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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Hakeem Jeffries FTW

Open Thread: Hakeem Jeffries FTW

by | 112 Comments

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I will miss Nancy Pelosi every single day, but this is great news.

An FYI: Tonight I’m posting a discussion thread on how to be an ally, Dan B and Sister Golden Bear will be there to offer suggestions and I hope others will, too. Not only LGBTQ+ issues, but others as well. I hope you’ll stop by with questions and suggestions. Kindness thread on Thursday.

This is an open thread

 

Reader Interactions

112Comments

  4. 4.

    sab

    Living as I do in flyover country, I have mixed feelings about a guy from Brooklyn being Speaker, but I try not to hold where they are from against people. My favorite aunt was from Queens, 50 years in Ohio and she never lost her NY accent.

  5. 5.

    Betsy

    Now, look for the idiot Republicans to pluck some random Black dude to head up a post of theirs.

    Because when we promote a talented person of color to a position that needs that person’s talent, they think we do it because of tokenism.

    “They got a black guy?  Well, we got a black guy” … and their analysis ends there.

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    @TaMara: Just to be clear, that’s from 2017. At first I thought this was his acceptance speech and thought it was a little strange.

  8. 8.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    The fact that he was unanimously elected majority leader by the caucus shows how united the House Dems are right now. That’s good and that unity is going to be needed in the coming months under GOP control. With such a slim majority, perhaps the Republicans can be manipulated and outmaneuvered. They’re incredibly disunited even in the best of times

  10. 10.

    Alison Rose

    @sab: My mom moved from New York to California when she was 25, and next Spring will be 50 years since she came out here. She lost her accent within a few years, she said, although there are still a handful of words where she definitely pronounces them a bit differently than the rest of our family. BUT…if she gets angry? Oh boy, then the New Yorker comes out :) We used to tease her about it when we were kids and she’d be yelling at us for something, and we’d hear that accent come through. Then of course she’d just get more annoyed with us, LOL.

    Also, any time we’d go back East to visit, within about a day, she would sound almost like she’d never left.

  12. 12.

    Joe Falco

    May he stick around long enough for when the Democrats regain control of the House so he can become the first black Speaker of the House. And then let the Blazing Saddles jokes flow.

  15. 15.

    narya

    I had a professor in grad school with a pretty neutral accent. Then I heard her say either “beautiful” or “attitude”–i forget which–and the Philadelphia came through (bee-yoo-tee-full and atty-tude), and I asked her if she had grown up there. I was right (though she had emigrated from Germany, originally).

  16. 16.

    Roger Moore

    @sab:

    Living as I do in flyover country, I have mixed feelings about a guy from Brooklyn being Speaker, but I try not to hold where they are from against people.

    I think this is going to be a thing for the Democrats.  Our strength is in the cities, which means that’s where our leadership is likely to be from.  I’ll point out that Nancy Pelosi was from San Francisco, so it’s not as if it’s totally new for us to have a leader from a big coastal city.

  18. 18.

    Geminid

    Hakeem Jeffries:

     @RepJeffries

    Humbled to be elected House Democratic Leader.

    Let’s get to work.

     

  19. 19.

    Kent

    @Betsy:

    Now, look for the idiot Republicans to pluck some random Black dude to head up a post of theirs.

    Because when we promote a talented person of color to a position that needs that person’s talent, they think we do it because of tokenism.

    “They got a black guy?  Well, we got a black guy” … and their analysis ends there.

    There’s always Hershel Walker!

  20. 20.

    Kent

    @Roger Moore: Yes, I’m fucking tired of apologizing for living in a city.  That is where the future is.

    Brooklyn is part of the USA.   And a hell of a lot more important part in every way than say rural Nebraska.   Land doesn’t vote, people vote.

    Obama was from Chicago and Trump was from New York.  What does that mean?

  21. 21.

    tam1MI

    @sab: My favorite aunt was from Queens, 50 years in Ohio and she never lost her NY accent.

    I recently saw an interview on YouTube with the criminally underrated guitarist for the Cars, Elliot Easton. He originally hailed from Lon Guyland 😜, and you can hear it in his voice to this day. When he described a nasty bug he saw in Florida as a “cock-a-roach”, I cracked straight up!

  22. 22.

    Geminid

    @Roger Moore: Representative Jeffries got that job because of his talent and work ethic. He would have been elected House Democratic Leader if he’d been from any state, coastal or in between.

  23. 23.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Betsy: except the Republicans don’t have a black guy. JC Watts has been gone for a while. The woman  from Utah lost her seat several years ago. There is Tim Scott but he’s in the Senate. They’re very diverse, the Republicans.

  24. 24.

    Miss Bianca

    @Kent: @Betsy:

    “They got a black guy?  Well, we got a black guy”

    And to me, it’s the sheer *relentlessness* of this clueless copy-catism – no, that’s not really the word I want, it’s more like sick, cynical parody – that gets so maddening to me. It’s like, “guys, guys, we KNOW you’re out white supremicists – what’s the matter, you’re not proud enough of it to just own it? You always have to try to pull the ‘black friend’ card?”

    Oh, well, I guess adding racial insult to injury is just their go-to MO.

  25. 25.

    Mr. Longform

    I think the way the older leadership team handled this was also quite impressive.  They clearly decided it was time to make way for the next generation, but they didn’t make a big deal out of it – announced they were stepping down, let it be known who the expected new leaders would be, orchestrated in such a way that there was no public squabbling, etc.  Of course the Dems have the advantage of not having a bunch of raving lunatic antidemocratic morons bitching about everything to contend with, so everyone pull out the tiny violins for poor Kevin.

  27. 27.

    Ohio Mom

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’ve said this before but I never know of you’ve seen it: whatever you are doing, keep it up. Because seeing a happy, grounded Goku, free of whatever anxieties that were chasing you, being your best version of yourself, thrills me every time I see another of your comments. It has to feel better for you too, and that’s the main thing, isn’t it.

  29. 29.

    Kent

    @Mai Naem mobile:@Betsy: except the Republicans don’t have a black guy. JC Watts has been gone for a while. The woman  from Utah lost her seat several years ago. There is Tim Scott but he’s in the Senate. They’re very diverse, the Republicans.

    Technically speaking the Speaker of the House doesn’t need to be a Congressman.  They could nominate and vote for Kanye West for speaker if they wanted!  Or Hershel Walker if he loses his runoff race.

  30. 30.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Betsy:

    Because when we promote a talented person of color to a position that needs that person’s talent, they think we do it because of tokenism.

    “They got a black guy?  Well, we got a black guy” … and their analysis ends there.

    The ur-example of this might well be Clarence Thomas. He wasn’t fit to hold Justice Thurgood Marshall’s hat. (In the same way that Amy Coney Barrett doesn’t come close to measuring up to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.)

  31. 31.

    hells littlest angel

    “I’ve got some advice for Justice Thomas — start in your own home.”

     

    I love this guy.

  32. 32.

    hells littlest angel

    @Kent:  A Speaker of the House who can barely speak would certainly align with the Republican theory of governance.

  33. 33.

    Bupalos

    @Kent: I’m not going to comment on nebraska specifically, and no one should apologize for living in a city obviously. But it is important to remember that less dense places where a less human- dominated ecology can thrive are in fact important to us all. Your point is taken but I’m not cool with the implied formula here- that all that makes a place important is how many people are crammed in there. Just because Republicans do the stupidest version of “real America” doesn’t mean we need an equal and opposite version.

  35. 35.

    FastEdD

    Hakeem Jeffries will be the R’s worst nightmare and I welcome that. Eventually he will be Speaker and by the time he gets there he will know every lever to pull. Terrific news.

    Elliot Easton is one helluva guitar player-I have been amazed at work he’s done in addition to the Cars.

    And yes, as Democrats we shouldn’t apologize for being from a city. Or belonging to a majority of the American people. Those other folks in their bubble don’t even realize that.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @Geminid:

    I get this.  My point is just that the Democrats are mostly from cities, so it’s more or less inevitable that’s where leadership will come from, just based on the numbers.  If 80% of our House membership is from cities (made up number, but it’s probably close) we should expect 80% of our leadership to be from cities.  We aren’t going to have a leader from South Dakota until we can get someone elected there.

  37. 37.

    Gin & Tonic

    As someone who has pointedly contrasted the young political leaders of Europe with America’s octogenarians, I am delighted to see Rep. Jeffries taking on this leadership role.

  40. 40.

    Jay C

    Well, a brief glance at Hakeem Jeffries’ career will show he came up in Brooklyn politics: a rough neighborhood, politically: that he made it (so far) on the national stage is a good sign for the Democrats He definitely seems like a TNS Leader (and hopefully he’s absorbed enough lessons from Nancy Smash on how to manage a House bloc, – even as a Minority without – being ham-handed about it.)

  41. 41.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Kent: the Republicans aren’t  going to have a black speaker if they are having trouble getting McCarthy the votes. They should just have TFG as speaker. Dumbasses.

  42. 42.

    Miss Bianca

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: OMG, women too. Fucking Republicans – always promoting the worst examples of achievement in women and POC, whether out of genuine cluelessness or as a “fuck you” to Democrats. Owning the libs has been their only reason for being for such a long, long time, apparently. (Clarence Thomas being indeed, perhaps, the ur-example of this for our times.)

  43. 43.

    Kent

    @Bupalos:@Kent: I’m not going to comment on nebraska specifically, and no one should apologize for living in a city obviously. But it is important to remember that less dense places where a less human- dominated ecology can thrive are in fact important to us all. Your point is taken but I’m not cool with the implied formula here- that all that makes a place important is how many people are crammed in there. Just because Republicans do the stupidest version of “real America” doesn’t mean we need an equal and opposite version.

    I don’t think we really disagree.  I just used rural Nebraska as a random example of a place that people (especially young people) are fleeing and for good reason.  And I actually worked there long ago when I worked on wheat harvesting crews.

    This whole “we can’t nominate someone from a city because rural rubes might take offense” gets tiresome.   That also doesn’t mean we ignore rural issues or strive to elect people in rural districts.  I have hopes that my new representative, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez will join with Mary Peltola and other young rural Democrats and organize a rural Democratic caucus as a counterpoint to AOC’s “squad” to show the diversity and breadth of the party.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    Every young Black person in this country who looks at Congress will now see someone like Rep. Hakeem Jeffries leading a major political party and think to themselves, “That can be me when I grow up.” Let that sink in. Can’t overstate how important of a moment this is.

    They might also think, why did it take so freaking long to get a black person as leader?

    Still, it is great. And a clear contrast with the madness of the GOP House leadership.

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    @Miss Bianca:

    I think some of the reason Republican women and POC are so bad is because they need to overcompensate to get ahead.  A woman or POC who only matches a white man as a stupid asshole can’t get a second look because of the Republicans’ bigotry.  They have to be even dumber and a bigger asshole to get anywhere.

  47. 47.

    Jeffro

    @Darkrose:Someone from Gen X who isn’t a rightwing asshat! Yay!

    Wait…there’s another one, besides me?

    =)

    Seriously, though, I’m a huge fan of Mr. Jeffries’.  Here we come, GQP!

  48. 48.

    Kent

    @Jay C:Well, a brief glance at Hakeem Jeffries’ career will show he came up in Brooklyn politics: a rough neighborhood, politically: that he made it (so far) on the national stage is a good sign for the Democrats He definitely seems like a TNS Leader (and hopefully he’s absorbed enough lessons from Nancy Smash on how to manage a House bloc, – even as a Minority without – being ham-handed about it.)

    Nancy will still be around.  I expect he will have plenty of support should he need it.  Unlike Republicans, Democrats tend not to eat their own.

  49. 49.

    TriassicSands

    Congratulations to Jeffries. He has a hard act to follow. I wish him immeasurable success.

    I also can’t wait for the day (though I probably won’t live to see it) when there are no more racial, gender, or ethnic firsts to be had, because they’ve all been accomplished.

    In the short run, the most important thing is to keep Republicans out of the White House.

  51. 51.

    trollhattan

    I, for one, will miss Republican mewling about “San Francisco values being shoved down our throats” but perhaps Rep. Jeffries can bring in a big ol’ sack of New York to the job and make them forget all about our SF nana.

    LFG!

  52. 52.

    Kent

    @Roger Moore:I think some of the reason Republican women and POC are so bad is because they need to overcompensate to get ahead.  A woman or POC who only matches a white man as a stupid asshole can’t get a second look because of the Republicans’ bigotry.  They have to be even dumber and a bigger asshole to get anywhere.

    There are currently 8 Republican women Senators.  I don’t think they are worse than the current crop of male Republican Senators.  To the contrary, they mostly aren’t as bad.  A much higher percentage of them (5 of the 8) voted for the recent recent Respect for Marriage Act, for example.

  54. 54.

    KrackenJack

    @Roger Moore: I’d add that the leadership needs to be in a safe Democratic district since they will be relentlessly demonized by the MAGAt party. Not to take anything away from the heartland, but reps from the big coastal cities seem more likely to support a liberal agenda. Candidates who need to triangulate should be able to, but the leadership should be thinking national strategy rather than local issues.

  55. 55.

    artem1s

    Every young Black person in this country who looks at Congress will now see someone like Rep. Hakeem Jeffries leading a major political party and think to themselves, “That can be me when I grow up.”

    Every White kid in this country will see White leaders working with and accepting and celebrating a Black man’s leadership. Making inclusion and diversity the norm will be one of the great achievements of the 21st century Democratic Party. What the GOP and their base do with that is up to them.

  57. 57.

    Betsy

    @Mai Naem mobile: True enough.  I’m thinking the first time I realized and railed about this was way back during the era of Michael Steele.

    The thing is, people of talent are attracted to places where they are valued for their talents.

    So yeah — the Republican Party will tend to be hard up for talented people of color.

    (There’s generally a limited market though for shills and blowhards, thus Candace and a few others.

    I don’t mean to pick on people of color though. White republicans are plenty bad on their own)

  58. 58.

    Brachiator

    @sab:

    My favorite aunt was from Queens, 50 years in Ohio and she never lost her NY accent.

    A coworker had lived in California for decades, but never lost his strong Brooklyn accent. One day he complained about speaking to a customer service rep from another country who spoke with an accent. I laughed at him and reminded him that HE also spoke with a strong accent.

    I am from Texas, but never really had a Southern accent. I went to school back East and could pick up New England and New York accents. I can also do regional Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia accents.

  59. 59.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Miss Bianca: The only way to succeed as a minority in the GOP is too sell out your identity group.  So Black Republicans have to be Clarence Thomas/Candace Owens types who deny racism exists and Women need to be Phyllis Schlafly types who rail against Feminism etc.

  63. 63.

    trollhattan

    @Miss Bianca:

    I will certainly welcome their new complaints with enthusiasm. In response, always show the Nancy SMASH video tearing up Trump’s SOTU. It’s already on endless loop in my head. (That, and the mean girl clap. God, I love her.)

  65. 65.

    arrieve

    I may have mentioned this before, but I gave Hakeem Jeffries his computer training when he was joining the firm where I worked. I remembered him for two reasons–the really unfortunate suit he was wearing, and the fact that although he wasn’t particularly friendly there was something I really liked about him, and remember thinking, This guy is definitely going to succeed. I was thinking in terms of law firm partnership, but for some reason he set his sights elsewhere, fortunately for all of us.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    @Roger Moore: Sorry, I did not mean to pick on you and would have done better not to tag anyone.

    I’m just very enthusiastic about Jeffries. I became aware of him when he was elected Caucus Chairman in November, 2019. Jeffries had been in the House only six years, and his peers and leaders must have seen a lot they liked. I have followed Jeffries since, and I believe he is one of the most capable politicians I have ever seen.

  68. 68.

    Josie

    My favorite accent was an unusual one. I grew up on the Texas Mexico border, and we used to go across all the time to eat out, party, and/or shop. There was a clerk in a gift shop/night club in Reynosa who had perfected the ability to speak Spanish with a Texas accent. I’m sure he brought in quite a bit of money, since we (and many others) went into that establishment just so we could hear him do it. He was rather well known locally and such a funny guy.

  69. 69.

    bbleh

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  @Fair Economist: @Mr. Longform: @Wapiti:

    So let’s see, which party is looking to the future, planning sensibly, promoting younger leaders while retaining older leaders to give advice and assure continuity?  And which party is stuck in the past, with respect to both its leadership and its ideology/mythology, and can’t get rid of an old former leader whose continued presence is literally tearing the party apart?  Which party elected its leader unanimously and which is still fighting internally?

    Democrats in array!  (Not that I expect the media narrative to reflect it, but it IS the reality.)

  71. 71.

    Ruckus

    @Mr. Longform:

    I also think that having Nancy as leader for a few years, who could look in your direction and burn a hole from front to back of your head if she wanted might have made them actually think about actual leadership. I remember some of the shots of her in the capital building on Jan 6 and she was cool as it gets and thinking a lot of  steps ahead. If Jeffries is a leader in her mold, and I think he is, I believe it’s very understandable that he’s the new leader. They may not have come out of the same mold but the molds were very similar. I served on a ship for 2 yrs and we had way too many captains during that time, some of whom shouldn’t have been captain of a little red wagon, but the first and the last ones were actual leaders. Nancy and Hakeem strike me as several steps above either of them. I feel good with either of them in charge.

  72. 72.

    James E Powell

    @tam1MI:

    I met Elliot Easton years ago when he was doing a promotional tour of guitar stores for Gibson. The event was open to the public, but only about 20 guys showed up. He sat & talked with us for about two hours. He talked with us bar band losers & garage band wannabes as if we were peers. He was just great.

  73. 73.

    Ken

    @trollhattan: I, for one, will miss Republican mewling about “San Francisco values being shoved down our throats”

    They will pivot smoothly to “New York values”,  just as they shifted from “Chicago-style politics” in the Obama era.

    Or it might be “Brooklyn values”. Which reminds me to google… Brooklyn has 2.57 million people, more than 15 states. So it’s fair to say that there are more people with Brooklyn values than Wyoming values, Dakota values, etc.

  75. 75.

    Kay

    Transparent attempt to shut physicians up so no one finds out the practical consequences of these abortion laws re: women and children.

    I think women will find out anyway- abortion was minimized/ignored by media prior to the midterms, and young women educated themselves and voted on it anyway.

    Nick Riccardi
    @NickRiccardi INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana attorney general asks medical board to penalize doctor who spoke about abortion for 10-year-old Ohio rape victim.

  78. 78.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @tam1MI: My wife is a Long-Islander but trained herself out of the worst of the accent because she got tired of the looks she’d get. She can still put the accent on when she wants to, which she sometimes does in front of a class. It stops everybody cold.

    The kids thought she was exaggerating in describing the accent till the day we were visiting her parents and they heard a neighbor say “A dawg’s a dawg.”

  79. 79.

    Kay

    Here’s the roadmap for how the anti-abortion movement religious fundamentalists plan to shut down any discussion of their new laws.  they don’t want women to know what happens to 10 year old rape victims under the laws they put in so they plan on silencing anyone who reports what’s going on in these states.

    This link works.

  80. 80.

    CaseyL

    @Roger Moore: That’s an interesting twist on the adage that a woman or POC has to be twice as good as a white male to get half the credit.  Apparently that also applies to corrupt assholery.

  81. 81.

    rikyrah

     

    💉💉💉💉 Flip the WI Supreme Court on 4/4/23 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 9:14 AM on Wed, Nov 30, 2022:
    so when a white person says they hate the word or concept of “being woke,” they’re essentially admitting that this last 60+ years of civil rights movements for minorities was a lie, and that white culture’s natural default is permanent brutal racial discrimination & inequality
    (https://twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1597972430517329920?s=02)

  85. 85.

    tam1MI

    @James E Powell: I met Elliot Easton years ago when he was doing a promotional tour of guitar stores for Gibson. The event was open to the public, but only about 20 guys showed up. He sat & talked with us for about two hours. He talked with us bar band losers & garage band wannabes as if we were peers. He was just great.

    Every interview I have read or seen with him he comes across as a real down-to-earth, nice person. And his passion for music is absolutely infectious.

  87. 87.

    BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️

    This is a happy day for me. Brother Jeffries will do a fine job, Nancy SMASH has been working with him for some time, and he is ready for the moment. A LOT of people are in for a surprise; those on the right side of the aisle will find it most unpleasant. ♦️👌🏾❤

  89. 89.

    Redshift

    @Roger Moore:

    I think this is going to be a thing for the Democrats.  Our strength is in the cities, which means that’s where our leadership is likely to be from.

    The leadership should represent everywhere there are Democrats, but before Obama, it was pretty common to hear arguments that we should choose people (presidential candidates especially) from outside our areas of strength to have broader appeal (which, as with many things, Republicans are never expected to do.) Obama being from an urban area was a breakthrough, and a good one.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @trollhattan:

    I wonder if physicians are going to put up with it. They have a real ethical problem. Some of those women who are barred from receiving life-saving care will die, and they’ll die in hospitals with providers looking on, hands tied. Texas has already reported that a woman had to have a hysterectomy due to Texas’ abortion laws banning medical intervention to save women.

    It’s not their fault but I think they have to take a stand. Presumably they didn’t get into OB/Gyn care in order to maim or kill women on orders from religious fundamentalists.

  92. 92.

    BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️

    @Miss Bianca:

    OMG, women too. Fucking Republicans – always promoting the worst examples of achievement in women and POC, whether out of genuine cluelessness or as a “fuck you” to Democrats. Owning the libs has been their only reason for being for such a long, long time, apparently. (Clarence Thomas being indeed, perhaps, the ur-example of this for our times.)

    This is their M.O. All day every day, going back as far as I can remember. The Thomas placement on the SC was pretty foul. Trump’s installment was worse as a slap at both blacks and women; Barrett continues the trend.

    I’m hopeful that the tide will turn.

  94. 94.

    Kent

    @rikyrah:💉💉💉💉 Flip the WI Supreme Court on 4/4/23 (@Needle_of_Arya) tweeted at 9:14 AM on Wed, Nov 30, 2022:
    so when a white person says they hate the word or concept of “being woke,” they’re essentially admitting that this last 60+ years of civil rights movements for minorities was a lie, and that white culture’s natural default is permanent brutal racial discrimination & inequality
    (https://twitter.com/Needle_of_Arya/status/1597972430517329920?s=02)

    Woke just means awake, alert, aware, cognizant, etc.

    So the opposite of woke would be permanently asleep or unaware.  The correct word for such people is “Zombies”

  95. 95.

    Kent

    @Kay: Personally I think the chances that the state medical board will take the side of a culture warring AG over an actual doctor in this instance is pretty damn slim.  Even in a state like Indiana.   the entire medical board in Indiana (and probably every other state) is made of up entirely of doctors

    I expect them to do something like issue a terse note to the effect of:  “We reviewed the complaint and found it to be without merit”

  96. 96.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mai Naem mobile: They do. John James, a potentially formidable politician. Successful businessman, army vet, West Point, Ranger school, MBA from UM and another Masters from Penn State. Damn near beat Gary Peters for the MI Senate seat, squeaked into his current House seat, but he’s no clown. IIRC he started out in the sorta kinda anti-trump wing, and after Jan 6 declared himself 2000% with trump

    ETA not that I think they’re gonna make a freshman Speaker, and if he’s half as smart as he looks on paper, he wouldn’t want the job. He’ll keep his head down, raise money and hope for the crazy to calm down. Probably take another run at the Senate, I’d bet

    ETA, A: “on paper”, Fail-schmoo Mike Pompeo has a helluva diploma trail, and I’d be surprised if he isn’t done in politics.

  98. 98.

    sab

    @Kay: They will move to other states. Ohio, Indiana etc will find themselves with an ob/gyn shortage. As you said, they didn’t go into medicine to kill and maim people.

  100. 100.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Redshift: There was an idea for a long time that any Democratic President would have to be a white Southerner–every Democratic President after JFK had been one, after all, all the nominees who weren’t Southerners had lost, and it was the only way to get the Southern electoral votes that we absolutely needed to elect a President. Nominating Obama was a dramatic repudiation of that strategy.

  101. 101.

    CaseyL

    OT:  Just saw on the birdsite that Christine McVie, of Fleetwood Mac, has died.  She was 79, which shocked me, because of course she is frozen in my mind’s eye as she was when they were still performing.

  102. 102.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin:  every Democratic President after JFK had been one, after all, and it was the only way to get the Southern electoral votes that we absolutely needed to elect a President

    :Presidents between JFK and Obama” is a sample size of 2, 1 of whom was a one termer.  Maybe 3 if you count LBJ, but coming on the heels of the Kennedy assassination, Johnson could have been from Alaska and still won.

  103. 103.

    tam1MI

    @rikyrah:

    Ok the media has completely stopped talking about inflation and crime….

    That is partially because Republicans have stopped talking about inflation and crime. And although I would love it if a reporter actually asked a House Republican, “You’ve talked about how you are going to use your razor-thin majority to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop and impeach Dr. Fauci. What do you plan to do about inflation and crime, the issues you were elected to address?”, I know it will never happen.

  104. 104.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Betsy: It’s the price of admission to be considered “one of the good ones” and promoted/used as their (Republicans’) token shield from anyone pointing out their obvious and widespread Racism/Misogyny etc.

  105. 105.

    Kent

    @Citizen Alan: And Clinton was probably the only legitimate southerner who was elected as such.   Carter was more of an outsider in the wake of Watergate who would not have been in the running absent Watergate.   I think Jerry Brown of CA was second in the primary that year.    None of the mainstream Dems like Ted Kennedy were running in the 1976 primary.

  109. 109.

    Redshift

    @Citizen Alan:

    “Presidents between JFK and Obama” is a sample size of 2, 1 of whom was a one termer.  Maybe 3 if you count LBJ, but coming on the heels of the Kennedy assassination, Johnson could have been from Alaska and still won.

    Like lots of ideas in politics, it was insane if you actually thought about it, but that didn’t stop it from being conventional wisdom in the chattering classes. Really what it amounted to is “we were surprised Clinton won, so there must be some factor that explains that.”

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There was an idea for a long time that any Democratic President would have to be a white Southerner–every Democratic President after JFK had been one, after all, all the nominees who weren’t Southerners had lost, and it was the only way to get the Southern electoral votes that we absolutely needed to elect a President. Nominating Obama was a dramatic repudiation of that strategy.

    This misses the larger political picture. Prior to JFK, Southern Democrats included white racists and those who accommodated Jim Crow, as well as those who fought to overcome that horrible legacy. Subsequent to the passage of civil rights legislation, Southern electoral votes included the votes of black people, few of whom cared about a president being from the South.

    The 1968 presidential election was the first after the passage of the Voting Rights Act. A portion of the white Southern electorate voted for George Wallace in 68 and then were courted by the Republicans. The new voting demographic was significantly different from pre 68 voters.

  112. 112.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah:

    Ok the media has completely stopped talking about inflation and crime….

    It’s absolutely ridiculous how it propagated Republican talking points and just dropped them after an election…

    There is something like this every election.

    African Ebola is going to kill us all if the Democrats are elected. Dropped like a hot rock.

    The Latino gangs are coming on buses to cross the border and kill us all if the Democrats are elected. Dropped like a hot rock also.

    Inflation caused by the Democratic budget is going to crush our economy and we will all starve if Democrats are elected.

    Crime caused by Defund the Police will kill us all if you vote for Democrats. Over and over, they make up something to try to panic the nation, it never happens, they forget about it immediately after the election.

    But the national media never remembers the scam when the next election starts next year. Never. In fact, they are part of the scam.

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