Abrams would be the worst pick in the history of vice-presidential picks. No, really. The people who defend their vote for President Trump, who support the most unqualified Cabinet in history and who think political experience is overrated now see a catastrophe if the former minority leader of the Georgia state House, the founder of Fair Fight and Fair Count and a rising star in the Democratic Party is picked as the Democratic vice-presidential nominee…

Why all the venom? Let’s begin with the assumption that it is perfectly reasonable to argue she is not the best VP choice or that her lack of national experience would weaken the ticket. But the anger, the determination to ignore her accomplishments (she did found a voting rights group, deliver a response to the State of the Union and hold the minority leader position in her state for more than half a decade), the resentment over her insistence on calling out voter suppression as the reason for her loss and feigned offense at her ambition (horrors!) smack of racism. I suggest the tone of these voices — How dare she?! — would be far different if, say, Pete Buttigieg or Beto O’Rourke were promoting themselves for the job.

Abrams has committed the cardinal sin for an African American woman in the eyes of the right: She will not accept the legitimacy of elections won through voter suppression, and she will not be appropriately docile and humble. Unfortunately, I fear that this is just the beginning of the thinly disguised racism that we will see should former vice president Joe Biden select an African American as his running mate…

Abrams’ political style is “Person Who Is Never Afraid to Demand What Her Constituents Need”, which puts her squarely in the camp of such political stars as Shirley Chisholm (“If they won’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair”), Bella Abzug, and Ann Richards, among others. The current Democratic quest for Biden’s VP gives her a space to advocate for her goals, and she’s out there doing the work.

Some samples: From the AP, Q&A: Stacey Abrams is ready to serve but not on top court

… AP: The pandemic has elevated calls for mail voting. Can states make the changes necessary for that by November?

ABRAMS: No-excuse absentee balloting has to become the law of the land. It’s so critical that the next (pandemic response bill from Congress) include the $4 billion or $3.6 billion to help every state scale (up their absentee mail balloting.) The reality is we cannot afford not to do this. We have no excuse not to comply and not to meet our responsibilities for democracy, and it’s absolutely possible if we scale it up.

AP: The president said recently that people “cheat” by mail voting. How do you compete with that given his platform?

ABRAMS: I would ask journalists to tell the truth, which is that voter fraud is almost nonexistent. Donald Trump voted by mail. It is actually the safest and most accessible way of voting. In 2017, Donald Trump convened a voter fraud task force. It was so impossible to prove rampant voter fraud that they disbanded the committee before they had to issue a report…

AP: Can you talk about black identity politics and what might seem to be a more accepting environment for “blackness” in politics today?

ABRAMS: Writ large, identity politics simply means I can see you, and I understand that there are barriers to your ability to access what is considered a general good.

I enter this space as a black woman with natural hair, who does not look like everyone else. That doesn’t diminish my capacity to be effective, but it heightens my responsibility to be vocal.

Going back to COVID-19, black people are dying at a higher rate here in Georgia: 32% of the population, 54% of the deaths. That’s directly tied to identity, and if we do not acknowledge it, we are never going to find the solutions to address it. And so I think identity politics is a necessary part of our politics, but it’s also not new.

This nation began with identity politics. White men who owned land were allowed to vote and no one else was. That is the most strident degree of identity politics I think you can imagine, and what makes America such an important country is that we evolve, we continue to expand who is a part of our narrative and who has access to leadership (and) access to opportunity.

AP: The bottom line for November – do you believe that 50 states will be able to put together a fair election, an accurate count of the public will?

ABRAMS: Yes, we can have a free and fair election if, one, we have federal investment in those state elections now. Because this is a matter not simply of will, but of capacity. What I want everyone to pay attention to is that as Democrats work to expand access to the right to vote for all Americans, Republicans are doing their level best to limit that access. Why would we want to limit access to our democracy? That should be a question every person asks.


From the NYTimes, Stacey Abrams Wants More Than the Vice Presidency:

… Traditionally, Democrats have sought a vice-presidential pick that appeals to swing voters, those suburban whites whose operative variable is not whether they show up to the polls, but whether they go blue or red upon arrival. Such a priority this year would elevate the appeal of a running mate like Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota or Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

But there is another, oft-overlooked slice of the electorate that Ms. Abrams argues is equally crucial to the party’s success, voters who grapple with a different binary: voting Democratic, or not voting at all.

“The focus on persuasion has often been trying to persuade someone to shift from their conservative ideology to a more moderate or liberal ideology,” Ms. Abrams said in an interview. “But for voters of color, it isn’t about shifting ideology — it’s persuading them that voting actually will have an effect.”

These other swing voters, oscillating between voting Democratic or not at all, are the Americans — largely racial minorities and young people — whom Ms. Abrams has devoted her career to reaching. As she explains it, there are overt voter suppression tactics, and then there is this more insidious thread, often unwittingly perpetuated by her own party, that tells this segment of swing voters that they are less worthy of courting…

Since 2018, Fair Fight, along with its nonprofit arm, Fair Fight Action, has raised millions of dollars and funded teams at state Democratic parties across the country. In 2019, for example, Fair Fight helped Kentucky Democrats file a lawsuit that restored to the rolls some 175,000 voters who had been purged by the Republican governor. And amid the pandemic, the organization has shifted its focus to the expansion of voting by mail.

Ms. Abrams stressed that these efforts can matter little if citizens do not buy into the act of voting itself — in other words, if the barrier to participation is not so much a law or policy but a belief that the system has never valued one’s voice to begin with…

And a coda, from Georgia native Ed Kilgore, at NYMag — If 2020 Doesn’t Make Stacey Abrams Veep, It Could Propel Her to the Governorship of Her State:

… Kemp, whose coronavirus policies have been nearly as ignorantly erratic as the president’s, is presently in the midst of an extremely perilous gamble wherein he is risking a fresh wave of coronavirus infections and deaths due to premature reopening of Georgia businesses that managed to earn a rebuke from Trump. A recent Cygnal survey of Georgians commissioned by a Republican rival showed Kemp with an approval/disapproval rating of 43/52; 54 percent of respondents gave a thumbs-down to his handling of the pandemic. Kemp’s appointee as U.S. senator, Kelly Loeffler, appointed in no small part to fund Republican-coordinated campaigns this year and in 2022 (when Loeffler, in the unlikely case she wins the November special election, would be up for a full term), has been a human dumpster fire politically, generating constant negative media coverage (fanned by Republican as well as Democratic opponents) for apparent conflicts of interest involving her and her husband’s vast wealth and stock holdings.

It’s a long way until 2022, but you have to say Brian Kemp, who ran an abrasive, borderline-racist campaign in 2018 as a “politically incorrect conservative” who enjoyed offending people, doesn’t have the sort of personality that would lift him to a second term absent a strong performance as governor. And his dubious handling of COVID-19 has given Abrams all sorts of opportunities to gain local and national attention, completely aside from her veep aspirations. She’s taken advantage of it, too…

The political landscape in 2022 will certainly depend on what happens this November; if Abrams’s party loses, with or without her on the ticket, she’ll have the consolation of the midterm advantage the “out party” normally enjoys. She’ll also have had some more time to joust with Kemp and other Georgia Republicans over voter-registration rolls and other familiar issues, and figure out how to improve on her excellent 2018 turnout operation.

Any way you look at it, the immediate future looks challenging for Georgia, and promising for the politician who may become the first woman and African-American to serve as its governor — unless she happens to be otherwise occupied in Washington.

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  3. 3.

    ThresherK

    Our local minor baseball team was a “star farm” for the Minnesota Twins, and I saw many a player go through the circuit and thought “that kid is going places”. Plenty of them later turned into heralded, long-serving major leaguers.

    I’m certain there are Georgians who had this feeling about Abrams three or four years ago.

    The best part is, unlike the budget-constrained Twins, Abrams can be a star for the team she started with.

  8. 8.

    Another Scott

    Rachel Bitecofer makes a similar point about firing up the base (and irregular voters) to drive turnout.  It’s a compelling argument.  Stacy is very good.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  11. 11.

    James E Powell

    Stacey Abrams is my favorite American politician. We need 20 more just like her running for office.

  14. 14.

    Yutsano

    I’m still Team Kamala, but I do like the idea of Stacey taking over the Georgia governorship next year as well. Although I would think she would have to be running by now.

  15. 15.

    evodevo

    @HumboldtBlue: Glad those things can’t survive up here in Ky…it was bad enough yesterday when our resident rat snake was knocking stuff off the shelf in the garage (looking for mice, I presume) when we were out there changing a tire lol

  19. 19.

    MattF

    I read somewhere that the median voter in Georgia is a black woman. I.e., someone who looks and speaks and thinks like Stacy Abrams. The RW wants to think of itself as the majority— umm,… nope.

  23. 23.

    randy khan

    Whatever Jen Rubin has been drinking the last few years, we should give to maybe 50 other political commentators.  (I’m not saying she’s as good as, oh, Krugman, but the turnaround is pretty remarkable.)

  27. 27.

    gene108

    @lamh36:

    That’s wonderful!!!

    I remember when my niece and nephew were that age, and how much more grown up they were, than when they were babies.

    And all of a sudden, they become teenagers.

    Time goes by too fast

  29. 29.

    JustRuss

    @randy khan: Yeah, I haven’t really bought into Rubin’s conversion, but she’s winning me over.  This is good stuff, and beyond just “Trump is horrible”.

  32. 32.

    Baud

    @germy:

    If we’re using Trump as the standard, we could nominate Marianne Williamson and still come out ahead.

  33. 33.

    mrmoshpotato

    @germy: I’m luxurious and tremendous bigly at the testing, you losers! SAD!

    I need my unicorn butler to bring me a drink.  Bernie, where the fuck is my unicorn butler?

  34. 34.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Donald’s ridiculous actions indicate he’s not even smart enough to save his own skin.  The strike of the coronavirus tanked the stock market he depended on to brazen his way past all his other failures.

  38. 38.

    JMG

    As a Massachusetts resident I regret to say Joe Kennedy is already running TV ads and Ed Markey, who should remain Senator, is not.

    FWIW, had my monthly conversation with my money manager guy today. His firm, Morgan Stanley, and several other big Wall St. firms he cited, already regard another big bailout/stimulus bill as a done deal. Mitch McConnell’s huffing and puffing doesn’t bother them a bit. Since they’re his paymasters, I tend to believe them.

  39. 39.

    dexwood

    @lamh36: Too cute. It’s your world eventually, Zoe. You have a smart aunt to help you get there and make it yours.

  42. 42.

    Mike in NC

    Caught mention on the network evening news that Fat Bastard sez no more lockdowns under his inspired leadership! The Second Wave got nuthin’. He’ll bore the shit out of the virus like some energy vampire and make it go away before Xmas.

  43. 43.

    August West

    More jaw dropping stupidity from President Butthurt:

     

    President Donald Trump says that the country will not shut down again if there’s a second wave of COVID-19 in the coming months.

    Health officials have said that the risk of a second wave of the coronavirus is high, most likely when the normal flu season starts in late fall and early winter, again threatening to overwhelm the country’s health-care system.

    But Trump on Thursday expressed confidence that any flare-ups would be contained. “Whether it’s an ember or a flame, we’re going to put it out. But we’re not closing our country,” he said.

    Trump said he wore a face mask at the Ford plant, per the facility’s requirements, but he told reporters he did so just for part of his tour, and took the mask off before being seen by cameras. “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” he said.

    h/t https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-says-us-wont-shut-down-again-if-theres-second-wave-of-coronavirus-2020-05-21?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo

    Is there anything more fucking stupid than Donald Butthurt not wearing a face mask because of some deluded and twisted idea that his failure to do so is a way for him to screw over White House reporters?  Fuck Trump, his whole damn family, and his circle of enablers.

  47. 47.

    Jeffro

    @randy khan: She actually writes much better than Krugman.  I think she’s better prepared to deal with the crazy…he is still in a state of shock of some sort, and can’t figure out which ‘lens’ to view trumpublican stupidity/corruption sometimes.

    With Rubin…what’s that quote about ‘none so fired up as the newly-converted’?

  50. 50.

    Jeffro

    @August West: The guy is messaging HARD to the 27%.

    Kushner said the same thing, btw.  “We’re going to make it impossible to lock down again once we re-open”, essentially.  As if we should have just somehow have pushed through the first wave of the virus and taken our (1M, 2M dead) lumps instead of locking down and buying time/flattening the curve.

  52. 52.

    jeffreyw

    Abraham Lincoln — ‘Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant Rubin drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.’

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Yutsano: The Governorship isn’t up until 2022. Kemp was just “elected” in 2018, even though it feels as though he’s been in for many years.

  54. 54.

    JMG

    @Mike in NC: This is the sort of remark that might get replayed a great deal around Halloween. He’s an idiot, I mean even politically. His big insight, most white Americans are big racists and most men sexists, wasn’t exactly Machiavelli squared. Now he’s losing, he knows it, and all he’s got is to get stupider and less connected to reality. By October he’ll be trying to grab flies on the run, like Renfield.

  57. 57.

    Roger Moore

    @randy khan:

    Whatever Jen Rubin has been drinking the last few years, we should give to maybe 50 other political commentators.

    Jen Rubin has seen the fnords, and now she can’t stop seeing them.

  58. 58.

    Jeffro

    A friend was just pointing out to me on FB that the Michigan AG let Twitler have it on CNN (after his mask-less* visit to Ford**), this on top of the Michigan Secretary of State let him have it TWICE on Twitter, on top of Whitmer standing up to him.  The women are standing UP – you can kiss Michigan’s EVs goodbye, orange moron!

    *apparently there is a picture circulating of trumpov wearing a mask at some point during the visit?

    **and could the media PLEASE ask trumpov why he wanted to very badly to praise Ford “bloodlines” in today’s visit, and if that’s related to Ford being the only American praised in ‘Mein Kampf’???

  60. 60.

    Calouste

    @Jeffro: The answer to all that re-opening bullshit from the White House is the question when they are going to reopen the White House for tourist tours, without masks or social distancing or checks, and at  the capacity it was before the virus.
    I suspect it is after the election, or the first of never, whichever comes later. If they think it’s safe to reopen, it should be safe to reopen the White House.

  61. 61.

    Jeffro

    @Calouste: That and when AL and TX’s ICUs start maxing out in, oh (checks watch)…that should help folks understand it’s not a blue state thing, and it’s not subject to trumpov’s dumb “OPEN UP!” bs

  62. 62.

    mrmoshpotato

    @rikyrah: Dude’s a selfish, dumb bastard.

    What is herd immunity? (from Johns Hopkins’ Bloomberg School of Public Health)

    How have we achieved herd immunity for other infectious diseases?
    Measles, mumps, polio, and chickenpox are examples of infectious diseases that were once very common but are now rare in the U.S. because vaccines helped to establish herd immunity.

    What helped establish herd immunity? ??

  63. 63.

    lamh36

    @lamh36: They did a drive by graduation for the Pre-K today and Zoe was NOT impressed…LOL.

    The teachers kept trying to get Zoe to smile, but she wasn’t having it…LOL.

    I think she just wasn’t sure if her momma was dropping her off at school or not.  As they were driving up, she told my sis “we don’t have school momma bear”…LOL

    They did give the kids graduation gifts, a poster card w/their name and a kids’ mask for each kid

  65. 65.

    August West

    @Jeffro:

    Nothing will be more sweet than seeing Donald Butthurt’s reaction on election night after the Associated Press and other news outlets have declared Biden the winner.

  66. 66.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mike in NC: Dump and his Russki Twitter bots will hound COVID-19 out of existence with tweets of “TOTAL LOSER! SAD!” and “I’M TREMENDOUS BIGLY!”

  67. 67.

    mrmoshpotato

    @germy: The other shoe could be that dude’s first shoe’s running mate.

    (Unlike NotMax, pun NOT intended.)

  69. 69.

    Jeffro

    @August West: agree…just not looking forward to two months worth of stories about records being destroyed, trumpov continuing the slander and lies, and the inevitable corrupt pardons he’ll issue before leaving.  I’m just hoping he doesn’t incite his flock to violence along the way

  72. 72.

    Joe Falco

    Stacey would have been good as governor even if it meant her first two years would’ve been used to block whatever insanity the Republican-dominated state assembly would’ve tried to pass. Remember the antiabortion law that was passed and caused a call for boycott to stop producing films made in Georgia?

    I hope Abrams does get picked. It would be the biggest demonstration Biden could make to show the future of the party will rest in POC and women and energize those voters.

  73. 73.

    Scamp Dog

    @lamh36: The other day I had been thinking we hadn’t seen a picture of your niece in a while, so I’m glad you posted this. She’s a cutie!

  74. 74.

    MisterForkbeard

    @lamh36: Exciting! My daughter just did the same thing, but we didn’t get pictures of it :/

    Zoe looks like an amazing kid.

  78. 78.

    SFAW

    @Jeffro: 

    and could the media PLEASE ask trumpov why he wanted to very badly to praise Ford “bloodlines” in today’s visit, and if that’s related to Ford being the only American praised in ‘Mein Kampf’???

    You sure he wasn’t talking about “blood libel”? That would be about his speed, anti-semitically speaking.

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @lamh36: I don’t believe in polygraphs. I needed two words to get a handle on Reade: “tic toc”.

  82. 82.

    Another Scott

    @Jeffro:

    President Trump, having praised Henry Ford's bloodlines, went on to say that the American auto industry needed more living space to thrive and that he hoped to find something more than an intermediate solution for that soon.

    — SoiledAndOrFoiledHat (@Popehat) May 22, 2020

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    terry chay

    Be careful with that one, Anne. Stacy Abrams has all the hallmarks of someone who puts self before country and party. If you pump her up, when she hasn’t earned anything (even statewide, but especially nationally), you might have another Bernie Sanders in your hands.

    If she wanted to make a difference she should have risked running for Senate. She didn’t and her run for VO nomination borders in extortion.

  87. 87.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Baud:

    Maybe it’s a set up to try to get Biden to take a polygraph.

    God, no.  Polygraphs are garbage.  Highly unreliable.  A lie detector that is occasionally wrong is an engine of disaster.

  88. 88.

    planetjanet

    @terry chay: How dare you claim she has no accomplishments!  She was leader of the Georgia House for five years.  In her governor’s race, she won more votes than any Georgia Democrat has won in history.  Just because you weren’t looking doesn’t mean she wasn’t working hard.

  91. 91.

    SFAW

    @planetjanet:

    In her governor’s race, she won more votes than any Georgia Democrat has won in history.

     

    That’s only because she suppressed all those real American Republican voters. You know, when she was Secretary of State for GA.

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    @germy:

    I wonder if he actually did test positive and a lot of people told him not to say that. So of course he did, and then sort of corrected himself. Or at least tried.

  94. 94.

    Miss Bianca

    @TaMara (HFG): I like it. Very evocative of the 30s Socialist Realist style I associate with FDR. I bet I’m not the only one to make that connection, either.

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @Miss Bianca:

    “Bloodlines”?

    Yeah, Henry Ford gave them good Blut blood lines, not like those shifty Jooos.

    ETA: Popehat’s use of “living space” was a reference to Hitler’s excuse of Germany needing “Lebensraum” (living room/space), which I think was the excuse for annexing the Sudetenland.

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    @terry chay:

    If she wanted to make a difference she should have risked running for Senate. She didn’t and her run for VO nomination borders in extortion.

    That’s a joke, right?  She has already made a huge difference re: 2020 elections with the two organizations she created:  Fair Fight and Fair Count.  If we actually win the House and Senate and Presidency in 2020, it will in part be due to her work on both of those issues.

    I can’t even imagine what you are referring to with the word extortion.  She’s ambitious and she’s not subtle, but there’s nothing resembling extortion.

  99. 99.

    Another Scott

    @SFAW: And who needs an intermediate solution when a final is available…

    Yeah, Popehat (and many others) clearly see what Donnie was saying there.

    Grrr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  100. 100.

    artem1s

    @August West:

    Donald Trump says that the country will not shut down again

    Got news for you dumbass.  Governors and state health departments lead the shut downs, not you.    what are you going to do, force people to go eat at one of your crappy hotels at gunpoint?  Round up random groups of people and hold them hostage in Yankee stadium for three hours? Frog march them thru 18 holes at Augusta?  christ what an asshole

  101. 101.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I’ll leave it down here since a lot of people seem put off by the subject, but

    Defense lawyers in California are reviewing criminal cases in which Tara Reade, the former Senate aide who has accused Joseph R. Biden Jr. of sexual assault, served as an expert witness on domestic violence, concerned that she misrepresented her educational credentials in court
    Then known as Alexandra McCabe, Ms. Reade testified as a government witness in Monterey County courts for nearly a decade, describing herself as an expert in the dynamics of domestic violence who had counseled hundreds of victims.

    Tara Reade-truther-twitter is melting down, but still clinging to the idea that just because she lied doesn’t mean Joe Biden isn’t a monster. Serious journalist Ryan Grim is blocking the people making fun of him, including Neera Tanden

    These fucking people.

  102. 102.

    Raoul

    To Jen Rubin’s point, I fired off this to the WaPo opinion editors yesterday (as an email, not a WaPo comment thread item to be lost among the 1000s):

    I am aghast at the bilge Marc A. Thiessen dispensed on the pages of your newspaper today (‘Stacey Abrams is the Democrats’ Sarah Palin’). His tone is one of complete contempt. He treats an African American woman rising to Minority Leader of a state legislature as nearly nothing, in the most dismissive of terms.

    He compares her winning 1.9M votes for Governor of Georgia to Ms Palin managing 114,000 votes in Alaska, as if Palin accomplished much in her half term before quitting!

    That the Washington Post thinks this rudeness is worthwhile clickbait makes me really question the wisdom of my subscription. Democracy dies in nastiness.

  103. 103.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raoul: good lord– I’m not on the VP Abrams train, but– besides the fact that as a young black woman she damn near won the GA governor’s mansion in the time of trump— she has a Masters in Public Administration from UT and a JD from Yale.

  104. 104.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    I saw that she had misrepresented her education credentials in one of the stories and I figured there would be more about it and it would be bad, but I had no idea it would be this bad:

    Then known as Alexandra McCabe, Ms. Reade testified as a government witness in Monterey County courts for nearly a decade, describing herself as an expert in the dynamics of domestic violence who had counseled hundreds of victims.But lawyers who had faced off against her in court began raising questions about the legitimacy of her testimony, and the verdicts that followed, after news reports this week that Antioch University had disputed her claim of receiving a bachelor’s degree from its Seattle campus.The public defender’s office in Monterey County has begun scrutinizing cases involving Ms. Reade and compiling a list of clients who may have been affected by her testimony, according to Jeremy Dzubay, an assistant public defender in the office.

    Good Lord. I was thinking “she used it on a job application and they’ll find it- maybe even the senate job”. Would not have predicted “expert” witness in a criminal trial!

  105. 105.

    Raoul

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  Yeah, I’m not ready to put Abrams at or near the top of the VP list. But “All of ’em Katie” Palin? Just paragraph after paragraph of bottom-feeding twitter ranting. In the Washington Post. It was bad.

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Raoul: Thiessen is the WaPo’s house “torturers for Jesus, and trump!” guy, right? I think the other Bush speechwriter speech writer they hired is a never-trumper, his name escapes me right now

  108. 108.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  @Kay: I suppose it’s theoretically possible that Reade could be lying about all of this (and the other things she’s lied about) and still be telling the truth about Biden. Super unlikely, but possible.

    I guess Left Twitter isn’t willing to cop to that and just says she’s not actually lying, though.

  109. 109.

    Cathie from Canada

    The most important task in the history of the United States is to make sure Trump is defeated in 2020 – he has already destroyed America internationally but he will also destroy it internally if he has another 4 years to do it.

    Defeating him is going to be monumentally difficult because defeating an incumbent is extremely unusual in American politics.  Democrats are already settling for a Presidential candidate who is too old, and too easy to portray as a bumbler, and not the strongest or most charismatic campaigner either.  So when it comes to picking a VP, Biden needs to find the absolutely strongest candidate he can possibly get.  He has already boxed himself in by promising to choose a woman, which was a ridiculous and unnecessary commitment to make.  If someone like AOC was eligible, then this might be feasible because she is such a charismatic person.  But when it comes to African American women,  America is still way too racist and sexist a country to expect that 65 million would vote for such a potential president.

    So I really really hope Biden does not pick Stacey Abrams or Kamala Harris.  

    I wish I could feel I was wrong.

  110. 110.

    Duane

    @Cathie from Canada: You should feel you’re wrong because your post was full of wrong. Someone should introduce you to President Obama or Hillary Clinton. If you’re hoping for VP Sanders that’s just more wrong.

  111. 111.

    Cathie from Canada

    @Duane: Oh, I hope so. I really hope you are right and I am wrong.

    No, I’m not a Bernie supporter.  And Hillary didn’t win, she lost the electoral college (though she did win the popular vote of course, and I will NEVER understand why Democrats haven’t spent the last four years describing her as “popular vote winner Hillary Clinton”)

    And of course Obama did win. But he was a charismatic politician who gave great speeches, which Biden is not. And he was young, which Biden is not.

    I just see a lot of negatives there for Biden that will be hard to overcome. So my thinking is, he shouldn’t add another “negative” in choosing the VP when there are lots of very positive choices that could be made.

    But, as I say, I do hope that I am wrong.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    Stacey Abrams is a talented, articulate  woman, and there naturally is a hunger to see her on the national stage as Senator or Vice President. But I think that she can do the most good as Governor of Georgia. Before the 2022 cycle she can do plenty fighting voter suppression and supporting Raphael Warnock and whoever is nominated for the second Georgia U.S. Senate seat. She is relatively young, and can make a presidential run in 2028 or 2032. But the people of Georgia need a good governor, and she’d  be a great one.

  113. 113.

    SFAW

    @Cathie from Canada:

    Methinks thou protesteth too much.

    Obama won, but that’s only because “reasons.”

    Hillary won, but didn’t really, because the Dems didn’t counteract Republican/Russian fuckery.

    Al Gore won, until the corrupt SCOTUS (primarily Scalia) put its finger on the scales.

    John Kerry (probably) won, except for Ken Blackwell’s fuckery with voting machines in Ohio.

    I’m sure you can always find reasons why/how the Dems will fall short. It ain’t the candidate, it’s the cheating by the other side, without which they would not have “won.”

    And if you’re inclined to respond with the oft-used “But [Candidate X] should have won easily; a better candidate would have won a landslide” trope [“Al Gore LOST HIS HOME STATE!!!”], please don’t waste our time.

    [ETA: The point of the above, if it was not clear, is that the Dems have (likely) won every election since 1992, imperfect candidates or not. And there have always been “faults” with those candidates.]

     

    I’ll take you at your word that you “hope” you’re wrong. But, frankly, your comments seem more like someone who is semi-hoping for a Biden loss, so you can be proved right about the Dems/DNC. I apologize if I’m not giving you enough credit, but you really seem hell-bent on DNC (or whomever) bashing. Every candidate has negatives. I’m as cynical, and as much of a “Gloomy Gus,” as anyone here, but even I do not go searching for reasons to complain about “the Dem establishment” or whatever.

  114. 114.

    SFAW

    @Geminid:

    Stacey Abrams is a talented, articulate  woman,

    I know it’s not how you meant it, but every time I see “articulate” associated with a black man or woman — by a Republican, that is — it’s usually because they’re implying that almost all other blacks talk like Stepin Fetchit.

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