How Trump endangered democracy, and how Biden hopes to repair it https://t.co/FdiCyBCv9v
— Post Outlook (@PostOutlook) September 18, 2021
I *still* don’t trust any otherwise unverified information from Troutmouth Bob Woodward, but this is an interesting Peril review. Eric Rauchway, professor of history:
… [T]he danger Trump posed during the waning months of his presidency is only half the story of “Peril.” Even if you already know the outlines, the details — many of which have already found their way into the press — deepen one’s sense of how serious, even global, that danger was and how thoroughly Republicans enabled it.
The other half of the book is an account of Joe Biden’s campaign and early presidency, and as the authors shift between narratives, the reader must reckon with wildly differing realities. In one, Trump is the center of gravity; everyone works toward him; nothing matters except insofar as it fulfills his psychological needs. In the other, Biden is an ambitious politician leading a team of dedicated public servants trying to mitigate the coronavirus pandemic and its economic effects, endeavoring by sheer competence and energy to move the nation beyond Trumpism…
For Biden, his mission became clear after Trump’s 2017 defense of the Nazi- and Confederate-flag-carrying protesters chanting anti-Semitic slogans in Charlottesville. He said Trump was promoting “the darkest, worst impulses in the country.” Biden believed that the nation was in a struggle for its “soul” — a theme he repeated thereafter. “Who thinks democracy is a given?” he asked at a private event. “If you do, think again.”
Over a long campaign to the nomination, Biden wooed supporters. He stumbled, gaffed; recovered. Woodward and Costa show him responding to criticism — about, for example, his retrograde and unacceptable attitudes toward women — and changing, without altering his core conviction that the nation must transcend Trumpism.
And here the book is most illuminating: Biden regards the -ism, not the man, as the real threat; Trump put the nation in peril because he evoked and organized a darkness that was already there. And his behavior is more shocking because it serves no purpose greater than salving his own obscure hurts; he is no historic visionary but simply someone who wants the perks of the presidency. Biden observes, on surveying the golf toys that Trump assembled in the White House, including a wall-size video screen so he could play virtual courses, “What a f—ing —hole.”
Biden, by contrast, has an understanding of history born of his half-century in public life as well as from his consultations with historian Jon Meacham. Belief in the better angels of our nature implies an understanding that we have worse. He has convictions about politics: Meetings, especially long ones, can change people’s minds; small, graceful gestures can earn great good will. He knows, as the book’s sections on his consultations with Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) show, how much he owes Black voters and how much they expect of him. He calls out “systemic racism . . . economic inequality . . . the denial of the promise of this nation to so many.”…
Biden’s team did learn from Franklin Roosevelt, who also faced an intransigent predecessor, albeit not one who sought to overturn an election. Herbert Hoover was more like Republican Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio), who here tells Biden to discard his hopes for transformative legislation and advises him to say: “It’s our campaign agenda. We believe in it. But . . . we’re going to stop.” Roosevelt didn’t stop, no matter how much Hoover tried to make him, and so far, Biden hasn’t either, pushing his one-vote majority in the Senate to pass the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill and using existing federal power to acquire and roll out coronavirus vaccines with alacrity…
At Biden’s inauguration, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the Joint Chiefs chairman, thought to himself with satisfaction, “It looked like another peaceful transfer of power.” However peaceful it looked in the end, it was not. Blood was shed to support the belief that retaining power by mob rule against the law would be almost cool.
Baud
You go, Joe.
Baud
FDR had a lot more support going in than Biden has had.
debbie
@Baud:
No concerns about France?
ryk
We had to put the best dog I ever knew down Friday. Dakota is on the August page of the “A” Balloon Juice calendar. He was 100 pounds of gentle love, and spent the last 13-1/2 years following my wife everywhere she went. In all the years and all the dogs we’ve owned, this was the first one that we had to make that decision. All the rest have died “naturally” from one thing or another. It’s been a rough couple of days around here. We are both just wrecked.
Chief Oshkosh
I doubt that Biden learned from a Hoover/Portman analogy — which is a pretty stupid analogy, and meaningless. OTOH, if President Joe wants to be the new FDR, that’s mighty good news on a Sunday morning. Wonder how FDR would’ve handled 21st century media.
mrmoshpotato
Someone tell Professor Rauchway that that “-ism” is Republicanism. Dump evoked and organized the Republican party. Dump evoked the past, in 2015, 35+ years of the Republican party. Just in a way that screamed the whispered or nod-nod-wink-wink parts of the past.
Chief Oshkosh
@ryk: I’m very sorry to hear it. It is a hard thing to have to do. Someone on an earlier thread asked how to cope with it. I sure never figured that out, but with time, it’s less painful.
OzarkHillbilly
@ryk: It’s never easy. Take care.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@ryk: I’m so sorry. That’s hard. You did the kind thing.
Wyatt Salamanca
While I’m no Bob Woodward fan and even less of a fan of former Washington editor for the National Review, Robert Babyface Costa, at least their book reveals that Mike Pence is no goddamn hero despite attempts by the MSM to portray him as one. He was and remains a spineless, gutless asshole:
h/t msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/new-reporting-casts-pence-s-jan-6-actions-unflattering-light-n1279225
mrmoshpotato
@Chief Oshkosh: I hope Biden told Portman to pound sand if Biden dignified that BS with a response.
mrmoshpotato
@ryk: I’m sorry to hear that.
Steeplejack (phone)
@ryk:
? ? Condolences on your loss.
mrmoshpotato
@Wyatt Salamanca:
That’s sugarcoating it after reading the article excerpt.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Wyatt Salamanca: I thought that report about Quayle was interesting. Quayle is an unlikely hero himself, but he’s out of Trump’s orbit. He doesn’t feel the pull that people who go near Trump seem to feel.
Wyatt Salamanca
Speaking of Eric Rauchway, he was a contributor to the late, great blog Edge of the American West. He’s always worth reading and there are some videos of him on C-SPAN discussing various books he’s written.
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
Semi-legal question: Is it possible to indict all of a political party’s elected members for Treason?
Asking for a
countryfriend.NB: I expect some legal eagles here will say “we’re not at war, so there’s no Enemy to whom they can give aid-and-comfort.” To which I say: “make ’em prove we’re not.” [Note that I did not use the adjective “declared” in front of “war.”]
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Rick Wilson says Everything TFG Touches Dies, and it’s really true. He destroys the integrity and soul of everyone who gets near him, or perhaps he brings something that was already there to the surface. They all turn into his toadies.
SFAW
@ryk:
I’m so sorry about your “puppy.” It’s always hard.
Betty Cracker
@ryk: That sucks. I am sorry.
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
Careful! Portman is one of Kay’s favorites!
[Note to Kay: yes, of course I’m kidding.]
Ohio Mom
It’s one of those through-the-looking-glass moments when I feel admiration for, and gratitude to Dan Quayle.
Who is someone I had largely forgotten. If there was somebody I never wondered “What happened to him, anyway,” it was Quayle. And here I am, cheering him on.
Betty Cracker
@Wyatt Salamanca: Thank you for mentioning Costa’s NR origin story. He’s been pretty successful at stuffing that down the memory hole, but it’s worth bearing in mind.
SiubhanDuinne
@ryk:
That’s so hard, and I’m so sorry. You did the right thing for Dakota, but knowing that doesn’t make the decision any easier nor the loss any less painful right now. Hugs to you and your wife.
Wyatt Salamanca
@mrmoshpotato:
Earlier this hour, Margaret Talev, past president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, was on CNN making the same tired bullshit assertion that Pence is a fucking hero right after the network aired a clip of a recent speech Pence delivered at the Reagan Library pretending to act as if he truly cares about the rule of law and checks and balances. These beltway reporters are a fucking disgrace to journalism.
narya
@ryk: Adding my condolences . . .
W/r/t TFFG, I’ve been listening to Lincoln’s Bible’s podcast (“The World Beneath”) and it’s quite good. In addition to a fascinating history of codebreaking in this country–and how it’s tied to mobsters–she does an excellent job connecting mobsters and spies, and it makes understanding TFFG’s power a little easier. If you assume that many Rs have a skeleton somewhere (but not a spine), and that TFFG has/gets access to that kompromat via various sources, it makes it easier (for me) to understand why some folks seem beholden to him (Graham) who might not otherwise be swayed by him. Folks like Quayle (and Cheney) may not have the same worries. Anyway, just a guess, and it’s worth checking out the podcast.
zhena gogolia
@ryk: I’m so sorry.
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom: He was at the inauguration, and I felt a bit of affection for him when I saw him there.
mrmoshpotato
@SFAW: Rob Portman’s one of Kay’s favorite Rethuglican Senators to tell to pound sand? ?
SFAW
@Wyatt Salamanca:
That reminds me, has Villago been posting recently? My visits here have been sporadic, so I was wondering.
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
I hadn’t considered that possibility, but it works.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Betty Cracker:
Also too, shame on WETA for choosing Babyface Costa to succeed Gwen Ifill as host of Washington Week in Review. Fortunately, Yamiche Alcindor now hosts the program but that decision still sticks in my craw.
mrmoshpotato
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Including my beloved Upchuck Toddler?! Noooooo!!!!!!
Ksmiami
@SFAW: they are like the Confederates, making war upon the Constitution and the United States
Ksmiami
@SFAW: yes- although not as vehemently as me.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
Dorothy A. Winsor
I’m gonna go write a little. I’m working on a short story about a retired magician who moves into an over 55 residence. My workshop group gave me good feedback on Wednesday. Let’s see if I can use it. Everybody be good.
germy
I’m trying to figure out what prompted this. What happened? I can’t keep up anymore.
zhena gogolia
@SFAW: He drops in occasionally.
SFAW
@Ksmiami:
Works for me.
Ramalama
@ryk:
I feel you. We still catch ourselves, ten years later, whenever we think of our boy, late night in the summer heat (Canada will surprise you). He used to sleep on cool parts of the yard (like the one he sneakily dug and hid from us until it was an actual hole) at night when we were out on the deck, sipping wine, tending to the fire we used to elevate mood and to ward off bugs. Our dog slept on the ground those nights as if the earth were the mother, holding him. “Remember when,” my partner said just a few weeks ago. “That dog sleeping looked like he had complete trust in the world.”
It was difficult to take walks by myself. I started volunteering to help a neighbor walk her husband’s unruly monster. It felt wrong and weird. The guy at the end of the leash wasn’t my guy. At yet he’s all I had for the moment.
Clearly have not gotten over our big dog. But with time other dogs are possible. And with other dogs, I learn a little more French.
Geminid
@narya: Even non-compromised Republican office holders who do not respect trump still fear his voters. In the long run, the traditional types could be better off having it out with the trumpists in the primaries. But McConnell, McCarthy and their henchmen are thinking short term. They desperately want to regain the Senate and House next year. So, they’ll paper over the cracks in their party and hope trump does not hurt them too much next year.
Next year’s Republican primaries in Georgia will test this dynamic. trump is gunning for the Republican Governor and Secretary of State, but it it looks like Kemp and Raffensperger will fight. And trump is pushing his favorite, Herschel Walker, for the Senate nomination, to the dismay of the state’s Republican office holders. With Georgia Democrats led by Stacey Abrams steadily gaining ground, the last thing Georgia Republicans need is a divisive primary season, but that’s what they are going to get.
debbie
Rob Portman represents everything that has gone wrong with the Republican Party. His veneer of civility and propriety do not disguise his disdain and contempt for 99% of Americans.
OzarkHillbilly
Where’s the fun in that?
WaterGirl
@germy: Just a guess, but maybe all the support people showed for Jennifer Rubin after Politico published what she had clearly identified in all caps as OFF THE RECORD?
Capri
@Ohio Mom: The highway that runs through Huntington, Indiana, Quale’s home town was named “The highway of vice presidents.” He didn’t even get named in his home town.
rikyrah
@ryk:
Sorry for your loss???
Betty Cracker
I’m too old to take mythmaking narratives at face value, but I understand their political utility. Biden has been running for president since I was in my 20s and Trump was still on his first wife, so I don’t buy the story that Trump’s Charlottesville remarks made Biden come out of retirement to take one last shot to redeem America’s soul.
I’m sure Biden was sincerely disgusted with Trump’s behavior, as we all were and are, but the much more likely truth is, Biden saw a political opening, and he went for it. This time it worked! So far, he’s done a pretty good job running a country that remains divided and faltering on a number of fronts. But is Biden a man of destiny who alone was capable of wresting the presidency from Trump?
I don’t believe that. But in addition to being useful to political campaigns, mythmaking is a staple of pundits and also historians like Meacham and perhaps Rauchway (I’m not as familiar with his work). It’s a device that tidies up messy, disparate themes and obscures the roles played by factors like greed, spite, dumb luck and sheer human fuckery.
In that sense, it’s like religion, which I also have no use for. Maybe some day, as a society, we’ll grow enough to put away these childish things.
rikyrah
@Wyatt Salamanca: We knew that he was spineless after the reaction from him after Dolt45 tried to kill him, his wife and child?
Barbara
@ryk: I am so sorry.
WereBear
@ryk: I’m so sorry, especially for your wife. That kind of devotion colors the whole time they are with us.
At such times, I feel like an era has ended. Mourn as much as you need to.
Because you both loved that much.
Joe Falco
@Geminid:
The Republican primary for SoS is the one I’m going to watch closely because it’s my current House Rep, Jody Hice *spits*, that’s taking on the TFG mantle to try and oust Raffensperger. My loathing for Hice is so deep and personal (my former pastor) that it almost makes me want to consider voting Republican in the primary just to vote against Hice. I hope he is crushed in the primary and has to end his term in Congress dealing with an ignominious defeat.
MomSense
I’m still trying to wrap my head around Dan fucking Quayle being the person who may have saved our Democracy?
Really? Fate has one helluva imagination.
MomSense
@ryk:
I’m so sorry.
WereBear
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If you had told me that DAN QUAYLE, the guy who can’t spell “potato,” would have a commitment to saving American democracy and in a position to influence for good…
I wouldn’t have believed you. :)
WereBear
@Soprano2: Being Rick Wilson, I think he stole that from Noel Casler, who was TFG’s wrangler on his reality show.
I think people can either stand being in that orbit, or not. If a person can stand it, they are soul-less greedheads, and deserving of every bit of the betrayal that is baked in.
JPL
@Joe Falco: I am considering voting in the republican primary also. The only reason that I hesitate is because of the mailers. I no longer have a home phone, but when I did trump left me a message. It was awful. Soon after that I cut the cord.
debbie
@JPL:
A lot of Republicans voted for Hilary in the primary against Obama just to fuck the Democrats (in their minds). I say, do it!
Kristine
@ryk: Heartfelt sympathies.
germy
@WaterGirl:
God, I forgot about that whole dust up.
I aspire to be a normie, but they keep pulling me back.
JPL
@debbie:Raffensperger received another letter from trump, but this time it was about imaginary fraud in DeKalb County. I’m not a fan of Raffensperger, but he is better than Jody Hice.
Roger Moore
@narya:
I think the suggestion that Trump or the Russians or somebody has dirt on all the Republicans lets them off the hook too easily. There’s no way he could blackmail the whole party into going in line. The truth is that they didn’t need any kind of blackmail to go along. They emulate Trump because they all have a bit of Trumpiness inside them, and he showed them they could let it out with no consequences.
germy
@JPL:
Raffensperger refuses to cooperate with the Jan. 6 commission.
I wonder if he can be forced, or does that violate some norm….
germy
gah!
germy
cartoon:
debbie
@JPL:
TFG is awfully persistent. He reminds me of the Canada geese who wanted to nest just outside my apartment door. I used to chuck ice cubes at them. They’d move away, but then come back again. I ended up winning out, but it was relentless for a while.
There go two miscreants
Sadly, probably not. Humans have been telling “just-so” stories forever, and mythmaking is just one variety of those. There’s an interesting book on that general idea: Everything Is Obvious (once you know the answer). The better historians do try to break away from that mindset, but it is hard because there are so many possible counterfactuals to any event.
Geminid
@Joe Falco: I’d love to see Raffensperger thrash Hice. But it may be the other way around. I was just suggesting to my Atlanta friend that Georgia Republican leaders may be losing control of their voters. This happened in Virginia. The Chamber of Commerce/Country Club establishment used to call the shots in the party, and the rank and file voters would go along. Now an alliance of tea party cranks and bible thumpers is ascendent. They knocked off Eric Cantor in 2014, and then two fairly young Representatives retired in 2016 rather than face primaries, or more likely the caucuses and district conventions that the radicals favor. The best the establishment can do now is to form an uneasy partnership with people they despise, and who despise them.
Demographic change has helped Virginia turn blue. Georgia also has had similar growth in immigration from other states and other countries, and an increasing cohort of college educated voters. These groups are trending Democratic. Another factor in the decline of the Virginia Republican party is the way it’s rightward lurch has alienated independents and motivated Democrats. You will have a front row seat as these dynamics play out in your state next year.
germy
@debbie:
Like TFG, Canada geese poop on everything.
They ruin everything with their poop.
Mike in NC
Kinda pathetic that a Cult of Personality was built by American wingnuts around a fat old man who wore a girdle, a diaper, and lifts in his shoes. Do better next time!
LiminalOwl
@ryk: I’m so sorry. Losing a beloved pet is hard; doing it when you have to make the decision yourself is one of the hardest things I know.
raven
@ryk: Aw I’m so sorry. They never leave you.
LiminalOwl
@rikyrah: Good morning!
Kay
@germy:
There’s a relationship aspect to black/white political alliances in the Democratic Party that Republicans and most pundits miss. I think they miss it because they don’t recognize black political power. I’m not talking about black people as a vital component to Democrats winning national and state races- I’m talking about black political power in its own right- where black people are elected and run things.
It’s interesting that they miss it. It isn’t about white pols “reaching out” to black voters. It’s white pols negotiating with black pols and black political power centers as equal players.
Sure Lurkalot
@JPL: Raffensperger has said he will defy the 1/6 commission’s subpoena because it’s a partisan sideshow. What if Hice were 10 times more horrible…another Douthat column in the making.
VOR
Exactly. TFG said the quiet parts out loud and the audience cheered. Remember, he opened his campaign by saying Mexicans were rapists. TFG was polling at 95% approval among Republicans. We kept hearing MAGAts applaud him for “telling it how it is” or speaking his mind. He hated the same people they hated – immigrants, Muslims, shithole countries, and anybody who couldn’t pass the paper bag test.
And there were limited repercussions from the news media too. TFG would say there were very fine people on both sides, when referring to neo-Nazis, and the press would forget all about it in 2-3 days. Okay, the press moved on because there were more scandals in those 2-3 days, a Gish Gallop of scandals, but move on they did. Plus most of the MAGAts would never hear about it because their media – Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, and Facebook memes – simply wouldn’t cover it.
The institutional Republican party fell in line behind TFG because he won and they wanted power. Same reason why the so-called religious conservatives backed TFG – power. All about power, not principles.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Imagine being such a feeble-minded dolt that you turn to Dan Quayle as a wise elder…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m on the phlegmatic side, but this visual is a hell of a thing
Roger Moore
@VOR:
I’m not at all sure that’s true. The really scary thought is that it really is about principles, and that Trumpism is just letting the Republicans display the principles they’ve truly been following all along but have been afraid to admit.
germy
@Kay:
I agree, it’s one of their blind spots.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Pence is feeble and shouldn’t have needed to call anybody, but someone pointed out that Quayle was also a Republican Veep from Indiana who lost after one term, so Pence calling him makes about as much sense as him calling anyone else.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And yet here we are. A feeble minded coward turned to Dan Quayle and somehow DAN QUAYLE managed to find exactly the right words to get the coward to save our democracy – which feels like a miracle.
Jay C
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Well, in addition to “spineless,gutless asshole”, we can also add “moron” to Mike Pence’s CV after this gem:
Did he somehow forget that Dan Quayle actually DID hold the same position Pence did (though admittedly not serving under a narcissistic sociopath)?
Baffoon.
Betty
@SFAW: You are confusing Kay with Kasie Hunt, a true fan.
smith
@MomSense: Re Dan Quayle and myth-making, there’s an old tale that says, improbably, that once upon a time there were Republicans who respected the rule of law.
MomSense
@MomSense:
I needed a little reminder about the brilliance of Dan Quayle.
liveabout.com/dan-quayle-quotes-2733512 just how dumb is Dan Quayle.
MomSense
@Jay C:
You have to hear what TFG said in a mafia don voice. We won’t be friends anymore really means you will be taking a dirt nap.
gwangung
@Kay: Amen. It’s an aspect of their own racism that they can only conceive of power flowing outwards from white hands, and not that black hands and white hands hold power.
narya
@Roger Moore: How about both/and? I do think that some of them are compromised, but I also agree with what you said.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: oh sure, the whole Indiana, right-wing, Xianist thing, Quayle really is like an older, and apparently less dumb, verion of the man his R colleagues reportedly called Mike Dense. But Dan Quayle is frozen in my mind as a the wide-eyed dope of thirty years ago, trying to turn his pissing match with Candice Bergen into a historical moment of great social and political import
@MomSense: yeah, credit where due, hard to process
Remember “happy campers“? for some reason that one has always stayed with me. Also, Quayle plays a large role in my personal six degrees of separation, a friend of my father’s met him socially a few times before he was Veep. I figure that gets me to a lot of fancy people.
debbie
@MomSense:
Pence was putting his political future before his country just as much as any of the others. Period. Not a hero. Not sure anything would have ended very differently had he acquiesced, to be honest.
Wapiti
@germy: I think he can be forced, but he’s going to have to be forced. As others note, he’s in a primary contest and can’t easily cave to the Dems.
MomSense
@narya:
I think at critical moments some of them were made aware of the kompromat.
Scout211
I saw this story on DKos this morning:
Just like the anti-vaxxers, some of these insurrectionist just decide which rules/laws they want to follow and which ones are beneath them. Yikes. We are still working on dodging bullets. At least the judges in these insurrectionist trials are not having it.
Another Scott
Lots of good points in this thread.
Pence isn’t a hero. Quayle isn’t a hero. Even if Quayle had said, “Dunno – you figure it out, make something up, it’ll be fine” that assumes everyone else would have just stood around and shrugged if Pence had said “welp, can’t do it”. In fact, there would have been lots and lots and lots of blowback. There’s a whole machinery below the VP that is active that day in certifying the results. Quayle telling him that he had no choice wasn’t great statesmanship, it was reality.
Similarly, I’m sure that Biden had done lots of calculations over the years. He obviously thought that Beau was going to carry on the family name in politics, but assumed it would be later. Joe didn’t run in 2016 (for various reasons – Beau died in May 2015, and Beau had years before he would run (if ever)) so the pull of the office wasn’t overwhelming then. I’m sure that Charlottesville did have an effect on him.
tl;dr – It’s probably This And rather than This Or. Few things in life have single simple causes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Percysowner
@Chief Oshkosh: Well Fox would be calling him a weak (think worse word you can come up with for someone disabled). All the papers would have been “concerned” to one extent or another about the state of his health. His numerous affairs, several of which were with employees of either him or Eleanor, would have been gone over with a fine tooth comb and #MeToo would have been a battle cry. Eleanor’s deep relationship with Lorena Hickok would have been all over the right wing medial.
I’m not sure FDR could have been elected in today’s climate
MomSense
@debbie:
No, definitely not a hero. I’m just gobsmacked at the reality that our democracy was in such a perilous place and the fail safe ended up being Dan fucking Quayle.
I’m back to this is the plot of a bad spy novel by LeCarre if he were a meth head.
JPL
@Sure Lurkalot: He tried to block the Fulton County Elections Comm. from appointing Cathy Wooland as chairman. Hopefully Raffensberger will work with the district attorney who is investigating trump’s involvement in our elections.
jeffreyw
germy
JPL
If Raffensperger won the republican nomination, there is a good chance that trump’s cult would stay home on election day.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: Le Carré’s last novel comes out in October, and apparently there’s a farewell appearance by George Smiley! (yes, an exclamation point, and yes, I do consider myself to be a nerd).
I wonder what the setting of the novel is. As someone pointed out when Legacy of Spies came out, Smiley would have been about 120 in that book if you did a timeline from A Murder of Quality and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold.
Baud
@debbie:
I think it would have gotten more violent. We lucked out that Jan. 6 remained a battle between seditionists and law enforcement only.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: ah, never mind, “resurrect Smiley” here apparently refers to Legacy of Spies
MomSense
@Baud:
I have a procedural question. Had we failed to certify the election, what was the next step? Would it have gone to SCOTUS?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense: wasn’t their plan to go to a vote by state delegation in the House, where each state has one vote, so California = Wyoming = New York = South Dakota = New Jersey…..?
Villago Delenda Est
@ryk: My condolences. Dakota was such a good boy! Also very photogenic! He’s chasing after rabbits in some far away sunny field now. Probably overseen by Tunch.
NotMax
Why do I get the feeling the only reason he dialed Quayle was because calls to Palin went to voice mail?
emrys
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: reminds me of when we had the full Quilt out there.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I don’t know but I have a feeling the next step would have been bad. TFG would be President for life and then Dence and Ivanka would be fighting over succession.
Danielx
Trump did pluck Pence from well deserved semi-obscurity. Pence was a lousy governor and was going to get his ass handed to him if he ran for re-election, because Indiana voters had tired of his act. Which is a wonder in and of itself- for a sitting Republican governor to be turned out of office by Indiana voters for poor performance is damn unusual. Usually my fellow citizens are okay with Republican governors as long as they are warm and breathing and don’t fuck things up too badly.
Joe Falco
@JPL:
Oh? You don’t think they wouldn’t come out to vote for TFG’s former employee, Herschel Walker? I mean, he’s got an endorsement from Lord Tinyhands himself. That’s supposed to be worth its weight in gold to Republicans(/s). Of course, that’s assuming current state Secretary of Ag Gary Black doesn’t win the primary instead of Herschel.
Mike in NC
@Scout211: Pretty sure any crappy frozen supermarket pizza would taste better than what this idiot was selling.
Villago Delenda Est
@Scout211: Too fucking bad, seditious sow. I have ZERO tolerance for “sovereign citizen” (a contradiction in terms) types. May they all rot forever in stir.
Geminid
@JPL: Republican voters still might show up in November to vote against Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock, but leave the Secretary of State line blank. Georgia Republicans cannot afford to have their voters stay home, though. David Perdue’s vote dropped by 200,000 between the November election and the Senate runoff. Jon Ossoff’s vote dropped by only 100,000, and that made the difference.
narya
@MomSense: Exactly. I think it’s likely that some were all-in from the beginning, either because they (knew they) were compromised or because they also wanted access to that screaming, activated base. Then there’s at least one more group, that didn’t like TFG and didn’t want to support him, and had enough of their own base to avoid him, but then found out that they were also compromised.
Villago Delenda Est
@NotMax: Alert the burn unit.
Roger Moore
@Scout211:
There is something bizarrely incoherent about being both a sovereign citizen and participating in stop the steal. Both theories are nuttier than squirrel poop, but they’re also mutually incompatible. Seriously, how can you believe simultaneously that the US government is inherently illegitimate so that you can ignore the law and that it’s so important who is elected president that you are willing to march on Congress to disrupt counting the electoral vote?
trnc
All true, but I also think this was a case of probably the best person for the job (even though he was #3 or 4 on my 2020 list) being in the right place at the right time. IE, I don’t think Biden would have been this great if he had won in 08. He had his own challenges, and he overcame them to rise to the occasion.
trnc
@Roger Moore: Cognitive dissonance is the defining characteristic of the republican party. They’re coated in some sort of fact-diffusing teflon.
Villago Delenda Est
@debbie: Rob is definitely not a Natalie, that’s for damn sure.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trnc: yup, I always say Biden was the only top tier candidate in 2020 who didn’t draw the wrong conclusions from 2016, but I don’t think that was calculation, just who he is. Also, as @Another Scott: says, he was picking up the torch for his fallen son.
Kay
@gwangung:
I didn’t see it myself until I got involved in the state Democratic Party – because I’m white and rural I accepted all that about D’s reaching out to black VOTERS as the whole story: pol to voter.
In Cleveland I saw white pol to black pol – I thought “now that is an interesting story”, that power to power dynamic, not up to down but ACROSS
You don’t understand Democratic politics without it – black voters are only part of the story. It’s much bigger and much more local than Biden to Clyburn.
trollhattan
@Danielx:
When Pence was a rep he was considered the dumbest guy in congress. I checked and he and Gohmert did overlap, presenting a clear danger to the entire government, which might have been sucked into a singularity of stupid had they spent too much time in the same room.
As things stand, Gohmert and Nunes need to be kept at least 200 yards apart, just to be safe.
Geminid
@Joe Falco: Next year’s Georgia Senate contest will be intensely contested. So will Arizona’s. Republicans need to win those seats back to regain the Senate. And they have to put together the coalition that can take those two states back in 2024. They have no realistic path to an electoral vote majority without them.
Joe Falco
@Geminid:
Likewise, Democrats need to form a strong enough coalition to overcome whatever coalition the R’s cobble together. It’s close enough that almost any seat in both houses of Congress is going to be do-or-die for either party. It’s just some areas are going to be more contested than others.
eddie blake
@germy: from what i can glean, rubin’s damascus-road- conversion happened after charlottesville.
same with boot and kristol. i figure they realized that being on the side of actual nazis was a bad place for red-sea-pedestrians to be. (clearly, no one told stephen miller, who yearns to be a kapo SO badly.)
but yeah. when the gop OPENLY embraced fascism, they ‘noped’ and were out.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Something we have seen a few times now is a seemingly late candidate can have an advantage in part because folks get burned out by familiarity and other folks’ campaigns implode from either mismanagement or running out of resources.
Biden coming in late was frankly, unwelcome. We had a huge slate and several popular frontrunners. Why, Joe, why?
Joe was smart and his experience was unmatched by any of the seventy something other candidates. He wins one critical primary and everybody else folds like a house of cards, implying an underlying weakness that could have doomed their November chances. Now it all seems providential.
When Jerry Brown 2.0 ran for governor against Bazillionaire Meg Whitman, Meg spent copious money and ran for what seemed like two years. She was EVERYWHERE. Jerry tended to his secretary of state duties and his Colusa ranch and refused to go on the stump. Everybody is tearing their hair out as Whitman is polling okay and Might Become Governor to follow up Arnold, an improbable Republican domination. Jerry finally stirs, I think it was in September and kind of grudgingly campaigns, them wipes the floor with Whitman. Bye, Megs.
Gavin Newsom seemed not to be campaigning against the recall until pretty late. Dealing with Covid and wildfires will tend to use up your time. When Larry Elder gave the threat of Trumpism a face, Newsom had a touchstone and went hammer and tongs against the very idea of a Trump mini-me becoming governor for even a week. Worked like a charm.
And that brings us to Donny. His 2016 comedy campaign seemed like a hilarious sideshow to the Republican center ring (was it 26 candidates?). His swatting them around in the “debates” was hilarious and we, I anyway, thought the entire Republican apparatus would fall apart and require rebuilding as a sane party. Okay, so that didn’t quite happen.
All of these comprise an indictment of what standard campaigning has evolved into. I don’t think it’s now possible to campaign in each of 99 Iowa counties, carry the caucuses, grab New Hampshire then steadily stroll away from everybody and win the nomination. That model does not work, and yet….
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan:
That exchange about, “When I came to California thirty years ago, it was the land of opportunity!” “Hey Meg! you know who was governor thirty years ago?” was too good to be true, like the original instance of the later meme, “The writers are going too far…”
Geminid
@Joe Falco: I speculated to my Atlanta friend that Georgia Republicans are probably discussing how best to keep Walker from the Senate nomination. Walker is not one of them, in more ways than one. I also read that they think Walker would be a weak candidate, and I think he would be.
Whoever their nominees are, though, the Republicans won’t be trying to motivate voters to come out to vote for their candidates so much as to vote a against the Democrats. They will paint Abrams and Warnock as socialist, criminal-coddling, freedom-hating, free-stuff giving, anti-christian thugs. This would play into what political scientists call “negative partisanship,” the dynamic of people voting against the enemy tribe. It seems especially strong now, and it’s really all the Republicans have got going these days.
trollhattan
Rumors increasing that Beto will announce a run against Abbott, which would triple Abbott’s vote suppression efforts. I kanna read Texas and do not know whether Beto’s relative fame helps or hinders. Abbott’s gotta go, one way or another.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid:
also New Hampshire and Nevada. The CW I’ve read is that Hassan is much more vulnerable to Sununu than any other R, I have no sense if Sununu is trumpy, or if he’ll have a trumpy primary. In NV, I gather Laxalt has gone full-metal trump
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That was just…{chef’s kiss} Confess to ambivalence with Jerry 1.0 (his sudden conversion to Prop 13 acolyte was unwelcome OTOH Linda Ronstadt, rrrowr) but Jerry 2.0 was just amazing. Meg thought of him as a recalcitrant board member or something. (The undocumented live-in housekeeper was just so on-brand. Billionaire cheapskate.)
Roger Moore
@Kay:
When you think about it, it’s hard to see how things could be any other way. If Blacks are really a vital part of the Democrats’ coalition, there really isn’t a practical way to keep them from getting real power in the party. It’s just inevitable that’s going to happen if the party is itself democratic. Even if it isn’t and there’s a cabal that controls everything behind the scenes, they’re eventually going to have to let some Black members in or Blacks are going to walk away from the party. That’s just how politics works.
You can see the flip side of this in the Republican party with crazy racist people. You can’t run a party that depends heavily on crazy racists for its electoral power without eventually cutting them in to the real power within the party. This is why it’s an incredibly dangerous and stupid idea for the Democrats to try to cultivate a similar kind of crazy fringe as a way of boosting their power. It might help in the short term, but eventually that fringe is going to demand power commensurate with its votes, and it will undermine the whole party.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: I was just looking at this poll:
Yes, McConaughey as in all right all right all right Matthew. I’m deeply skeptical of celebrity candidates, but stranger things have happened….
JPL
@Joe Falco: Only if they think playing russian roulette is fun.
Roger Moore
@eddie blake:
I think it was a bit more complex than that. Most of the neocons were anti-Trump during the election and stayed ant-Trump after he won. But they were still anti-Trump Republicans at that point who hoped to excise Trumpism from the party. The big thing that happened with Charlottesville is that they decided the party was irredeemable and was going to have to be fought from the outside rather than reformed from within.
Joe Falco
@Geminid:
He would be. His only natural base of support is the Vinn Diagram of Republicans who are both UGA fans that remember UGA’s 1980 national college football championship and T cultists. His rival, Sec of Ag Gary Black, has already won the endorsement of several sheriffs in Georgia, including Athens-Clarke County’s, who is supposed to be a Democrat.
I predict there will be an understanding between Walker and the rest of the Georgia GOP that as long as he coasts along and loses gracefully to Black in the primary, it will allow Walker to save face and the Georgia GOP will have a tougher candidate going into the general election.
Jinchi
@eddie blake: To her credit, Rubin was vehemently against Trump from day one and she had no patience for Republicans who rallied behind him after he won the nomination.
Like most here, I find her style of conservatism repulsive, Givng her credit for passing a low bar doesn’t mean we’ve embraced her views on anything else. It just looks like that by comparison with 90 percenti of the party and its voters.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ohio, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina will also be in play. I just emphasized Georgia and Arizona as two states that have gone from red to purple recently. And they in some ways they remind me of Virginia, which has gone from red to purple to blue since 2000.
Ohio will be very interesting. Tim Ryan has a fairly easy path to the nomination, while the Republicans will have more divisive contests for their Governor and Senate nominees.
Ohio has voted Republican in the last two Presidential elections. But in between, Sherrod Brown won reelection by 300,000 votes. Ryan may not be the politician Brown is, but he’ll just need to win by 30,000, or even less.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid:
sure, just riffing. I think Georgia is on the online left’s radar in a way other races aren’t
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
Looking at how the votes turned out, I can’t think of anyone else who had a chance of winning that election.
eddie blake
@Roger Moore:
@Jinchi:
oh, i agree. i figure the neocon exodus (heh) from the fascist gop came out of a sense of self-preservation, as well as a modicum of understanding of history. (and, perhaps an awareness of the great klingon proverb, “only a fool fights in a burning house.”)
i just think that kneejerk twitter reaction, “oh, she supports biden because he’s white.” is missing the forest for the trees.
eta- also, who is “embracing” her views?
trollhattan
@James E Powell:
I’m probably in that camp as well–too many razor-thin margins in too many states that would not have gone for any woman candidate, and until Joe came in it looked as though we would nominate a woman. Sorry to be so stark but if Hillary taught us anything, it’s that misogyny lingers deep across many, many groups.
And Bernie would have been a disaster.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Being in California I am sworn to silence on whether a celebrity can be elected to statewide office.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Anything, even a celebrity, would be better than Abbott. Maybe get Tommie Lee Jones to run against and defeat Paxton, too.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
This is true of almost every election in the United States. That’s why low approval senators like McConnell get double digit wins. Republican voters don’t know or care about policies. They vote because they hate the rest of us.
JPL
@Joe Falco: Walker is going to have his biggest supporter campaign for him soon. I’m not sure how Black handles that.
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: +1
Positive name recognition is worth bazillions. New candidates have to spend a lot to try to build that in a few months/years before an election. People who have been in politics for decades don’t have to do that. It’s a huge advantage, especially these days with fractured media and huge costs.
Misogyny and bias against women in high office is another huge problem. It makes people wary when the stakes are high – better go with the safer choice! I remember when a woman being Secretary of State or National Security Adviser would have been impossible. Even being Senator is still far too rare. Hillary was right that breaking through the glass ceiling is a huge problem and when it’s finally done it will be a big deal – but even then the fight won’t be over to get to actual equality.
Similarly for minority governors. Wilder was the first post-reconstruction governor, and the first to be elected, but VA only has single terms for governor and he couldn’t run for re-election. Patrick was the only one to win re-election thus far.
“… backwards and in high heels!”
:-(
We’ve got to keep changing minds and fighting the old stereotypes. It’s a never-ending battle.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: even Minnesota….
@debbie: Governor Woodrow F Call? I would relocate to work for that campaign
debbie
@Geminid:
One thing that may help Ohio Democrats is the growing anger over the just-concluded monstrosity that was redistricting. Lawsuits and new citizen initiatives are already in the works.
James E Powell
@trollhattan:
Agree completely. And another thing 2020 showed us is that Hillary Clinton was running against forces that we all underestimated.
WaterGirl
@Mike in NC: Not to mention that they would surely remove the “wash your hands” signs from the bathrooms, so who knows what extra ingredients you would be getting on your pizza.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And I forgot Florida, where Marco Rubio has good reason to sweat. Val Demings made good use of her opportunity to shine on the national stage in the first impeachment. Demings will be a strong and well funded candidate
Pennsylvania’s Senate race will be very much on thr online left’s radar, since Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman has the vital qualification of having supported the junior senator from Vermont in 2016 and 2020. State Senator Malcolm Kenyatta also is running in the “progressive” lane, but lags in fundraising, possibly because donors are skeptical that a 30 year old gay Black man could win the state. Congressman Conor Lamb is thought to be Fetterman’s biggest rival.
Val Arkoosh, the experienced Chairman of populous Montgomery County’s Board of Supervisors, is also running and has the support of Emily’s List and the super pac that promotes candidates with STEM backgrounds (Arkoosh is an M.D.) But for some inexplicable reason, Ms. Arkoosh seems to get far less notice than Messrs. Fetterman, Kenyatta, and Lamb.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: I always think that while there was certainly misogyny against HRC, there was also a very specific Hillary Derangement Syndrome that was fueled by misogyny, bur somehow more. Right, (far) left and center, she just makes people crazy in ways I will never completely understand. For much of the media, I have a half-baked theory that they took out on her their resentment against the charming rogue they couldn’t bring down, whom they couldn’t even bring themselves to hate they way they thought they should have. In said half-baked theory, Al Gore suffered from the same transferred resentment. Maureen Dowd is the maybe the best example of this, because she wasn’t pretending to be objective by that point.
I wish there were some kind of computer simulation we could run where Harris and/or Warren had run on a Biden-ish platform
Geminid
@debbie: Independents don’t like gerrymandering either. And if Ohio Republicans push through permitless concealed carry legislation this session, Ohioans will have another reason to be mad. I very much doubt that this legislation has broad support. In Texas, polling showed that 56% of Texans disapproved of permitless concealed carry, but the Republicans pushed it through anyway. It’s a terrible idea.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
My concern re Florida is that optimism combined with respect/affection for Demmings will cause us to donate millions to a race that we will lose by double digits.
They elected the dipshit in the first place, then re-elected him after he promised he wouldn’t run. Florida is a red state now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: Speaking of my hypothetical computer simulation… I’d be interested to see how Fetterman does presenting a left-leaning platform with his blue-collar, bouncer’s persona. I do wonder if progressives aren’t whistling past the graveyard as they hand-wave away Fetterman chasing a black jogger through his neighborhood with a loaded shogun
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell: statewide races in FL have been closer than the presidential votes in recent years, no? De Santis and Gillum, Scott and Nelson?
Jinchi
We get to find out next time we have a Republican House majority certifying an election
Bill Arnold
@Soprano2:
In Christianity and some other religions, increasing this moral corruption is the role of demons(/the Adversary). If one assumed that DJT was possessed by a demon, this corruption of everyone around him would be the expected observed effects of such a presence.
And yes, this would mean that the evangelical supporters of DJT are willing (both witting and unwitting) tools of the Adversary.
Yes, in this narrative, defeating Trump (and taking bare control of the Senate) was a dodging of a bullet(s), akin the dodging of bullets by Neo dodged in the first Matrix movie.
James E Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Rubio won 52-43, over 700K votes.
Another Scott
@James E Powell: Good points, but the pandemic is still raging. We haven’t seen all the effects yet.
So far, most of the predictions that the GQP will come back have not borne fruit. We won the GA senate races and GA registration is at very high levels. We won in CA. Biden is getting his agenda enacted, and got a few GQPers to vote for the infrastructure bill in the Senate (breaking the 100% opposition to everything stasis).
Our voters are highly motivated. Theirs are still on the path of infighting and they still haven’t figured out how to handle TFG. VA’s elections this fall look to be yet another disaster for them.
The October 2 Women’s March might be informative as well.
I like our chances.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Wyatt Salamanca:
They are not journalists, they are enablers. That’s why they say what they do, they are enablers for the wealthy.
Joe Falco
@JPL: He minimizes that point as best he can, play up fear mongering about Democrats and their “cancel culture” being responsible for that one baseball game originally planned to be played at White Flight Stadium being moved to another state coupled with other scare tactics. Also, hearken back to pre-COVID times and wax poetic about Georgia’s economy back then.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Fetterman’s 2011 incident with the jogger will get a thorough airing in the Democratic primary.
Fetterman’s “working class” appeal seems suspect to me. Sure, he dresses like how college educated “progressives” imagine a working class person dresses, and they think he will appeal to their fantasy of the white working class. It could be that Fetterman’s working class schtick will resonate with Tony and Sandy down at the bowling alley. And Parker and Abigail up at the country club might like the idea of a proactive mayor who would chase some of the joggers in their neighborhood. But again, this will be fought out in the primary.
Captain C
@Villago Delenda Est: Funny how they’re quite happy to use (often fraudulently) the legal system when it suits them (fake liens come to mind). If they were serious, they’d refuse all legal protection, including for violent crimes against them. But they don’t want to be outlaws, just to do whatever they want with no consequence or repercussion, while denying the same to anyone they don’t like.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan: I don’t think Jerry had a sudden conversion to loving Prop 13, he was(and is) just a realist, It was passed by the voters and he had to make the best of it. BTW, on your earlier comment about Jerry doing his job as Sec. of State, he was AG when he ran for his 3rd term(he was Sec. of State when he ran for his first).
James E Powell
@Another Scott:
I like our chances overall and I am looking at saves in AZ, GA, and NH plus flips in OH, PA, and WI. It would take a lot to make me feel optimistic about FL. (Still haven’t recovered from 2000.)
Geminid
@James E Powell: If you look at statewide Florida races since 2010, Rubio’s 2016 margin is very much an outlier. Florida is a purple state, with a gerrymander-red legislature and Congressional delegation
Anyway, even if you tried you could not stop people from donating to Val Demings.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
It’s a really interesting political story too, and it isn’t reported. I saw it again at a Cleveland political event with Sherrod Brown. It was on voting rights and state and local elected black Democrats were there ensuring that the issue was front and center. It’s a peer to peer negotiation rather than “Sherrod Brown saves black people”. They’re a political power in their own right apart from any “90% of black people vote for Democrats” or “black female voters won it for Biden”.
I’d like to see the reverse of the conventional reporting too- conventional is “white pol reaches out to black voters”. I’d like to see analysis of white voters and black pols, where the black person is the political leader and white peope are just voters.
I don’t know but there must be black elected officials in these majority black southern-state counties, just like there are in Cleveland or Chicago. Why don’t we ever hear about them? I bet Staci Abrams knows who they are.
Soprano2
@Kay: I just got done listening to the latest “Serial” podcast. It was about a black-run PAC in Bladen County, NC, where the Republican cheating scandal happened in 2018, and that group’s power and relationship with the white people there. If you listen to podcasts you might enjoy it.
Steeplejack (phone)
Retired firefighter shuts down a J6er. Definitely worth a watch (two minutes).
Geminid
@Kay: I know about excellent Representatives Terri Sewell (D-AL) and Dan McEachin (D-VA), as well as Jahana Hayes (D-CT) and Lauren Underwood (D-IL). But many Democrats don’t notice capable Black office holders until they’ve made a splash on the national stage. Val Demings and Joe Neguse were relative nobodies until the first and second Impeachments. And a lot of people won’t know who Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is until the January 6 Select Commitee begins it’s work in earnest.
But this phenomenon extends to white officeholders as well. I chalk it up to a lack of curiosity as to people and events that do not make national news. And some passivity among people who rely on their usual news sources and don’t research matters on their own.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Republicans won Florida’s 2010 and 2014 Governor races by 60, 000 and 66,000 votes out of 5.5 million votes cast. In 2018, DeSantis beat Gillum by less than 40,000 out of over 8 million votes.
JoyceH
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Several times I heard anchors on television describe Quayle as the only living Republican former VP. Had to go check Wikipedia to see if I’d missed something, but sure enough, Dick Cheney is still alive.
Now, it’s true that Quayle is the only Republican VP who had to certify his own reelection loss, but that’s not what they said.
Rand Careaga
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Incidentally, the le Carré memoir, The Pigeon Tunnel, is well worth a read—or better yet, worth a listen in the unabridged audiobook version, very capably read by the author, who proves himself, among other things, a wickedly gifted mimic.
Rand Careaga
@Jinchi:
We go to war with the allies of convenience we have, not necessarily the allies of convenience we want. Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, Hell. Some assembly required.
opiejeanne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I can’t imagine Dan Quayle as an elder. I still think of him as wet behind the ears and wearing knee pants.
debbie
@Steeplejack (phone):
I want to hug him. That is one brave dude. I was expecting the uniformed firefighter to deck him.
brantl
@SFAW: Declared is a verb, not an adjective.
Nettoyeur
@ryk: Condolences. Over the years, we have lost three beloved dogs whose grave illnesses finally made their lives unbearable. The pain of losing each one fades, masked by the good memories, but never goes away. Dogs are often better beings than humans, and the world would be a better place if they lived far longer lives.
@Roger Moore: Only the bit that having a black President brought out into daylight.
J R in WV
@Geminid:
Mr Walker was great at running the football, and did so for many hundreds and thousands of head injuries during his career in football. Pretty sure he has had trouble with Law Enforcement since retirement from traumatic brain injury ball.
I personally still watch some football, but somehow I am watching it less and enjoying it still even still more less than I used to. [SAD] So many stars of that show have obvious behaviorial issues eventually. They should not engage in careers with lives at stake, like Senatorial work!
ETA: In my weak defense, I contribute no income to any entity via my watching of football via broadcast TV…
brantl
@Jay C: That would be “buffoon”. Baffoon would be a sort of penguin in clown makeup.
Steeplejack
@brantl:
Declared can indeed be used as an adjective, according to the Oxford English Dictionary and numerous other sources. Your declared thesis is in error.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
That’s my situation. My Assemblyman (Chris Holden) is Black, and my district is absolutely not a majority Black one. Yes, it includes some traditionally Black neighborhoods here in Pasadena, but that is nowhere near enough to carry the district. Holden couldn’t win if he couldn’t get White, Hispanic, and Asian people to vote for him. And, of course, until 2021 my junior Senator was also Black, or multi-racial with Black being a big part of her identity. I’ve voted for both of them because they’ve earned my trust.
Geminid
@J R in WV: Hardhitting safety Irv Cross played through multiple concussions in his nine year career, and went on to a groundbreaking career as a network sports anchor. Cross was exceptional, though. From what I’ve read about Herschel Walker’s life since he left football, he surely suffers from the effects of traumatic brain injuries, and for his sake I hope he doesn’t run for public office. Whichever other Republican facing Raphael Warnock will be constructively brain damaged anyway.
Irv Cross was knocked out so many times his rookie year his teamates called him “Paperhead.” When Cross was advised by doctors to quit, he put padding in his helmet and learned to tackle with his head clear. After he retired, Cross demonstrated his mental acuity when CBS ( I believe) asked him to co-anchor a Sunday pregame show (Cross had demonstrated his sportscasting ability in the offseason for a Pittsburgh TV station). The network’s producers suggested he wear a leisure suit and a gold chain! Cross appeared in a coat and tie, as he did throughout his broadcasting career.
J R in WV
@Geminid:
As a person who has personally had severe concussions over and over since I was a little kid, I personally know that everyone who has concussions isn’t brain damaged enough to be stupid/psychotic from that damage. I pursued a BS in computer Science and had a long and successful career in the software trade.
Irv Cross was a great example of that fact, also. Smarter about broadcasting that highly paid professionals!
But O J Simpson and Herschel Walker and that guy with the Patriots, Aaron Hernandez, are examples of guys who show that traumatic brain injury can produce truly evil personalities.
Anyone who supports TFG is another example of evil personalities. Just look at them!
Just Chuck
@J R in WV: It’s not always brain injury: a lot of the sports legends just never stopped being the asshole jocks from high school.
Ken
@JoyceH:
“Un-Dead! Not alive! What do you mean? Is this all a nightmare, or what is it?” — Arthur Holmwood in Dracula by Bram Stoker
dww44
@Kay:
I know this thread is long dead, but I know of one who fits your criteria.. Democraticand AA Congressman Sanford Bishop of Columbus, Ga (home of Ft. Benning) and who does represent a significant number of white voters although his district (#02) exists because of a carve out by the GOP during the last redistricting. They cede certain districts to Dems and make the others almost unwinnable for a Democratic candidate.