All the frustration on the right over the last few days is entirely because Republicans got exactly what they wanted.
— Bob Sampson (@bobsalpha1) January 7, 2023
"How can you have changed so much and support them?!"
Well, they're okay with supporting the Constitution, so…. https://t.co/KsJm4WpjKb
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) January 6, 2023
Tom Nichols, at the Atlantic, on “A Slow Democratic Recovery“:
President Biden today decorated 14 Americans with the Presidential Citizens Medal, an honor established by President Richard Nixon in 1969 to recognize any citizen of the United States who has “performed exemplary deeds or services for his or her country or fellow citizens.” There are, I am sure, people on the right who will roll their eyes at honoring a Democrat such as Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, or a Republican such as the former Arizona House speaker Rusty Bowers (whose long political career ended with censure and a primary defeat from his own party). Likewise, the Capitol Police officers and the election officials who will be honored have already been the target of harassment and threats; their medals cannot make them whole now. Nor can such a posthumous honor restore Officer Brian Sicknick to life. (Sicknick’s family yesterday filed a wrongful-death suit against former President Donald Trump and two of the January 6 rioters.)
These American citizens are all, in fact, heroes. They took risks—not only politically but also by enduring physical threats from unhinged conspiracists—to protect our democracy. It’s easy to forget just how much danger these people were in, and how narrowly we escaped even greater chaos. Imagine what America would look like today if some of the people being honored by Biden had been intimidated or defeated, or if they’d just lost their nerve.
I reached out to Rosa Brooks today to explore that question. Brooks is one of the scholars who convened a group of experts and partisan operatives in late 2020 to game out the “worst thing that could happen to our country during the presidential elections.” She and her colleagues attracted a lot of snippy criticism at the time, but the events of January 6, 2021, proved their prescience. When I asked about her view of the worst that could have happened on that day, her scenario was chilling: She believes that had the rioters caught Vice President Mike Pence, or perhaps some members of Congress—such as the Democrats trapped in the House gallery at the time—they may well have been beaten or killed. “We know what happened to the police officers caught by the mob,” she told me. “Imagine if the mob had caught members of Congress.”…
Brooks’s most disheartening conclusion was that we escaped this disastrous possible outcome only by sheer luck. “I don’t think some sort of resilience in our system prevented that,” she said. “It wasn’t the supposed ‘guardrails of democracy’ that kept things from getting that bad—it was chance, plain and simple.”
I agree. We might be glad Pence stood firm at a key moment, but Pence had to be free—indeed, alive—to act. We might also comfort ourselves knowing that the clowns and opportunists who tried to overthrow our constitutional order have been outed by a thorough investigation in Congress. We can hope that justice is served, with prison sentences for some of the most dangerous seditionists and violent rioters. But is it enough? As the Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn tweeted this morning: “730 days later. We’re still waiting on accountability.”…
The anniversary of January 6 should remind us that the crisis of American democracy isn’t over, and that we should continue to take seriously what a close call we had in January 2021. (Exhibit A: Twitter’s new boss, the deeply unserious Elon Musk, trollishly chose today to reinstate the account of the disgraced Trump national security adviser Mike Flynn, the man who wanted the military to seize voting machines.)…
It is fitting that we remember the heroes of January 6, including the many people who weren’t at the White House that day but who stayed at their posts and did their jobs as election officials, volunteers, observers, and many other of the tasks that allow the millions of citizens of a giant federal democracy to govern themselves. But the events today on Capitol Hill and the ceremony at the White House are reminders that the threats to our constitutional order have not vanished, and that we cannot magically wish them away.
Our Failed Mainstream Media:
to provide context for readers since bob here won't do it, i will point out that the whole reason he will have to deal with these members and dynamics is because he has ruled out working with the entire other half of the chamber who represent more than 50% of americans. https://t.co/om4RED5qPq
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 6, 2023
political media stop volunteering to lay your bodies over the broad, wide, utterly exposed ass of the republican party challenge 2023, difficulty level impossible
congress is broken, and an enormous part of why it’s broken is that the fourth estate simply do not bother to provide americans with the important background or context for how it got broken, why it’s broken, or who broke it
i have had a good time with this over the course of the week, because it’s very funny, but it’s no fucking way to run a government
mccarthy could easily get democrats on board were he willing to offer any concessions, and they would be exponentially more reasonable that what the freedom caucus demand, but because he is not a leader, he has rejected the option
i harp about “leadership” a lot, and how so many of our critical functions lack it in this country, and this is what that looks like, a bunch of stupid, vain and malicious assholes kicking each other in the balls while the press reports on the velocity of their shoes
like, this is a disgrace. it’s a hilarious disgrace (for now), but it’s legitimately a disgrace. stop giving these disgraceful incompetent shitheads cover just because they feed you juicy text messages, bob.
— antifa bus driver (@ihldmybreth4fun) January 6, 2023
just so we're clear, McCarthy of Bakersfield does NOT have the Mandate of Heaven. Heaven tolerates him at best.
— the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) ?? (@merovingians) January 7, 2023
God bless whoever did this, I was gonna tweet the URL as a joke https://t.co/6ufHlMjVeK
— Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq. (@clapifyoulikeme) January 7, 2023
pluky
Now those are two happy dogs.
Raven
I’m here in LA with my family and my sister is a Charismatic Surfer Christian and a Trump era convert to us dems! It’s fun to hear her talk about her, and another family member, who saw the light!!!
Ken
Bet it changes state faster than isabevigodadead.com did.
(Sucker bet; that site went over a decade before it flipped.)
lowtechcyclist
The failure of the mainstream media to give people a reasonably accurate picture of what policies each of the two parties are for and against, and what tactics they are and aren’t willing to engage in, is IMHO the main reason why the GOP is in any position to contest control of our nation.
In particular, because the MSM glosses over the insanity of the GOP on both policy and tactics, people refuse to believe the truth about the GOP when they’re told it.
frosty
@Raven: How nice to have a family member convert to the Light Side!
Scout211
Over 500,000 without power here in NorCal due to this current storm (of many this week). No word when any of us will get our power restored. It’s going to be a long day. . . or days.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Raven: Excellent! Was she a Republican before or just apolitical?
John S.
@Scout211: That’s always a difficult situation. We went 2 weeks without power after Hurricane Wilma hit, and South Florida was bordering on going completely feral (which isn’t hard seeing as how it’s already halfway there anyway).
I have a colleague who lives in Puerto Rico who told me she went 4 1/2 months without electricity after Hurricane Maria. I cannot even begin to fathom what that was like.
Baud
@Raven:
👍
p.a.
Dear MSM, how can a party with >50% of supporters thinking the earth is 6,000 years old have solutions* to ANY problem? This isn’t a localized, compartmentalized stupidity.
*Assumption that they want to solve anything not in evidence, I’m just posing a question.
delphinium
@Raven: Nice!
Scout211
Here is a current news story on NBC that sums up what we are facing here in NorCal now and through next week.
Nicole
@Raven: That’s such good news about your sister. I had hopes for my sister-in-law, but I sense some backsliding. I am choosing to look at her loyalty to the GOP as an addiction (because they line up with NONE of her ethics or morals), and remind myself it can take a few tries to break an addiction.
She’s a PA native and while she doesn’t like Fetterman, she admits that he was a much better alternative than Oz. I suspect that means she didn’t vote, but fine, better no vote than a vote for Oz.
delphinium
@Scout211: How awful-hope you stay safe and that your power will be restored soon.
Amir Khalid
America is only one day from finding out what the House of Representatives will be like with a Speaker who has crippled his own position and placed himself at the mercy of its most irrational members. I think it will take a few weeks more for that reality to sink in for Oblivious Kevin, though.
Chief Oshkosh
I’m not grockin’ the Nichols-Rubin interaction. Could one of the Jackoleriate here explain it in simple words? Thanks in advance.
RepubAnon
@lowtechcyclist: most media types either work for Rupert Murdock, or for someone who sees imitating Rupert’s political coverage a way to increase advertising revenue.
Raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Republican like our old man!
Raven
@Amir Khalid: soak in to concrete?
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
gene108
Is there such a thing as a normal dream? I do wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me.
OzarkHillbilly
I came across this, this AM and it seems to fit in here:
Well, this being the internet it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Still I find it quite plausible that these shootings are not at all linked by the fact that the victims were all DEMs, 4 of the 5 are Hispanic, and 3 of the 5 are women. Nope, no connection at all.
gene108
@rikyrah:
Good morning ☀️🌞 ☕️
Matt McIrvin
One of the key things that prevented a bigger disaster on 1/6/2021 was the activist/antifa left–including a lot of people who are way more radical than the Democratic Party–collectively made the correct call that they were being goaded into a trap and should stay away. That wasn’t a given, and it was amazing to see it happen.
Imagine if it had gone differently. Part of the Trump administration’s plan, we now know, was to set up a bloody battle in DC between left and right forces, with TV images of both sides being equally violent, and use that as the pretext to bring in the National Guard, squirrel Mike Pence and other officials away “for safety” and suspend the electoral-vote count, which would buy them time for their other efforts to reverse the election result. When it didn’t go that way and it was just their side storming the Capitol while Congress tried to observe the rule of law, they were left at a loss.
RepubAnon
@Amir Khalid: Kevin’s so happy with his shiny new job title that he won’t notice he’s still got the responsibility after giving away the authority.
sab
@Amir Khalid: Does a crippled Speaker mean there will be no legislation or will there be a flood of truly horrible legislation?
Raven
@Nicole: I pepper conversations to the racism in the puke party and I think that helps her. Her old man was a Harley riding trucker and he was pretty bad. He’s been dead for about 6 years and I think that moved her in the right direction.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Total coincidence!
Betty Cracker
From the GOLIKEHELL tweet:
I confess I lose sight of that sometimes too because it would be such an unthinkable development in our current political context. If only there were some group of professionals whose job it was to provide context so citizens could make informed decisions as voters…
PS: When did GOLIKEHELL go e.e. cummings on us? Seems like that tweeter used to capitalize…
Matt McIrvin
@Chief Oshkosh: Those things that Jennifer Rubin lists are things that Republicans always believed were their party’s property. Her point is that the Democrats are now the party of the things she thought of as central to conservatism.
What I don’t know is if she thinks the Democrats really changed, or if it’s just that she perceives the Republicans stopped supporting these things. Both Nichols and Rubin are conservatives going way back and I wouldn’t be surprised if they still have delusional ideas of what liberals used to stand for. A lot of things Nichols says still piss me off. But I’m happy to have them on-side at the moment.
WaterGirl
@RepubAnon:
Total agreement. I talked about responsibility with no authority on Friday. It’s the worst possible combination, and there is no way for you to come away undamaged, and no one gets away unscathed.
WaterGirl
@sab: There will most definitely be attempts at horrifying legislation.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
WaterGirl
@Matt McIrvin:
Jennifer Rubin didn’t leave the Republican party, the Republican party left her!
Raven
It’s pretty chilly down at the beach but sunrise is soon so we’ll see how it goes!
Frankensteinbeck
@sab:
A non-crippled Speaker would mean a flood of truly horrible legislation that would all die in the Senate, then a fuss over budgets and debt limits until McCarthy had his ass handed to him in negotiations because enough of his party joined the Democrats to keep things functioning. Same as the Obama years. Make of that what you will.
Amir Khalid
@sab:
No worthwhile legislation to benefit the people for sure, because the crazies have more important things to do.
@RepubAnon:
It will be like an out-of-control kindergarten class.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks for being the Nichols whisperer.
I agree with you: it’s unclear whether the never-Trumpers think that the Democrats have changed (I don’t think they have) or whether the never-Trumpers have realized that Democrats had all of those good attributes all along but that they, the never-Trumpers, were high on their own supply in believing their own caricatures of Democrats.
gene108
@Amir Khalid:
An out of control kindergarten class is at least having fun. The House Republicans really did not seem to be too happy last week.
p.a.
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m not that optimistic, even about Rs from Biden districts.
Betty Cracker
There will be idiotic show trials, impeachment feints, etc., none of which will redound to the GOP’s credit with the public, IMO. The coming debt ceiling fight is the real danger.
Dems will have to peel off half a dozen or so Reps to stop the crazies from blowing up the global economy. Sounds doable, right? I’m not so sure, especially if they perceive a political benefit in the resulting chaos.
Starfish
@lowtechcyclist: I am watching this long YouTube video of the Nicole Sandler show. She has Marcy Wheeler as a guest.
Anyway, it is boring because Marcy goes into all this detail as she usually does, but she is putting the pieces together in ways others are not doing.
She is talking about the January 6 commission report and how Alex Jones was leading the rioters and how the rioters were receiving messages from Trump. She is also pointing out that the people who kept denying Kevin McCarthy his victory are the ones up to their eyeballs in conspiring with the various folks on January 6 and that none of the news people covering the fact that “McCarthy lost yet again” were really covering the background of the folks who were opposed to him and the fact that McCarthy was capitulating to folks who tried to overthrow the government.
She mentioned that if McCarthy lost, his career would be toast, and he could go give his testimony of what all went down with the various Congress members conspiring on January 6. I want to live in that timeline where Kevin McCarthy does the right thing.
She also pointed out that one of the people that Maggie Haberman was painting in a positive light was one of her sources on the various Trump administration shenanigans, and he was doing all sorts of stuff for Trump and should not have been painted so positively.
I have never heard of the Nicole Sandler show, but I am getting the sense that she is a Floridian, and Wheeler is pointing out how A LOT of people who were part of these conspiracies were Floridians.
Josie
@gene108: I don’t know. Matt Gaetz and his sidekick Lauren seemed to be pretty happy.
ETA: Unfortunately for them, they will be as popular as Ted Cruz among their peers.
Matt McIrvin
@Chief Oshkosh: If anything, the Democrats have moved leftward, and become downright radical on sex/gender/race stuff, provided that we measure relative to their positions during the Clinton and GWB eras when liberals were still reeling from the Reagan revolution and from 9/11. The party’s move to the center culminated sometime around 2004 and then reversed.
But these positions that used to be radical now feel centrist and mainstream. For a cultural conservative it’s a nightmare, which is why they’ve embraced madness.
gene108
@Chief Oshkosh:
Democrats are a lot more unified now, than they were in the past. The Democrats had a challenge in balancing the pro-Civil Rights wing and the needs of Dems in conservative states to not be seen as too liberal.
Republicans seemed to be a lot more unified from the 1980’s to about 2010 or so.
I think that’s played a role in some former conservatives conversion away from Republicans.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Agreed.
BellyCat
Until a financial model develops that rewards good faith reporting by the fourth estate, instead of bad faith exploitation of theatrics, our democracy remains imperiled.
Mainstream press subscriptions doubled and in some cases tripled due to Trump’s insanity and the press is financially motivated to perpetuate the madness. Solve this core problem and the rest “may” improve.
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
JRub is right – Dems have always been pro Apollo Creed
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: In the runup to passage of the Omnibus spending package last month, Republican Senators talked like they were trying to childproof the House. Putting matches and lighters in a locked drawer, placing plastic caps in electrical outlets in case the five year-olds try to talk the three year-olds into sticking wires in them.
But there was only so much they could do. Republican House leadership will stay busy putting out fires and keeping curious members from electrocuting themselves.
Mousebumples
Question for the crowd – Since I doubt Kevin will resign, what’s the process for removing him as Speaker?
A) Vote of no confidence removes him, another vote to elect a new Speaker?
B) Vote for Speaker, and someone else would need to get enough votes to be elected?
And any idiosyncrasies about the motion must come from a member in the majority caucus, etc.?
And some of this might be set out in the rules they’ll be voting on tomorrow, too.
Thanks!
WaterGirl
@gene108: I don’t know about that last part… Boebert seemed like a pretty happy camper all week – being interviewed, smugly voting for, and nominating, the flavor of the day candidates.
To me, she seemed really happy right up until that last half hour, when she seemed near catatonic sitting there as the “persuasion” discussions happened all around her.
I think Gaetz was a pretty happy camper all week, too.
But the Rs who weren’t part of the 20? I agree there. They were not having any fun at all.
lowtechcyclist
@RepubAnon:
But the MSM doesn’t imitate Fox News etc. Fox etc. are about getting people’s blood pressure up, getting them angry. The MSM is not.
Given that conflict sells, if they want to increase ad revenue, you’d think they’d be eager to make it clear where the battle lines are between the two parties.
I think that their belief in two responsible but different political parties is so ingrained that they shoehorn their coverage into that model whether or not it has any basis in reality.
Starfish
@Josie: They are creating further dysfunction in the body of government that could investigate their participation in January 6. They should be happy.
Starfish
@lowtechcyclist: Fox News is a reality distortion field. This is what they said about Jeffries speech:
Is anyone who likes Fox News going to seek out the speech to see what Jeffries actually said?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@rikyrah:
Good morning
sab
@Matt McIrvin: As an old Democrat, I feel like the Democrats are moving back to what they were (disregarding the Dixiecrats) when I was growing up. To me the Clinton Bush years were the aberration years for Democrats, when the party had no basic values whatever except to pander to be reelected. Whittling away at civil rights, labor protections, abortion rights, privacy, and social security were all considered acceptable.
I don’t see them as moving leftward. I see them as swinging back to what they had been.
oclday
The right has a hatred for Democrats that passes all understanding while they typically adore cops regardless of what they do. Look what they did to the cops on J6. They would have murdered every Democrat they got their hands on.
delphinium
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I am not so sure either how many of the potentially ‘peelable’ GOP will vote with Dems on anything. It will probably depend on whether the constituents they hear from the most are the loud-mouthed MAGAs or dems/independents. Or if they start getting threats of violence if they do not go along with the cuckoo caucus.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: In the post-9/11, George W. Bush era, up to about 2005, it seemed like the Republicans had a remarkable amount of discipline when whipping votes through–they’d consistently pass the most right-wing measures they could get 50%+1 votes for. And the Democrats just seemed feckless and confused when they weren’t outright voting for the Republicans’ wish list, especially on security/war stuff.
And then Hurricane Katrina happened, and the failed push for Social Security privatization happened, and the Iraq war started really going bad, and I think that time right around 2005 was when everything started to turn around.
Baud
@Starfish:
The thing is, if I saw a liberal article with that sort of headline, I would immediately discredit it as pure spin.
@sab:
That’s not true when it comes to non-economic issues. The Dems have never been as left as they are today.
ETA: and you really can’t exclude the Dixiecrats if you’re going to do an apples to apples comparison.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Political chaos will not benefit the 18 members who won seats in districts carried by Biden. Add in a dozen or so more with districts Biden came close in, and there is a substantial bloc whose interests diverge from those of the radicals, who come mainly from deep red districts.
I could not say how this dynamic will play out. The House Rules that will be voted on tomorrow will shape it, and the vote itself might reflect this split.
sdhays
@Betty Cracker: What all of this has demonstrated is that it simply confirms that McCarthy will mostly irrelevant for the next two years, just like he has been for the past four. The debt ceiling will be raised, or not, depending on deal making with Democrats and a few backbencher Republicans. The government will be funded, or not, in the same way.
The Squeaker brings nothing to the table in a negotiation with the Senate or White House because he doesn’t have the capability to negotiate a compromise that can pass all three stakeholders. He counts the votes, assigns committees, and has a nice office. Otherwise, no one should pay attention to him whatsoever.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@sab:
I think a lot of that was because as someone mentioned above being shell-shocked by Reagan and then later 9/11
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Since Reagan was brought up, why was he taken seriously by other world leaders at the time? I guess he had been a governor of a major US state like California prior to the WH and the US still had a better reputation then
JML
@gene108: Democrats were very united during the New Deal era, but that coalition was very economically focused and frayed badly once we got into the civil rights era. The reckoning might have come a little sooner, except for the fact of Watergate, which brought in a different group of reformist democrats into Congress and elected Carter with the last fringes of the old coalition.
With Reagan’s embrace of the racists and the Nixonian southern strategy, it ended that democratic coalition and democrats spent time in the wilderness figuring out who they were. Messaging was a disaster. Clinton is credited for moving the party “back to the center”, but the bigger aspect of that was developing a message and policy prescription that appealed to the suburban voter. (remember all the conversation about soccer moms?)
While democrats were sorting it out, finding unity was harder; you still had a lot of old school rural democrats in the tent and a social/economic unity for rural/suburban/urban was basically impossible. Dems have essentially become a urban/suburban coalition now and are more unified and stronger…and frankly that’s where the votes are. The problem that coalition truly faces now is voter concentration. Winning 80% in an urban core helps you win state wide, but makes it harder to gain enough seats in the House.
Republicans have increasingly become a post-policy party where their ideology is bound up more in “pwning the libs” and amassing power. what does the GOP stand for from a policy perspective? Not paying taxes and being mean to minorities? What are they actually for?
Baud
@sab:
I have no idea which abortion rights or social security rights were whittled away by Dems during this period.
sab
@Betty Cracker: Don’t ne so pessimistic. I can’t link on my Nook, but read the today’s Cleveland Plain Dealer ( Cleveland.com) on the Ohio Speaker of the House fight. The Republicans held a secret caucus in November and two thirds of them wanted nutcase Derek Merrin. One third didn’t and they teamed up with the Democrats to elect instead far right wing but not nuts Republican Jason Spencer. The two thirds were outraged and voted to censure their new Speaker and the Republicans that voted for him.
At issue for the Democrats were support of public schools v excessive funding for private charter schools, whether to increase citizen proposition requiement from 50% to 60%, and the mechanics of the ongoing redistricting fight.
Ohio Democrats in this red state are pretty much screwed on most issues, but those handful of issues are hugely important and still give me a hope for recovering some ground.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: In some ways. Particularly stuff like abortion rights and affirmative action–we’ve lost so many of those fights, but it’s now OK in the Democratic Party to have positions that Democrats had been running away from 20 years ago (which is a large part of why we’re losing these now). And if you go back to the 1970s, Democrats were supporting them wholeheartedly.
And sometimes people say it’s just the cultural stuff and not the economic stuff, but that’s not true either. The extent to which Democrats embraced things like flatter taxes, deregulation and privatization 20-30 years ago seems positively weird now. As I mentioned a little while ago, when Jerry Brown ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1992, the centerpiece of his campaign was a flat-tax proposal!! That’s just bizarre. That’s Herman Cain, right-wing fringe crap now. But Brown was a liberal.
On the other hand, there are some positions like supporting same-sex marriage or trans rights that NEVER could have been mainstream before. Maybe in the alternate reality where the AIDS pandemic and the rise of Reagan never happened, they might have become mainstream earlier.
Geminid
@Starfish: One ironic aspect to what Fox said is that the “Left”- that is, the vocal group outside the Democratic party- panned Jeffries’ speech. They’ve identified him as the representative “Corporate Democrat,” and they try to tear him down at every opportunity.
Within the party, though, Democrats at either end and the greater majority in between seemed to love Jeffries’ speech.
delphinium
@oclday: The right does not adore cops except when they are going after liberals, minorities, women, immigrants. And they are more than happy to put cops lives at risk when it suits them-Jan 6th, lax gun laws, etc. Much like how they claim to love America, families, and veterans, it is all a sham as their policies and actions are opposite of this. It would be great if the media would make more of an effort to point this out, but won’t hold my breath .
JML
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Reagan was president, and that was really all you needed to be taken seriously on the world stage. I’m no fan of Reagan (I think he’s responsible for disastrous policies and did more to divide this country and wreck important institutions than any modern president) but he he was president of the most powerful country in the world and knew how to use the trappings of power.
While Reagan often put corrupt fools in positions of power, they didn’t have the overt showings of incompetence that say, Trump’s cabinet did, and did have people like Baker and Schultz who were respected internationally.
Suzanne
@sdhays:
Agreed.
McCarthy is giving off real Stannis Baratheon energy. That guy did not end up being a factor.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
Which is bizarre given he’s the head of the House Progressive Caucus
Starfish
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The US had both technical and economic dominance at the time. The focus on various individualistic identities was low.
The technical dominance and the lull in individualism were both due to the Cold War. It was important to educate kids and do interesting things with technology to show we were better than that other superpower. Treating a segment of our own population badly was used to clobber us in the Cold War because “How can you trust a government that treats its own people this way?” Of course, the racism in the war on drugs was ramping up during this period, but a lot of people did not recognize that for what it was at the time because it was just getting started. There was also the refusal to treat HIV seriously because of Republican hatred of gay folks, but I am not sure the general population noticed. And I am not sure that Russia was treating gay folks any better.
Bringing down the Berlin Wall was historic. Understanding that there was a wall in Germany splitting the country in half is really hard to grasp for people who were born long after that. I am, of course, talking about explaining this to my own child.
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
He’s not the head, I don’t think. He’s a member though.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: A lot of it was rhetorical. In the Clinton era, you had to say you were “pro-choice”, not pro-abortion, and the formula was that we wanted it to be “safe, legal and rare”. All that is really soft capitulation–there’s this unspoken accommodation to the idea that abortion is a tragedy that happens when a woman behaves irresponsibly. All the raging energy was on the anti-abortion side, people waving around pictures of stillborn 8-month fetuses and citing “The Silent Scream”.
These days it’s much more acceptable to say “abortion is a positive good” and that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with getting one. To some extent that is a reaction to actual losses with practical consequences. But we took a long time getting back to there.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s a little bit too much “woo” thinking for me. I do agree that our rhetoric has gotten stronger, but that’s mostly because the threat became more real and then it actually happened that Roe was overturned.
Roe would have been overturned in the 90s had Bork gotten on. Dems have freed to an extra generation of women by stopping that.
ETA: Wasn’t pro -choice always the preferred term from the get go?
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: “Abortion is health care”
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
The country is also less religious and that matters. A lot.
Matt McIrvin
@JML: Reagan started out by putting in a bunch of clowns, people like Haig and Watt who said scary, ridiculous things in the news. The interesting thing was that most of them got turfed out rapidly in favor of these gray fixer guys, the old establishment Republicans who would behave.
Meese was an exception, he hung on a long time while being a consummate ass in public. And then there was the occasional exception like C. Everett Koop who had been hired as a partisan bomb-thrower who would say the right Christianist things on hot-button issues, and suddenly started behaving like a man of integrity in office.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Jeffries was a member of the Progressive Caucus but never the head. He is what some self-styled “progressives” try to label as a “PINO”: Progressive In Name Only.
I’ve seen this label applied to other Caucus members, but it doesn’t seem to stick with actual Democratic voters. These tend to be much less ideogical than various commentators would like them to be. My joke is that if I took a typical 7th Virginia CD Democrat aside and quietly said, “You know Abigail Spanberger is a Blue Dog, don’t you?” their response would be, “What’s a Blue Dog? And why are you whispering?”
Starfish
@Baud: I agree. Our rhetoric has gotten stronger because the threats have gotten more real.
We could overlook parents or teachers ostracizing queer children in schools; but when we saw everyone electing crazy school boards to ban all the queer literature, then we saw queer children as more worthy of protection.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
@Geminid:
You’re right, it’s Jayapal
sab
@Matt McIrvin: I think the AIDS epidemic forced Americans to recognize that there were lots of gay people in our midst amd often in our families and that they were normal loving people like everyone else. They couldn’t remain closeted while desparately ill. One had to be monstrously homophobic to watch them suffer and have no sympathy.
I think without the epidemic we would still be back where we were before.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Reagan’s strident anti-Communism played well at a time when the USSR was both behaving badly and showing signs of internal strain.
sab
@Baud: Social Security used to start at 65, now it starts several years later and there is talk of moving it back to 70.
Matt McIrvin
@sab: I used to think that but I’m not so sure. I think there was increasing gay acceptance brewing just below the surface of popular culture in the late 1970s, coded in all these barely disguised ways, and without AIDS it might have gone further.
But when people really became aware of the pandemic it made them mortally afraid of gay people as sources of contagion. There were calls to round them up into camps. It was years before it really sunk in that you couldn’t catch it from gay people touching you.
…And then the big liberalization of attitudes that did eventually happen in the 1990s happened right after effective HIV treatments appeared, and suddenly it wasn’t a death sentence.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
This is true
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@JML:
@Starfish:
All good points. It was definitely before the Trump Error
Baud
@sab:
Which Dem in the Clinton Bush era changed the age? I actually thought that happened earlier. Which Dem is talking about it now? Manchin?
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Reagan also was solidly within the Internationalist consensus that prevailed in both parties until 2016. One of Donald Trump’s many distinctive attributes was that he was the first American President since the Second World War to fall outside that consensus.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Maybe, but since we’re talking about Republicans in 2023, we can’t trust they’ll act rationally or even always in their own political interest. What if they think a global economic meltdown will tank the Biden presidency and give Republicans a trifecta in 2024? It’s not entirely insane to think that’s a possibility or to believe the public wouldn’t place the blame where it belongs.
Anyhoo, I’m not saying that’s definitely going to happen or we should all worry about it constantly, but it’s something to watch. I remember the insane shit the GOP House proposed while holding the Obama admin hostage with the debt ceiling, and the GOP caucus has only become more unmoored from reality since then.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
They are unpredictable, but one thing to keep in mind is that they don’t want to take over with the economy in shambles. They probably know how that has hurt Dems in the past.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
Definitely. My parents were born in the early 60s, so I was exposed to a lot of pop culture from that time through them. In episodes of the Rockforf Files and Mannix, for example, there were gay male characters who were portrayed sympathetically. So that was definitely a thing
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
@sab:
It did, in the early 1980s I think
rikyrah
@delphinium:
The Democratic Party needs to set up camp in those 15 districts won by Biden in 2020 who have GOP congresscritters. Set up a PR camp, amplifying every crazy vote they take for Squeaker. Making them defend lunacy.
Pound away for the next two years. Don’t let our foot off their necks😠
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne:
LOL, so true. And MTG is his Red Woman!
BellyCat
@Baud: Old school Republicans *used to* support abortion rights. In the 90’s, before the Evangelicals co-opted the GOP, the Hillmans (GOP stalwarts in Pittsburgh) used to throw a huge fundraising garden party gala for Planned Parenthood every year.
There still is significant Republican support for abortion rights — however, the GOP’s unwritten rules prohibit expression of this belief. The private voting booth is another matter however.
Baud
@rikyrah:
I like your style.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: We’re going to see the extent to which money really rules them. There probably are, as others have assured me, rich Republican donors who DO NOT want a debt default to happen, and will be on the phone with persuadable Republicans. To what extent will that matter? I can’t say.
And there’s the extent to which it was actually rational. Republicans in 2011 correctly calculated that they could extract concessions from Obama with hostage tactics on the debt ceiling–and it slowed down the economic recovery, probably making the 2012 election closer than it could have been. In 2013 they were wrong that they could get some more, so it didn’t go well for them then.
Biden’s best tactic now is undoubtedly to stand firm and take zero crap, though of course he is taking the chance that they’ll really set off the bomb and he will get blamed. I’m also sure Biden knows all of this.
JML
@Baud: it did happen earlier, 1983. Reagan of course…but aided and abetted by Tip O’Neill and the confused and mostly leaderless democratic Congress. It was a phased approach, of course, that only fully took effect in 2022.
Baud
@BellyCat:
Agreed. And we always used to have a few anti-choice Dems. We are almost 100% solid now.
oclday
@delphinium:
On J6 the rioters/terrorists expected the cops would be on their side and not just let them in but help them. That the right doesn’t always adore the cops doesn’t negate my point that they universally HATE Democrats and would have unleashed their pent up rage on them.
Suzanne
@Matt McIrvin:
Another factor: Americans (and the entire world) became much more urban during this time. One of the biggest changes in all of human history happened fewer than 20 years ago, and that was, for the first time is human history, a majority of people in the world live in cities. There’s a reason urban areas in much of the world tend to be more “left” than their rural areas.
My theory is that cities have more population and therefore often more diversity, and it is much more common to meet people who are different from you, and it is harder to dehumanize people who you encounter who seem to be okay.
Matt McIrvin
@BellyCat: The Bush family up to George I and Barbara were active supporters of Planned Parenthood.
tobie
@p.a.: Agree. We’re going to default and the standoff will last two weeks, if not longer. I don’t see any Republican with the nerve to buck his/her party or the GOP rabid base. The media will blame the Biden admin for refusing to compromise. If I am wrong about this, I will happily eat my words.
tobie
@Baud: You’re assuming the caucus is rational. I’m not sure about that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Suzanne:
And the more of them you encounter, the harder it is to let outliers color your perceptions too
Baud
@tobie:
I said they were unpredictable. But simply calling them irrational means you can read into them anything you want. It’s not very helpful.
ETA: I seem to recall a lot of predictions that McCarthy would never be elected speaker.
sab
@Matt McIrvin: I totally agree that accepting “pro-life” v “pro-choice” was a serious capitulation in the framing, when abortion should be framed as part of health care.
When I was eighteen I knew slightly older women who had had serious health problems from failed pregnancies. I didn’t know then that the reason was timely D&Cs were not available in their states because of legal restrictions. I didn’t know then about ectopic pregancies.
Roe v Wade changed the medical reality on the ground, but we allowed the whole discussion to focus on sexually active young women rather than medical complications in pregnancies. Centrist Democrats voting for bans on late term abortions were not unusual.
Baud
@sab:
Abortion as health care seems to exclude elective abortions. I don’t see how that’s a wonderful principal framing of the issue.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I tend to look at these Republicans individually and not as a class. Once it became settled doctrine here that “Latinos are not a monolith!” I decided to research whether in fact Republicans are not a monolith either.
But I don’t think we’ll see any meanful expression of Republican diversity until the second half of the year. Which is fine by me; I want to see the radicals do so much damage to their party’s brand that Americans decide they never want to see another Republican Speaker in their lifetimes.
That result won’t require a default, just the imminent threat of one. That’s where the Speaker removal rule that Gaetz and company want so as to control McCarthy could come back to bite them.
Gin & Tonic
@Geminid: I remember you confidently predicting that shortly after the election we’d get an accounting of that egregious Progressive Caucus Ukraine letter.
Nobody even remembers it anymore.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
I remember. Very disappointed in Jayapal that she hasn’t followed up. I had been warming to her over the last couple of years.
tobie
@Baud: I always assumed McCarthy would be Speaker and the only question for me was how much he was willing to humiliate himself to get there.
He showed that the quest for power trumps everything else. The GOP doesn’t give a damn if they destroy the economy. They don’t give a damn if it stays destroyed. They’re fine with the US becoming a commodities economy a la Russia. So are their donors. What matters to them exclusively is that they regain power and sic it to the libs.
Baud
@tobie:
I didn’t mean you necessarily. Just a lot of people were making predictions and a lot of people got it wrong, as happens with predictions.
sab
I think a big problem with the current Republican Party is that all the reasonable people have left the party and are now independents, so they don’t vote in the primaries like they used to.
My mother was a traditional Republican who left the party in her seventies. She was fiscally conservative but socially liberal. She liked lower taxes, but she was for civil rights, rabidly pro-abortion, and in favor of government regulation for food safety, drug safety and workplace safety rules. She even came around on unions at the end.
People like her have no place in the current Republican Party, so they have left
ETA: She also favored gun control.
Kirk Spencer
@Suzanne: The world became more urban than rural less than 20 years ago. But the us flipped about a century ago – during WW1.
I think you have a point but it’s not as significant in us politics.
NotMax
@sab
65 is a legacy of (of all people) the Kaiser. Not say it’s ipso facto not a realistic dividing line, however. But back then, 65 was not merely old but ancient.
karen marie
@Matt McIrvin: I would argue that Republicans forced Dems to be vocal about supporting LGBTQ. I’m proud to be a member of a party that tries to not only support people who face discrimination and violence but actively push back against it.
sab
@Baud: It is certainly an improvement on all fetuses are sacred lives. It frames it as decision between a woman and her doctor, rather than a choice between the innocent baby and the grown woman who allowed herself to get pregnant.
Baud
@sab:
Anything is better than their message.
Matt McIrvin
@Kirk Spencer: It’s been a continuing process in the US though. Even the suburbanization and white flight of the 1950s-60s-70s was only a little hiccup in the trend.
The fraction of college-educated Americans increased too, and college is a place where this kind of socialization happens, which is why conservatives are so suspicious of it.
Omnes Omnibus
@tobie: The caucus as a whole isn’t. We just need six or so individuals who are. FWIW, I think 10-20 Rs will defect on the debt ceiling issue.
Starfish
@Baud: Is this because you are not seeing mental health as part of the broader concept of health?
Elective abortions are also healthcare.
sab
@NotMax: And 70 is really too late for most people who worked physically tough jobs. My husband and most of his friends were physically shot long before age 65. Bad backs, bad hips and knees, bad hearts, bad kidneys.
Baud
@Starfish:
I’m saying people have a right to abortion simply because they don’t want to have a baby, regardless of any assessment of their physical or mental health.
ETA via reddit, apropos
trnc
@Frankensteinbeck:
Qevin may be able to do a lot of damage single handedly by not scheduling votes for debt ceiling, etc.
Steeplejack
@Chief Oshkosh:
“How can you have changed so much and support them?!”
That question is in quotes, meaning it’s one that presumably conservatives ask Tom Nichols, not one that he’s asking Jennifer Rubin. He tags in Rubin for her detailed explanation that answers the question.
Ksmiami
@Betty Cracker: Biden and Yellen will not allow the full faith and credit to be undermined. And the SC can only rule after the fact.
sab
@Baud: The phase in started in the Reagan years as a compromise to “save” Social Security. A compromise touched the then third rail of politics without being electrocuted was maybe not such a good idea.
Another reason I love Nancy Pelosi, who took Social Security discussions off the table.
Ksmiami
@tobie: the Constitution ain’t a suicide pact. We have the population and the will to stop Republican traitor trash.
sab
@Baud: I agree with your position, but we needed to have a lot more discussion about how serious pregnancy is a medical condition, instead of allowing it to be framed as merely inconvenient.
Starfish
@Baud: The new phrase in the abortion rights movement IS “abortion is healthcare.”
That has to do with things like “the Hyde amendment” making a government sponsored healthcare option impossible BECAUSE that would be healthcare that has cut out a very important part of healthcare for women.
So by talking about abortion as healthcare, we are talking about going after things that make a government sponsored healthcare option unappealing.
It is also healthcare, even when justices say that it is totally cool for Hobby Lobby to deny this very specific type of healthcare to women.
It is also healthcare when you have some God bothering pharmacist who decides that their right not to do their job is greater than your right to get medicine that your medical provider has written a prescription for.
By saying “abortion is healthcare,” we are not saying “abortion is healthcare but only for people who would suffer terrible outcomes otherwise.”
We are saying that abortion is healthcare. It is part of much broader conversations on healthcare, and the people who do not think that abortion is healthcare are attempting to harm women’s health.
tobie
@Omnes Omnibus: I very much hope you’re right. My one ray of hope is that the Republicans will make themselves so dislikeable over the next few months that it will become toxic to be associated with their brand. That will make it easier for some members of the caucus to break with leadership and vote to raise the debt ceiling.
Baud
@Starfish:
I’ll go with whatever is decided upon.
If there is a silver lining to Dobbs, it’s that I think it broke the logjam with respect to the Hyde Amendment. If we can restore abortion rights, we’ll do so without that restriction.
Geminid
@Gin & Tonic: Was I confident? I was certainly hopeful. I think Democrats in and out of the Progressive Caucus decided to turn the page on the letter purportedly signed by 20 of the 95 Caucus members. Ultimately, it had little consequence despite the heated controversy it excited for a couple of days.
There may have been a negative result though; at the time there was speculation on a Washington state media site that Rep. Jayapal was considering a bid for the second ranking leadership position won by Rep. Clark. That did not materialize, and Jayapal’s ambiguous role in the letter’s release may have been a factor there.
Uncle Cosmo
He could’ve saved everyone a lot of bother by just putting on a blue serge suit and then pissing his pants – it would’ve given him a nice warm feeling and no one else would’ve noticed….
Baud
@Geminid:
It was crappy of her to blame “staff” and then not follow up with which staff was fired for what would be a pretty egregious mistake.
Geminid
@rikyrah: I would add to those 15 (or 18, I read yesterday) every district where Joe Biden came within 4 points.
delphinium
@rikyrah: That would be great! Would also like Dems to keep talking about everything they have done for the American people based on all the legislature passed last session (like Hakeem Jeffries did during the multiple speaker votes).
Would also be nice to see Dems who won in purplish districts or who flipped red districts run ads throughout the year touting all the benefits of the Infrastructure and other bills that were passed, especially since many of those projects are now getting underway.
sab
@WaterGirl: Never mind. I got lost along the chain of replies so lost track of who was responding to what comment.
Those of us who can’t do proper box quotes or any box quotes certainly mess things up sometimes.
Geminid
@Baud: Yeah, that whole affair was hinky. One interesting aspect was that while almost every other “signer” distanced themselves from the letter, Rho “the Schmo” Khanna was on TV that night hailing the letter’s significance.
Progressive Caucus member Ruben Gallego, on the other hand, was typically blunt in his rejection of the letter’s contents.
My theory is that Khanna pushed for the letter’s release and that Jayapal gave staff the green light. It’s pretty clear this was not a matter of someone hitting the wrong “send” button. The Caucus website and Twitter account had a coordinated promotion effort ready.
Maybe we’ll find out more later this year.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I can’t figure out Ro Khanna. I don’t think Ro Khanna can either.
Suzanne
@Kirk Spencer:
The urban/rural divide has become incredibly strong in the US in the last 20 years, politically. It was not true, as recently as 20 years ago, that cities were blue dots in seas of red. Now that seems to be the situation even in very red states. It is, of course, also tied to the college education divide…..which was also much less of a thing 20 years ago. Also relates, of course, to cost of living and housing issues.
None of these changes are one causative thing. But looked at all together, they show a major shift.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Khanna was a forerunner in the effort to replace liberal Democratic Representatives with “progressives.” He knocked out Mike Honda in 2016, I think it was. In 2018 Justice Democrats used the model to elect the famous “Squad” (although Tlaib and Omar won open seats).
Jusice Democrats made a bad name for themselves though, so their efforts now are concentrated more under their other brand, “Brand New Congress.” When Katie Porter accepted the Brand New Congress endorsement this summer it raised a rose flag for me. I guess we’ll see what that means if Porter runs for Senate in 2024.
Baud
@Geminid:
I haven’t followed her recently, but I remember being disappointed when Porter backed Nina Turner. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
MisterDancer
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): With respect? It’s more complex than just that representation you recall, by a long shot.
I grew up Accused of Gay in the 1980s in multiple schools — including Catholic Schools. And, of course, Male Belly Dancer.
So, I Am Not Gay, yet I’m also a person who’s had to navigate Homophobia over the decades. And I was “there” as the basic representation of the 1970s was well-erased in the 1980s, which is critical to how Reagan took and held power.
Rather than babble on about my experiences, I’m going to direct you to two sources:
Do yourself a favor and spend some time on this topic. It may seem on the surface somewhat distant from what we discuss, but I promise there’s a host of key understandings of American politics echoed, too often sadly, in the above sources.
Aussie Sheila
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rho Khanna, (Silicon Valley with a human face)
Tom Q.
@Matt McIrvin: I’ve been thinking, of late, how McGovern was pummeled as the “Triple A Candidate: Amnesty, Acid and Abortion”. Thanks to the end of the draft, amnesty is a non-issue, and, if you translate “acid” to “drugs, especially marijuana”, the other two are things Dems are now happy to campaign on. That tells you how far left the country (not the Dems, the country) has swung left in the past 50 years.
This is why the Sinema approach is so maddening; she seems to want to ride into the political past, even while Mark Kelly has demonstrated you can win comfortably in a currently-swing state like AZ by being a conventional Democrat.
Geminid
@tobie: You may be overlooking Valadeo (CA) and Newhouse (WA). They had the nerve to buck the “base” and vote for Impeachment. They survived because they are in jungle primary states. I don’t think a vote on raising the debt ceiling will excite nearly the passions that their impeachment votes did. The debt ceiling issue will be forgotten in a few weeks I think, unless there is a default.
And then there are “Chamber of Commerce conservatives” like Don Bacon. He is probably planning on retiring after this term, and he is likely not the only one.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: my recollection is Porter and Raskin only endorsed Turner in the initial primary for the open seat after Marcia Fudge moved to the cabinet– which I still thought was dumb. Turner campaigned for Jill Stein in ’16 and said there was no difference between Biden and trump in September of 2020– (ETA) they were two indistinguishable ‘bowls of shit’. Bernie and AOC (!) campaigned for her when she primaried Shontel Brown in the general cycle for a full term
Kathleen
@Geminid: I’m old enough to remember Ocasio Cortez stating that Hakeem Jeffries should be primaried.
BellyCat
@Baud: We are more “solid” now, if only because 100% of newly registered young Democratic voters are pro-choice. The olds mind’s are made up, regardless of party, but the young’ins are going to reverse this Supreme Court bullshit or they will burn it down, no matter how long it takes.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kathleen: I wish I could remember exactly how Chris Hayes described the relationship between Ocasio-Cortez and Jeffries last week. It was rather comically melodramatic, and of course implied that Jeffries was the villain.
Kathleen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: But of course Hayes would characterize Jeffries as the villain. Jeffries started the PAC to support incumbents being challenged by Bernie’s Astroturfed Spawn ( a deliberately confusing collection of interconnected LLC’s and ever changing names). I imagine MSNBROC took umbrage that “corporate/centrist” Democrats were “being mean to The Pures”.
ETA: Also Hayes’ brother managed Jamaal Bowen’s campaign.
Geminid
@Kathleen: I remember that event as well. That’s when I first started paying attention to Jeffries. Representative elect Ocasio-Cortez did not exactly threaten to primary Jeffries though; the story reported by Politico’s Laura Barron-Lopez was that persons “close to” the Representative-elect intended to sponsor a primary challenge to Jeffries.
This was right after the caucus elections in November, 2018. Jeffries won the Caucus Chair over Barbara Lee in a secret ballot, 121 to 111, I think. Lee was and is an excellent legislator and she was the “Progressive” champion while Jeffries was considered the “Estabishment” choice.
Two of Ocasio-Cortez’s staffers- probably Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti and Press Secretary Corbin Trent- told the reporter that there had been foul play, Lee had been lied on, and they held Jeffries responsible. They would primary him, and even had a candidate lined up.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez denounced the story the next day and said it was what her late father called “birdcage lining.” People noted that she did not actually deny the story, though. Chakrabarti and Trent were to leave her office August of the next year, in the aftermath of the Caucus blowup over emergency border funding that Chakrabarti helped instigate.
When Politico reached out to Jeffries for comment he indicated that a primary challenge was acceptable: “Democracy is a beautiful thing….’Spread Love, it’s the Brooklyn Way’.” The last part is a quote from the late Brooklyn rapper Biggie Smalls, and some people said it was a veiled threat. I don’t know why!
Burnspbesq
@Geminid:
Katie had a brutally difficult re-election given the redrawing of district lines in OC. She gets a pass from me for doing whatever she thought was necessary to achieve the goal. I’m confident that she has a fresh supply of markers for the whiteboard.
Geminid
@Burnspbesq: I don’t condemn Porter for affiliating with Brand New Congress. But I am suspicicious of that group or groups; Brand New Congress is pretty much run by the same people as Justice Democrats. So this is something to keep an eye on, I think. Hence the “rose flag.”
I’m don’t know if it made much of a difference in her reelection; their main strength is elevating and funding relative unknowns. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, the best known Justice Democrat politician, came to campaign for Porter and that may have netted her some votes.
Porter is certainly a good addition to their brand as she has a national following. The affiliation may also help dissuade Rho Khanna from competing with her if she decides to make a Senate run in 2024.
A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)
@Ken:
Don’t f with Abe – he was good man and a great character actor.
Nora
@rikyrah: I’d gladly volunteer to do that in NY-17!
David 📢 Speaker 📢 Koch☑️
It’s not Dems pols who changed, it’s the electorate and times that changed.
Bill Clinton got a assault weapons ban passed, he hiked taxes on the rich, he tried hard to get health care passed. He wanted to be as liberal, if not more liberal, than fellow southern LBJ. But the headwinds were too strong.
In 1992, 87% of voters were white. In 2020, it was only 67%. In ’92 there was 2,300 murders in NYC. In 2020, there was only 400. (graph) When the electorate is less reactionary and less vulnerable to fear, uncertainly, and doubt peddled by the republicans you have clearer weather for progressive policy.
It was Ice-T who said 25 years ago, “don’t have the playa, hate the game”. In other words, itt’s not the players who changed, it’s the game that changed.