MAGA drone Ron DeSantis took his stale show on the road this week and quickly demonstrated how much he doesn’t represent a departure from Trumpism. Jen Rubin, the most righteous of the Never Trumpers, highlighted the squinty snowflake’s empty talking points on the domestic and foreign policy side. On the former, Florida’s Rage Munchkin complained about “woke” bail laws in NYC. Rubin wasn’t having it: (gift link)
Regardless, any comparison between Florida and New York does not serve DeSantis well. In 2020, the homicide rate in Florida was 5.9 murders per 100,000 people, and the violent crime rate was 384 per 100,000, according to the Daily Beast, citing the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. New York, meanwhile, had 4.2 homicides per 100,000 people and a violent crime rate of 364 per 100,000 people. New York City itself had a homicide rate of 5.6 per 100,000, slightly below the national average of 6.5 and half Miami’s rate of 12.8.
Miami has a Republican mayor, by the way — Crypto King Francis Xavier Suarez.
DeSantis was in NYC to appear on Fox n’ Friends, where he blathered inanely on camera while Joe Biden was on the ground in Kyiv:
“The fear of Russia going into NATO countries and all that and steamrolling, you know, that has not even come close to happening. I think they’ve shown themselves to be a third-rate military power.”
Maybe the response from Ukraine and NATO’s show of support might have had something to do with that? Jesus, what an asshole. He went on:
“He’s (Biden) very concerned about those borders halfway around the world. He’s not done anything to secure our own border here at home. And I don’t think it’s in our interest to be getting into proxy war with China, getting involved over things like the borderlands or over Crimea. I think it would behoove them (the administration) to identify what is the strategic objective that they’re trying to achieve, but just saying it’s an open-ended blank check, that is not acceptable.”
As Rubin pointed out, the objective is a free and independent Ukraine, obviously. And there’s no “blank check” — DeSantis lifted that bogus framing from Kevin McCarthy, of all people.
Anyhoo, DeSantis came across as small and churlish during the complaint-fest on Fox News while Biden was exhibiting courage and commitment to democracy worldwide. Rubin identified the dilemma:
DeSantis might be utterly uninformed on foreign policy, or he might be pandering to the MAGA base. Regardless, his tone-deaf, reflexive know-nothingism should set off alarms for Republicans. If they want to restore the party’s image as tough on national security and find someone to make Biden look feeble, they might want to look elsewhere.
Yep. I’m not sure they’ve got anyone else though. Mike Pompeo? LOL!
Open thread.
lowtechcyclist
Yeah, barring one of them dropping dead or being convicted of crimes, either TFG or Rhonda Sandtits will be the GQP nominee. And it’s definitely more of a choice of style than substance.
OzarkHillbilly
Yep.
hells littlest angel
Governor DeSantis, in New York City to complain about all the crime there, was unavailable for comment.
RSA
One of the challenges we have in public discourse is that MAGA people will just tell lies. On a Washington Post piece about Florida’s new death penalty legislation, a commenter claimed that Florida’s homicide rate was lower than that of most other states; in reality, Florida is in the middle of the pack, worse than 30 other states. It’s frustrating to have to counter the people who deny reality even for easily-checked facts.
Josie
I keep seeing articles saying that Republicans are moving away from Trump, but then I look at the alternatives and don’t see anyone with the ability to pull off a campaign against President Biden. They are all pretty weak sauce.
Jeffro
If trump and DeSantis were my party’s choices for president? Whew. Time to get a new party.
The Rs want someone just like trump, only more competent at inflicting cruelty and (possibly) a little less tweeting. That’s it.
Foreign policy? Psssshhttt. They don’t care about that – half of them would already prefer Putin rule this country instead of Biden. They just want someone who makes them feel STRONG in their lil’ patriotic hearts, regardless of the cost.
Crime? Oh please. They don’t care about actual crime rates – they already “know” (courtesy of Fox) that most of America’s major cities are burnt to the ground. They just want someone who’ll ‘back the blue’ (ie, crack some black and brown skulls).
OzarkHillbilly
I think so too, but I am looking at them through DEM colored glasses and worry that maybe I’m missing the forest for the trees.
Geminid
@Josie: All the potential Republican candidates show weaknesses, maybe Trump most of all. But one of them will get the nomination. I just hope the process is long, rancorous, and expensive. They will at least spend a lot of money tearing each other down.
Betty Cracker
@Josie: Yep — today’s WaPo has a long piece about how Trump is losing his grip on the party, and it’s entirely possible they’re right and voters will move on from Trump personally. But if his successors in the party embody all of Trump’s worse traits — lying, corruption, contempt for democracy, etc. — the party won’t have truly moved on.
My worry is that our horrendous political media will conflate moving on from Trump the flaccid bag of farts in human form with moving on from Trumpism. But we can’t really control that. All we can do is push back.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
And can we just stop for a moment to talk about DeSandtits and Pompous? They are both educated, at elite institutions, presumably intelligent people. Why the fuck are they so goddamned stupid? Is it play acting for cynical, manipulative reasons? Are they cramped by their ideology? Arrogance? All of it?
I remember one day I was working in my garden with my niece. She was about 5 o think. We found this weird red bug. It looked like a, short, very wide caterpillar. When I went to pick it up – it popped like a pimple! It was simultaneously fascinating and disgusting.
I feel the same way about DeSandtits and Pompous as I did about that weird bug.
Do we even need to figure out what makes them tick in order to defeat them? I get the feeling both of them do not appreciate being mocked and I am more than happy to annoy them.
Jeffro
@Josie: any one of them could campaign against President Biden and pull 45% of the popular vote, easy. The problem is how does any of them get the nomination and keep trump from eviscerating the party afterwards?
The thing I’m not seeing in much of the coverage (and I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t come up with Nikki Haley’s weird “I’m running against President Biden not Donald Trump” bit) is…walk it all the way through, snooze media…assuming someone can get more votes than trump, what then?
trump is not going away. The grift and the need for revenge and the need to avoid prison means he is running and the GOP base loves him, even if they are ‘tired’.
Eventually, there has to be a GOP nominee, right? If it is trump, then ‘tiredness’ aside, they all rally around him.
But if it isn’t trump…how does this GOP make him go away? How do they make him shut up? How do they keep him from running as an independent and throwing the election to President Biden?
I never hear that part.
They all are hoping that he croaks or flees to Russia, I guess.
Amir Khalid
@Josie:
And not one of the likely contenders has had the huevos to stand up to TFG. If they can’t stand up to Trump, how do they expect to be able to face Xi Jinping?
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
Have you noticed that since David Corn wrote the book tracing the fuckery of the Republicans back to the beginning the invitations from MSNBC have stopped?
They really want to pretend that the current Republican Party is an aberration and not the logical progression of the party as it has always been.
OzarkHillbilly
Open thread so… James Webb telescope detects evidence of ancient ‘universe breaker’ galaxies
The JWST does not disappoint.
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: they can’t. Most of the non-true believers, the cynical ones if you will, know this.
The problem for the GOP right now is that an absolute majority of their party is still 100% on the Trump Train.
it’s an honor, Betty!
Josie
@Jeffro:
This is an excellent point. I don’t think any of them have figured out how to handle this, and it’s why they are all tiptoeing around so carefully at this point. As Amir says, they aren’t able to stand up to Trump and look weak because of it. I love that they have backed themselves into this corner.
ETA: They have had several opportunities to free themselves from his yoke and were too stupid to do so.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MomSense: The PhD students in our program at Iowa State were all smart. They had to be to get in. But at some point, the ability to learn was a factor of character or personality. Some of them were so used to being the smartest person around that they couldn’t process anything that upset their world view
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: There are two elements to education. One is being able to jump through the hoops provided by our system. Do well on tests, study and learn what the instructor wants to hear or read, take the right courses, etc. That is the mechanical side. It isn’t necessarily easy, but it is the easier part. The other is being able to become a well-rounded person with a far better understanding of the world in which we live. That is the organic part. It is harder.
A lot of the people with elite educations that we complain about accomplished the first but not the second part.
Matt McIrvin
@RSA: The “DeSantis won the pandemic” line is largely based on outright lies, too–this idea that Florida got off unusally lightly or at least was on par despite minimal COVID mitigation measures, when in fact they performed worse than average even going by their own untrustworthy statistics.
One popular way of making the comparison work in Florida’s favor is to just compare them with New York, which contains NYC, which was hit horrifically hard by the initial Northeast wave in spring 2020 before vaccines or good treatments existed. Florida has caught up since then and is now roughly at parity with New York even in official death counts, and you know Florida’s are being badly undercounted.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
That’s why I hang out here.
Betty Cracker
@MomSense: I don’t watch the news much at all these days unless something specific is happening, so I wasn’t aware of that. MSNBC as an institution does pine for “Good Republicans” and always has, I guess. In one sense, I understand that. A country with a two-party system needs two sane parties, and we’ve operated with one for so long we’re always on the verge of going off the rails. It’s exhausting.
Marmot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Out of curiosity, what field was that in?
Alison Rose
Since it’s an OT:
An animal sanctuary in central California was hit very hard by the flooding earlier this year, and has been trying to raise money to repair damages to the facility and keep the animals fed and warm and medically attended to. They’ve only been able to raise $2200 in over a month. Since this place is chock-full of animal lovers, I thought I’d share their GFM here to see if we can help them out. I don’t know the people who run it, but I did live in Santa Cruz for a few years a while back (the shelter is in Watsonville) and a friend who is still in the area does know one of the people there and has been trying to spread the word. If any of you are able to spare a few bucks for them, that would be lovely.
Also too, fuck DeSantis.
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Both thoughtful answers. It seems like a failure of the institutions that students are only required to master the mechanical side of learning or to get through without showing willingness and ability to challenge their world views.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I do think we managed to overcome the myth that red states that opened schools earlier did better by students – none of the information shows that, although everyone expected it to. CA did better w/pandemic and schooling than FL did, if the measure is test scores
you don’t hear the claim anymore. So it can be done. The lies can be effectively refuted.
SFAW
If TFG does not get the nom for 2024, the only problem(s) the Rethugs have to deal with is how to keep him from either third-party-ing them, or sitting on the sidelines and trashing the Partei and its nominee. That’s easily solved: get the Mercers and Rupe/Lachlan Murdoch and Koch to bribe TFG to STFU. Well, either that, or have Vladi send someone from Wagner Group to “visit” Mar-a-Lardo.
I don’t know if DeathSantis can win the general in 2024, but barring fuckery from TFG, he has an even chance. His dorkish “personality” will not matter, because he will make sure the (Rethug) electorate knows he hates the same people they do.
Baud
I’ll once again get on my hobby horse, even while appreciating that our side has improved a lot over the last decade: One reason the GOP has been so effective at selling their lies is because we have historically focused more on pointing out the things that still need to be done rather than selling the progress we have made. A lot of people will choose to believe in a lie if the alternative is believing in nothing.
Karen S.
@Josie: I love that they’ve backed themselves into a corner, too, because of their greed and craven opportunism.
Cameron
I know there are other bad actors here, but with his special talent for creative sadism Governor DeSantis has single-handedly turned me off to living in a state that I really like in many ways.
Jackie
@Betty Cracker: This is interesting: Apparently TFG is persona non grata with FAUX news.
The Spectator: “It’s by now well-established that Fox News, the American media behemoth, is no longer on the Trump Train. Trumpworld’s union with Foxworld was never altogether easy and, ever since that fateful election in November 2020, it has fallen apart. Trumpists despise Fox for, as many see it, helping Joe Biden steal the election. And the top brass at Fox News have sought to distance themselves from the Trump movement and what they regard as its increasingly toxic politics. Rupert Murdoch has had enough of the Orange One, by all accounts.”
“What hasn’t been made entirely clear is the extent of the break-up. One senior Fox figure has let slip, however, that Donald Trump is effectively ‘banned’ from appearing on Fox News at present. He hasn’t been seen on the main channel since he declared his candidacy for the 2024 presidential in November and other Fox sources have confirmed that there’s a reason Donald is not appearing on their network.”
Since I don’t watch FAUX, I wasn’t aware TFG hasn’t been on. The few clips shown on other networks are of DeSantis and, now Haley.
catclub
@Geminid:
Except, for cred with the maga base, none of the others will be claiming to be billionaires. This matters to them.
Baud
@MomSense: Didn’t the same thing happen to Norm Ornstein?
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
Right. Who has the courage to employ Biden’s “Will you shut up, man?” against Trump?
None of them, Katie.
Omnes Omnibus
@MomSense: One thing is measurable. The other is not. It, however, is the goal of a true liberal arts education. The institutions can open the door, but they can’t make people go through.
Amir Khalid
@SFAW:
There may be a problem with that. Is there a window at Mar-a-Lago high up enough and wide enough for TFG to, um, fall through?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The way that data surprised even liberals who’d supported keeping schools closed, I think, helped–it had the shock of counterintuitivity to everyone.
catclub
@Baud: yes, if you swap “Meet the Press” with MSNBC
MomSense
@Baud:
It did. MSNBC is almost all GOP all day now. It’s an image rehab facility for Republicans.
SFAW
@Baud:
Agree, but one of the associated problems is that the MSM would rather pump up Rethugs — or both-sides things, at best — than give Dems positive press. Not sure how that gets fixed in the short term. In the longer term, it would probably take years of Dems screaming about the RW/conservative press, the way the Rethugs did for 20-30 years about the “liberal media,” to shame the MSM into behaving better. But I am not confident we could do that for such a long period.
JKC
I keep hearing that DeSantis’s shtick won’t play well outside of Florida, but we live in a country that put a failed reality TV star in the White House. I fear are more people who’d support a platform of Putting Those People In Their Place than we’d like to think.
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Damn, I knew I was missing something!
Thanks for pointing that out.
Betty Cracker
@Jackie: Fox News wants to be rid of Trump because he’s a stone-cold loser. But if Fox News viewers fall for Trump again, so will Fox News.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
I’ve seen that particularly in environmental activism. Environmentalists are so good at raising the alarm that it’s easy to get the impression that they’ve accomplished nothing in 50 years. But there have actually been all these tremendous wins, at least one of which may have staved off an extinction-level disaster. The wins were so thorough that it’s been easy for the other side to pretend the dangers never existed in the first place and it was all a needless panic. We need to toot our horn about that stuff a bit more.
CaseyL
@MomSense:
IIRC, MorningJoe is their biggest rate getter.
Joe Scarborough is one of the architects of the modern GOP. He happily and energetically bought in to all the lies, distortions, character assassination, and dysfunction while he was in Congress.
He’s important to MSNBC.
They will not want to highlight his role in making the GOP what it is, and will therefore not have on people who insist on talking about it
ETA: Not to mention the enormous amount of sycophantic airtime MorningJoe gave Trump during 2015-16.
Baud
@MomSense:
Right. MSNBC may be liberal compared to most other media, but on average it’s not really dedicated to a liberal point of view.
Omnes Omnibus
@JKC: I kept hearing how Scott Walker was an up and coming national political figure. DeSantis, IMO, is more Walker than Trump.
suzanne
It takes a particular kind of huevos to correct me and mansplain the content of a conversation that one was not even in…: but my colleague managed it this morning. Gold star.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I saw something the other day saying that Ari Melber is the rising star at MSNBC, which, no offense to anyone who likes him but… what?
Steeplejack
@Alison Rose:
Threw ’em a little money. Hope they get what the need.
Mike E
@Baud: glass half empty vs Molotov cocktail
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Seriously? He’s terrible.
sab
@OzarkHillbilly: The Mike Pompeo who couldn’t get up the nerve to defend his own Ambassador to Ukraine? That wimp?
Eolirin
I’m honestly less concerned with DeSantis in 2024 than I am with DeSantis in 2028. If he’s smart he won’t run against Trump this cycle. Letting Trump have the nomination and get beat again is really the best thing the party can do for itself.
Though if Trump does gets indicted he’s the most likely to end up being the nominee.
tam1MI
@Alison Rose: Sent a few bucks their way, hopefully it will help.
gvg
@Betty Cracker: Initially Fox resisted Trump when he was winning the nomination. They did not like him at first but gave in after he won. There was some meeting with Murdoch. I can believe he would be glad to get rid of Trump if he can do it without destroying his business.
sab
@Alison Rose: Thanks. I used to live outside Watsonville.
Baud
@Eolirin: That’s a fair point. The risk for DeSatan is that someone other than Trump gets the nomination and wins in 2024. The other risk is that there will be a lot more old GOP voters dead and a lot of younger Dem voters voting in 2028, and he has done a pretty good job of earning a reputation as a fascist, which will probably be out of favor by then if Biden gets a second term.
SFAW
@suzanne: Well, let me explain why you just don’t understand/appreciate what your colleague was trying to do, and how helpful he was, little lady.
SFAW
@Baud:
From your keyboard to FSM’s ear-like appendages
OzarkHillbilly
@sab: “The (name a Republican) who couldn’t get up the nerve to defend their own…” pretty much applies to the whole damned party.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@gvg: I suspect Rupert, like Paul Ryan and Lindsey Graham and ad nauseam, first thought trump couldn’t win, then thought trump could be managed, then at various points– Access Hollywood, Helsinki, 1/6– thought trump had gone too far, so they wanted to push him off the train. I think they’ve got one toe in that field again, now they’re worried he’s got loser stank, but if he starts showing signs of strength, they’ll fall back into line.
Maybe there’s some personal beef between trump and Rupert, but from what I’ve read Lachlan and the other heirs– with the possible exception of James– are all as bad or worse than the old man.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, I’m sure there’s at least one Rethug, somewhere, who is willing to defend some bullshit point by going after a 12-year-old.
Bupalos
@RSA: it’s pretty silly to do state-level statistical comparisons for things that aren’t primarily administered at the state level. And if you did you’d need to correct for a lot of factors before differences potentially due to state policy began to emerge. This impulse is another one of the spinoffs of the “Red state/blue state” mythology.
Off the cuff I’d guess Florida and Arizona probably “should” have low crime rates just because of average age?
Steeplejack
@suzanne:
I hope you showed him to the nearest high window.
Sure Lurkalot
@Omnes Omnibus:
So true, though by the time one is of college age, it is much harder. I’d like to think I was born curious with a love of learning…I was a “why?” kid. But I also had a most wonderful 6th grade teacher and a nerdy 1st year 8th grade science teacher who we tortured until he became an inspiring favorite and then there was that Algebra teacher in high school…yes I brought something to those classes but teachers…when they are good, they are the bomb.
Immanentize
@MomSense: When I was in the undergraduate mental playpen, I was close to several “minors” in credits along with my majors (English/Creative Writing and Cinema/Analysis). One such foray in interest and credits was Judaic studies (specifically for me, the second temple period). It was a vibrant department at SUNY Binghamton because a vast majority of students came from “downstate” and were Jewish. Many of those from the City went to Yashiva highschools. The Chair was a prominent Judaic History scholar, a fine teacher and a great guy — he ended up asking for a meeting with me to encourage me to please continue as a major. His reason? Too many of his majors knew a lot about the subject but were so locked into their religious views about the topics that they made poor history researchers, indeed.
It was a rather eye-opening conversation for young me.
catclub
Except for a couple who were on the House special committee…. and the GOP disowned.
Matt McIrvin
@Bupalos: Arizona’s average age is actually about at the median for the US. Florida’s is high. But most of the Northeast is older than Arizona.
Sure Lurkalot
@MomSense:
Made this comment in a thread last night. Sometimes we turn it on when eating lunch at home and it’s parade of conservative pundits whom I neither respect nor trust. And Mrs. Greenspan. What’s to watch?
Bupalos
@Betty Cracker: I’d pour boiling maple syrup in my eyes before I watched any cable-news infotainment. But if it is going to exist, I’d rather it exist to serve diversity of Republican opinion than as some kind of fox news for liberals.
catclub
@Bupalos:
I haven’t read Kevin Drum in a while, but I think he would point out that the lead poisoning leading to more criminality evidence is clear, and what is means is that right now, the most likely population for that high criminality is much older than the youts.
So just saying a population is older does not mean most likely to have higher crime rates.
Mike in NC
Try to imagine a lazy buffoon like Rhonda Sandtits trying to stand up to a thug like Putin. Worse than Trump? You betcha!
UncleEbeneezer
It’s 36 degrees here in Altadena, CA and I can’t believe that once upon a time (living in MA as a kid) I would have been THRILLED to finally go outside and play basketball in this temp (snowbanks around court, puddles everywhere)…F*** it’s cold!!
cain
@Josie: If they want to fix the problem, they’ll need to reject Fox. Fox is what keeps people on the Trump train through their lies and propaganda.
You need to pay them off and make them anti-Trump. That will be hard because Trump helps drive profit.
Almost Retired
OT, but why, oh why, is the Alex Murdaugh murder trial national news? CNN and MSNBC are both carrying his testimony live! When I briefly tuned in the question pending was “What did you do after you took the chicken out of Bubba’s mouth?” I’m out.
So, it’s local news for me this morning. Enjoying the apocalyptic weather forecast for the Los Angeles area. “SNOW!! WHITE DEATH TUMBLING FROM THE HEAVENS!! TAKE SHELTER! HUG YOUR LOVED ONES!!
scav
@catclub: There’s also the whole unstated issue of what kind of crimes are being rated.
marklar
@OzarkHillbilly: ““It turns out we found something so unexpected it actually creates problems for science,””
Ugh. One of the first things I teach my students is that “science” isn’t a collection of facts, but an epistemological strategy that we use to discover facts. We the discuss Popper’s thoughts on falsification as a way of testing our current level of understanding.
Discovering the unexpected is not a problem for science, but evidence that it is functioning properly!
(sorry to be pedantic here, but this is one of my ‘hot button’ issues, being housed in a Psychology department and often being told that means I’m not a ‘real’ scientist).
TriassicSands
It may set off alarms, but the message is, “This is our guy. He’s an idiot, just like we are. We don’t need a president who knows anything about foreign policy, ‘cuz we want to wall off the country and withdraw into our ONLY AMERICAN shell.” It’s not really “America First,” since so many of them would like to just completely ignore the rest of the world. And reality.
Seventy four million people voted for Trump in 2020 after having four years of blatant incompetence by which to judge him. He was a foreign policy hack, at best, but that was OK with all those people. It should be quite obvious by now that there is nothing Republican voters won’t ignore except, possibly, the feeling that someone can’t win an election. And they aren’t even good at judging that — see Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz, Kari Lake, Doug Mastriano, etc., etc., etc.
FelonyGovt
Lengthy commentary in this morning’s LA Times about drag queens and DeSantis, etc., including this priceless observation:
The haters are clueless about drag aesthetics. In one stunningly preposterous case, the text of an Oklahoma bill that would ban the dress-up practice defines a drag artist as “a male or female performer who adopts a flamboyant or parodic feminine persona with glamorous or exaggerated costumes and makeup.” Well, off to the clink with Dolly Parton, Kim Kardashian, Sam Smith and the “Real Housewives” franchise, flamboyant feminine exaggerators all.
Matt McIrvin
@catclub: IIRC violent criminals as well as victims of violent crime are still overwhelmingly younger adults from about 17 to 35–but there are some specific crimes, such as mass shootings, where the perpetrators are often older. (The focus on school shootings can give the impression that mass shooters are usually young men, but obviously the operative word there is “school”.
The explanation for the drop in violent crime since the mid-1990s according to the lead-crime hypothesis is, I think, that the lead-poisoned folk aged out of prime criming age (and into prime voting age, I guess).
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: Loved BillieJean’s story.
You and the missus have the Right Stuff.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Almost Retired: I am vaguely aware of that trial because it’s big in the ‘true crime’ world. I think there have been several podcasts, and odds are a Netflix doc. It caught my eye the other day the Murdagh’s lawyer is Dick Harpootlian, whose name has jumped out at me from every story about So Carolina Dem primaries seemingly my whole adult life. Apparently he’s…um… well….
George
@MomSense: They are, at a minimum, malignant narcissists. Potentially they have anti-social personality disorder. They lack empathy and remorse, but they know how to manipulate the rubes and the haters. They are the worst.
Brachiator
I see the political press trying to push the narrative that DeSantis and Haley are trying to appeal to GOP normies, whoever these people might be. The fantasy, I suppose, is that moderate Republicans stayed home in 2020, and yearn for moderate candidates that they can vote for.
And yet the political reality is that Trumpism reigns supreme among candidates and voters, and right wingers came out in droves to vote for Trump. It’s just that fortunately, there were more sane people who came out to vote for Biden.
There may be moderate Republicans, but they either have decided that the Democrats are better, or they simply go along with the MAGA madness. There is no pull towards GOP moderation.
Or both.
The GOP image of being tough on national security died with John McCain. Since then, the cult of personality reigned. The US was strong because Big Orange Daddy Trump beat his chest and supposedly made everyone cower. Meanwhile, in the real world, Angela Merkel was arguably the leader of the Free World.
Barbara
@TriassicSands: Herschel Walker, Kari Lake and Dr. Oz all have something in common with Trump: high name recognition based on their participation in popular entertainment. Clearly, preexisting fame is not always going to be a definitive advantage, but it almost certainly conveys an advantage over what the person’s inherent appeal would otherwise have been. It was obviously true for Walker and Oz — who weren’t even residents of the states where they were seeking statewide office.
Jackie
@Almost Retired: I’m with you! Never heard of the guy, and while I’m sorry his wife and son were murdered – supposedly by him – why is the national media obsessed with this trial?
Thankfully I have a ton of shows prerecorded for such times.
Stacy
@CaseyL: And Mika ran off to Trump Tower directly after the 2016 election to pitch her “Know Your Worth” seminars for women to Ivanka.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Marmot: Rhetoric and Professional Communication
scav
@FelonyGovt: I’m also rather loving the tank-sized hole that leaves for drag kings to step up & in to continue bending the binaries.
Jeffro
Which is, obviously, a really interesting stance for a “news” network to take. LOL
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Most Americans still regard Republicans as the “strong defense/national security” party, regardless of what they do or say:
https://news.gallup.com/poll/355511/gop-viewed-better-party-security-prosperity.aspx
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Stacy: As I recall, they all turned on each other at some point in the transition. Wasn’t trump offering to perform their marriage in the Oval Office after the election?
Almost Retired
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ah yes, Harpootlian. The man who compared Nikki Haley to Eva Braun. I didn’t realize he was involved. So he would know what happened after Alex took the chicken from Bubba’s mouth?
CindyH
@OzarkHillbilly: great Nova piece on this last night
Brachiator
@Jeffro:
Right now, I would say that Trump is too lazy and disorganized to mount a credible third party campaign. He might also have problems financing an effort and he is not going to spend his own money.
His best bet is to capture the GOP nomination.
Betty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I agree. I find him hard to take, always with the savvy, cool guy bit.
Hoodie
@TriassicSands: I think the difference between Trump and the failed 2022 GOP candidates is that the latter are almost totally functionaries of the culture war. DeSantis is one of those, too, e.g., it’s all “anti-Wokism.” Trump used and amplified the culture war for his own purposes, but Trump also got a lot of votes just by being Trump, i.e., a lot a people simply liked his asshole persona and ignored whatever policies he might pursue (I mean, some of those morons thought he was a sex symbol). Even with his extra appeal, Trump failed to win the popular vote twice and squeaked by in the electoral college in 2016.
DeSantis is more of a foot soldier (or officer) of the Kultur Korps than Trump was in 2016 or even 2020. Candidates like DeSantis can be successful under the right circumstances, but they generally don’t have as broad an appeal to win a nationwide election.
DeSantis’s Florida Republicanism somewhat reminds me of Orange County Republicanism of the 1960s, which gave us the gift of Richard Nixon. Nixon capitalized on the culture war of the 60’s revolving around the war, the women’s movement, etc. I don’t think the anti-Woke crew has equivalent horsepower.
EarthWindFire
@hells littlest angel: Maybe he needs to work on securing Florida (roll eyes)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Hoodie:
all true, but also “He’s a businessman, and we need to run this country like a business” is a powerful trope in our politics, even if it was bullshit with actual successful business-folk like Perot and Romney, much less with the daddy’s-boy racist gameshow host
that’s interesting
WaterGirl
@Almost Retired:
I’m just gonna count myself as lucky that I do not know who Alex Murdaugh is or anything about his murder.
TriassicSands
@Barbara:
They have something else in common — a complete lack of competency and qualifications for the positions they sought.
Of course celebrity is going to appeal to Republicans. And, sadly, t means far too much to far too many Americans, but its advantage for Republicans is they already know who the people are and don’t have to spend even one second trying to decide if these are really people who should be elected. Qualifications? Hey, I know who they are. (The thing is that I’ve never spoken to a Trump supporter who knew anything factual about his actual business career. They all assumed he was a highly successful entrepreneur, but they knowledge of him was limited to his reality show persona.
If we look at some Democratic vs. Repubican celebrity candidates, the difference jumps out.
Dems: Bill Bradley and Al Franken
Repubicans: Donald Trump and Tommy Tuberville
Both Bradley and Franken turned out to be highly intelligent, hard working Senators. I still doubt that Franken should have left the Senate, but that, too, points to a difference — the willingness to hold members of one’s own party accountable (even if the punishment was not a good fit for the crime — opinions may differ).
Trump and Tuberville? Both idiots. Years ago, Trump could actually form complete, coherent sentences. But by the time he ran for president, I suspect that decades of mental sloth had rendered him stupid and inarticulate. Tuberville? One of the least qualified senators ever elected. A football coach. And nothing more (unless you want to include mindless neo-fascist). With both, dare I mention racism?
UncleEbeneezer
Baud
@Hoodie:
The last liberal president according to some.
J R in WV
I have disliked Andrea Greenspan ever since I realized during a DNC convention that she was distorting a major speech Wife and i had just watched, live and in person. So many years ago now. But she is not typical of MSNBC coverage at all.
And some mornings driving into town for a medical appointment, I have sometimes accidentally listened to Joe and Mika’s morning show on XM Radio, which is also mostly terrible. That’s quite unusual as we are both up late and sleep l1ate when at all possible.
We usually watch MSNBC in the evenings while I fix a drink and dinner, and while we eat. While I do see some former Republicans as guests, none of them actually spout Trumpian propaganda. From late afternoon until O’Donnell wraps up the evenings we both think
MSNBC is far and away the best news show we can receive via our internet connectiion.
They allowed Brian Williams to stop his insipid opinionating, which was a good thing. Over the years most changes to the on-air talkers have been small improvements. Andrea Mitchell being the shining exception!
I will confess that given my precipitous plunge into ill health lately, I am spending less time on the news and way more time studying elves, dragons, gargoyles, spaceship crews, and the humans who partner with them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT, but the sort of thing I suspect someone here might now: I believe you’re not supposed to give white bread crumbs to birds, but whole wheat is okay?
MomSense
@George:
I’m leaning toward that position as well.
RaflW
I regret it, but I managed to see a very whiny pair of tweets from massive Texas embarrassment Teddy Cruz yesterday.
Republicans made a choice to just be 100% negative and I hope it backfires badly. If they were smart (which, obvs, they aren’t!) they’d be puffing up about our role as a global security leader, and just criticizing Biden for (somehow, I presume they’d find some critiques from sympathetic foreign policy circles) doing Ukraine wrong.
But a significant minority of MAGA-land has crawled up Putin’s posterior, so the critiques are that we should just be timid non-interventionists. It’s weird, and feels really weak. (I think there are regrettable mistakes the US has made in the past by being too much Team America World Police. Ukraine isn’t one of those moments.)
Eunicecycle
@Matt McIrvin: Maybe lead poisoning explains the MAGA mindset!
cmoren
@WaterGirl:
What’s uniquely interesting today about the Murdaugh trial is: defendant Murdaugh is taking the stand in his own self-defense as I write. Murdaugh is not just a former (disgraced attorney) but a former prosecutor himself, and is betting that he can withstand withering cross-examination by the prosecution, probably against advice of his own lawyers. The case against him is entirely circumstantial – maybe enough of itself to persuade a jury to convict, maybe not but now it’s going to be tough for him to evade at least some questions that touch on his financial malfeasance and habiual lying to his former law partners and financial difficulties. The prosecution gets a much better chance to portray him as a complete sociopath with demonstrated ability to make skillful seemingly convincing lies.
AM in NC
I’m guessing this is a dead thread by now, but as it is an open thread, I came here to vent. My 20 year old kid texted me this morning from his job at Starbucks because he was in a lockdown at the back of his store. Someone at the Breuger’s Bagels next door pulled a gun on one of their employees, and, of course, that threatens everyone in the vicinity. Thank God nobody was shot.
Just called our GOP state house speaker and GOP state senate chair and gave their staffer/voicemail a right good earful. Not that it’ll do any good, but I wanted them to hear my fear and anger; hear how normal people hold them (and their staffs) responsible for this uniquely American carnage; hear how it is antithetical to being “pro-life” and a Christian to worship implements of death; hear how their gun-humping prevents everyone else from being able to do anything without being terrorized by gun-humpers, restricting freedom for everyone; and hear that how they behave is cowardly and shameful and normal people recognize that.
I hate these evil cowardly shitheels with every fiber of my being. They should be right glad I am a non-violent person. But Imma tell you what: either of my kids gets shot, and all bets are off.
Baud
@AM in NC:
How awful. All too common though.
RaflW
This is basically the play the press ran for Youngkin. And he’s a roaring MAGA chode/asshole now that he’s in office.
I’m just enraged, daily, at the motivated ‘reasoning’ of our broken press.
TriassicSands
@Hoodie:
A huge difference between Trump and DeSantis is that DeSantis has to find a way to become recognized. Trump’s reality shows did that for him. Being a governor of a state, even one as populous as Florida, isn’t a great way to gain national name recognition. You have to reach out beyond the borders of your home state and for DeSantis his vehicle is culture war. Donald Trump helped make that a key issue in Republican politics — often THE key issue. DeSantis is using it.
The 2022 losers all had something in common — extremism beyond extremism and incompetence. They were trying to get by simply by appealing to Trump supporters at a time when at least some of them were tiring of Trump’s endless whining and losing. Most lost in close races. They tied themselves to a loser, while DeSantis is tying himself to something that is very popular among the majority of Republicans and clearly separately himself from the loser. What none of them have is any real competence for the positions they sought, or in DeSantis’ case, the position he seeks.
It’s unknowable at this point how he will ultimately be seen by voters. A focus group that appeared in the Times was quite frightening. Florida voters who self-identified as “progressive” supported DeSantis. That speaks to the general ignorance of the American electorate.
citizen dave
@Almost Retired: “why, oh why, is the Alex Murdaugh murder trial national news”
Me too! I recently read that netflix is removing Arrested Development on March 14, and as I never got around to watching the more recent netflix seasons 4 and 5, I’m now doing that at a 2 or 3 episodes per night rate. So I’m loving that the remaining Murdaugh son is named Buster…
Baud
@TriassicSands:
Over Biden?
MomSense
@Immanentize:
Aaah – later Judaism. That’s a fascinating period. I was in a world religion class where we were discussing the influence of the Zorastrian religion and this poor Baptist woman from northern Maine interrupted the professor to say “you’re blowing my mind. I thought Jesus was unique” in a thick County accent. She was joining the class via video so we could see the pain in her face in cinematic detail.
That period of exile in Babylon was influential for those in exile and for those who stayed behind.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@FelonyGovt: It’s not about the text of the law, it’s about what the (R)ight people deem to be (R)ight.
zhena gogolia
Haven’t read the thread yet, but — HE ACTUALLY SAID “BORDERLANDS”???
MomSense
@gvg:
I think they shifted after one of trump’s Russian mob goons poisoned Megyn Kelly.
UncleEbeneezer
@AM in NC: We had our tennis classes cancelled Tues because of an active shooter threat (turned out to be a hoax) at the HS courts where I teach. #ThisIsAmerica…sigh…
different-church-lady
Bumping this from downstairs: “We’re having a campaign rally for democracy!” has got to become a rotating tag.
RaflW
@zhena gogolia: But what about our borderwaters? Should we be stepping up our jingoistic swagger on the Great Lakes? Canada is kinda woke, after all. I mean, just look at their PM. He gives off some Gavin Newsom-y airs.
RR_Mikey
The glorified stupidity promoted by Fox and growing out of control in God’s waiting room will not be interested in anything that isn’t spoon fed to them by the likes of FNC or even worse. There are days when I just want to move off grid and make friends with the wildlife around me.
Paul in KY
@OzarkHillbilly: They have Nikkki!
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The debate itself mirrored a larger debate about public schools, and it’s this “how much do out of school factors matter?”
All conservatives and lots of centrists believe out of school factors don’t matter at all- most liberals think they matter a lot (hence how the Right promotes “school choice” and liberals promote funding schools but also a broader safety net).
I think what the panemic showed is out of school factors matter a lot. That’s what everything always shows, but conservatives and centrists want to insist the school is the whole story for kids.
I think conservatives and some centrists deny that out of school factors matter a lot because if they admt that and they are upper middle class or better off they would have to admit it that their school success was not all merit-based – that a lot of it came from the income of their parents. They will die before they will admit that :)
I was an “open schools person” but I am also an “out of school factors matter a lot” so I was LESS surprised than people who think a good school is a magical fix to poverty.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Seconded.
RaflW
@UncleEbeneezer: The Denver/front range area schools had a rash of called in ‘active shooter’ threats/lockdowns this week. I think I saw that it was happening in at least a few other states, both at schools and other public or quasi-public spaces (malls, etc).
Dunno what’s up. But it’s more g.d. gunhumping chaos. I absolutely hate it. 2A fetishism and gun-profiteering might be the thing I’m most bitter-despondent about in this problematic country.
different-church-lady
@OzarkHillbilly: I would be relieved if the entire Big Bang theory were disproven, because it absolutely hurts my head and soul how much I can’t make sense out of the idea that nothing exists and then suddenly everything exists.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
I expect we’ll find out that the real reason the universe is expanding is that everyone out there is running away from us as fast as they can.
Redshift
@RaflW:
This is why they’re trotting out “Biden should be in East Palestine, not in Ukraine” and “America First” generally – they’re trying to avoid arguing that the US is weak by pretending that engaging abroad means ignoring problems at home. Not that we can’t kick ass abroad (weak!), but that Dems are prioritizing those furriners over good wingnut Americans.
The problem is that it requires arguing that America is so incompetent it can’t do both at once, which brings them right back to weak.
TriassicSands
@Baud:
No, over Crist. The 2022 election.
RaflW
@different-church-lady: Yeah, my brain pretty much has to go to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe if I think about the Big Bang very much. IOW, snarky silly science fiction to trick my mind into throwing a metaphorical towel over itself.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I think lower income kids probably benefitted from the blue state closures of restaurants and other service industry entities because there was less pressure for low wage parents to go back to work than their was in red states. That benefit (parents less stressed and at home with their kids + federal/state subsidies) perhaps equaled any benefit red state kids got from earlier school opening.
I’m not an expert on children but I think smaller children want to be home with their parents – that’s their ideal. Obviously we can’t always do that- they have to go to school and/or daycare but they don’t “suffer” home with parents- they prefer it. So I thought a lot of the keening and wailing over 2nd graders missing social events ignores that 2nd grade social events are mostly for parents. Overblown. I thought it was valid for high schoolers, many of whom actually are social and did suffer from isolation.
different-church-lady
@TriassicSands: Chist is the Beto of Martha Coakleys.
Baud
@TriassicSands:
Ok. Still bad, but I can’t help but wonder how representative those “progressives” are of actual progressives.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
That would explain people staying home. Not progressives voting for DeSantis.
RaflW
@Redshift: I don’t follow Ohio all that closely, but I was under the impression that Mike DeWine wasn’t one of the incompetent Repubs. But if there’s blame to go around, it absolutely includes him.
And Trump rolling back rail regulations. (Fox apparently made the soon-to-be retracted error of factually reporting Trump’s rollback this morning on their pretend-hard-news side. Oppsie!)
Of course, a nation of 300M with a $1.7T budget can both clean up a toxic crash and ship howitzers to Ukraine.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In which Ted “Chunky Wolverine” Cruz accuses Zelensky of being a cosplay warrior. There are photo receipt
JKC
@Omnes Omnibus: I hope you’re right. My sense of Walker was that he was in Wisconsin to shovel as much tax money to Foxconn as he could, and that the culture warrior act was an effort to keep the rubes happy. DeSantis on the other hand seems to get off on punching down on marginalized folks and swinging his d*ck around.
Paul in KY
@Cameron: Gulf Shores, AL has the same damned beaches and their governor (while a Repub, natch) is much less eviler and assholish than DeSatanis.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@different-church-lady: LOL. But I’ll say this for Beto, before he OD’d on twitter, he damn near took down Ted Cruz.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: The other side of the coin was that the little kids were the ones who had the hardest time dealing with remote schooling, whereas my middle school and then high school-age daughter occasionally thought she actually preferred it (don’t know if she still thinks that). But for the really little ones, school is largely recreational day care anyway–if a parent is at home they could do without it.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah and he had a tougher state than Coakley. A little unfair.
Kay
Typical Right wing asshole arrogance and sneering. Biden engaged successfully which is why “steamrolling” did not even come close to happening and more importantly Ukrainians fought and died to stop Russia – for this clown to ignore that is just offensive but typical of the fake manly-men of the Right.
He knew how it would turn out. Yeah, sure. My ass he did. He just removes Ukrainians from this picture he paints. What goddamned nerve. So disrespectful.
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Tongue in cheek.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: God, I hope so, as I think DeSantanis is much more worser than whathisface.
Redshift
@different-church-lady:
If it’s any comfort, the common layperson explanation of the Big Bang as “everything exploded from a single point out of nothing” hasn’t been what astrophysicists believe for quite a while. The universe was very small when the Big Bang happened, but it wasn’t nothing, it was (if I understand correctly) kind of a state change in the laws of physics. Since we have no way of observing what came before the Big Bang, it’s all theoretical, so it may have been something that always existed, or it may have been produced out of a greater multiverse structure, but the Big Bang definitely doesn’t require that it just appeared out of nothing.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: As usual, any success in stopping a thing means that the thing was never a big problem in the first place, or that we can let up now. It’s the same pattern as with voting rights, COVID and environmental issues.
zhena gogolia
@RaflW: I mean that he seems to be using 19th-century Russian imperial language for the sovereign country of Ukraine, referring to it as “borderlands.” This passage:
He’s referring to boundaries that were agreed upon in 1991 as “borderlands,” I assume of Russia.
Hoodie
@TriassicSands: Running Crist against DeSantis was a truly terrible idea, which probably shows what a basket case the FL Democratic Party must be. Nothing like offering a warmed-over oven-browned Republican defector against another Republican. Charlie was ok as a congressperson, but it was idiocy to think he could get elected governor. That said, not sure the FL Dems had much in the way of alternatives.
One thing that I worry about is whether Dems are really developing candidates. It’s hard to start a political career because of the demands of keeping your day job, taking care of your family while serving in some shit-paying lower elective office. In our area, local offices pay so low that a lot of the people running are (1) retired or (2) independently wealthy or (3) crooks who run to use the office for their own personal gain. The GOP seems to get around this by (1) welcoming crooks into their ranks and (2) wingnut welfare.
West of the Rockies
@MomSense:
Both DeSantis and Pompeo are wildly arrogant, pampered, and churlish. They are bullies, junior high bullies in men’s suits.
I predict they will both be exposed for the rage munchkins and power gnomes they are.
different-church-lady
@Redshift: Well that’s some ask-and-ye-shall-receive shit right there!
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: Is going to be 78 or so here in Central KY.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
My high schooler hated it. I still feel a little bit guilty that his last year of high school was so bad. He lost everything he liked- band, track, his social life. He was miserable. I eventually put him in (online) counseling which helped, I think. He was always so easy going and all of a sudden he was just horrible- so irritable and downcast.
Anyway- he likes college so he seems to have bounced back!
The “open schools” debate was annoying to me because it was like a magnet for what I consider “liberal contrarians” – the same fucking group of 17 people who promoted the whole ridiculous “woke” panic. None of these people showed the slightest interest in public schools until it looked like they had an opening to beat up public schools. They weren’t well informed on the issues.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: Really if you ask an observational astronomer or even most astrophysicists, they’ll tell you they don’t deal in hypotheses about what came before the Big Bang–all they know is that the universe did evolve from an early state in which it was very hot and dense, and when you get further and further back into the first minutes or seconds of the universe, the story gets kind of murky.
Going further than that is an exercise for theoretical cosmologists, and they have all kinds of freaky ideas. But they are all speculative.
From the perspective of general relativity, time only exists while the universe exists, so there just is no “before”, any more than there is any land due north of the North Pole. But classical (that is, not-quantum) general relativity is probably inadequate to describe the initial state.
The idea of the universe exploding from a single point in space-time was never taken very seriously by conventional cosmologists, but that was a fair description of E. A. Milne’s “kinematic relativity” model, which only used special relativity. It’s still useful as a kind of toy model though it is obviously not realistic.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Redshift:
The Last Question, by Isaac Asimov
TriassicSands
@Baud:
No, over Crist. The 2022 election.
And it was not all progressives. The point is American voters of all stripes are prone to political ignorance which means they can be more easily swayed. Democrats nominated a terrible gubernatorial candidate to oppose DeSantis, but DeSantis’ margin of victory was appalling. And that after all his cruel stunts.
It remains to be seen how DeSantis plays nationally, but counting on the intelligence and awareness of the electorate is just crazy.
Baud
@Hoodie:
Val Demings lost to Rubio by almost the same amount.
geg6
@MomSense:
What? I am at work all day, but I have watched in the early evening now and again. I do like Ari Melber. Pretty sure Maria Cantwell would be shocked to know that her former staffer is a GQPer.
ETA: Pretty sure Joy Reid and Lawrence O’Donnell will be shocked to find out they are Republicans, too.
Paul in KY
@TriassicSands: To me, the modern GQP is made up of overlaid & interlocking groups of single issue voters. That’s why after 4 years of showing how unsuited/uninterested he was for the job, all those dipshits voted for him.
AM in NC
@Baud: It was awful. And, as you say, far, far too common. Shootings every single day and even more lockdowns/threats – this country has lost the plot.
Andrew Abshier
A top story in today’s Sarasota Herald-Tribune is about DEESantis going after the last liberal member of the Sarasota County School Board. He really does want a whole state of sycophants to do his bidding. Apparently destroying New College wasn’t enough for him.
The Moar You Know
@SFAW: that’s their brand. Kinda required. Either publicly humiliating them or molesting them, the GOP is truly there for the kids.
geg6
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
What is your beef with Ari? I like his show most of the time. Every now and then I am not happy with it, but I’ll take what I can get from anyone in the MSM that isn’t a nutcase or GOP ball washer.
Ohio Mom
@MomSense: I think it could be one of two things.
Some people simply do not have the emotional and intellectual strength to deal with cognitive dissonance — I once had a moment of profound cognitive dissonance, I am always hesitant to discuss it because it doesn’t translate. It’s like when people talk about mystical experiences, it just sounds lame.
The room spun for a few moments, I put my head down until the dizziness passed and admitted to myself that there was a flaw in that particular belief of mine. But this isn’t to say that I don’t have other areas of conflict I am actively suppressing — who knows, I am suppressing them!
I suspect this is at least in part what Dorothy Windsor saw in those students, a lack of courage, really.
The second possibility, and I think this describes “DeSandtits and Pompous,” is that they demonstrate an almost superhuman level of cynicism. Maybe they also have a dash of sociopathy.
Think of the newscasters at Fox. We know they know they are lying, and they do so effortlessly. I also think here of Jerry Springer. I remember when he was a Cincinnati Councilman and then, a local newscaster who ended each show with a very short (a minute or two) reflection on a news item.
He has solid liberal values, he’s very, very smart, well-spoken and charming. But an opportunity to make scads and scads of money presented itself and he took it. It was a calculated and totally cynical move.
I think he may feel some regret because he traded his legitimacy and authenticity for money; he thought about returning to politics a while back and realized his baggage wouldn’t allow that. It’s almost a biblical-type tragedy.
In contrast, I don’t think DeSantis and Pompeo are capable of any ambivalence about what they do, and that is hard for people like us to comprehend.
Joy in FL
@Alison Rose: I’m so glad I read your comment. I’ve supported Little Hill Sanctuary on their Patreon site for a long time. I also sponsor one of the resident pigs, whose name is Popsicle. I just donated to their GFM; thank you for calling attention to that.
If anybody is looking for a good place to donate a little (or a lot of) money monthly, you can find Little Hill Sanctuary on Patreon.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
This is the particular thing I like to be an asshole about and will stand in solidarity with assholes of all stripes to defend our common ability to be assholes without challenge.
Matt McIrvin
@Paul in KY:
It’s funny-that’s how the Democrats have historically been characterized. Everyone’s got their pet issue, nobody will pull in the same direction. But it seems like we’re doing better than we used to.
Paul in KY
@Jackie: For those among us that aspire to write crime novels and would use this one as a template for their book, a great plot twist (that does not occur in this real life tragedy) would be if the ‘Alex’ character, fesses up on the stand that he was the actual father of the young lady who was killed in the boating accident and his son ‘Paul’ had been disparaging her for years and it finally sent him over the ledge one night…
RaflW
@zhena gogolia: Ah, got it. I’d mixed that up with Cruz’s southern border bluster/cosplay.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
Although I suspect that you are both many, many, many years younger than I am, I think that’s an age thing. Ari reminds me of the very bright college students I deal with. Super enthusiastic about their area of interest, immersed in modern culture and having encyclopedic knowledge of rap lyrics. Other than Lawrence O’Donnell, he’s the least irritating host on MSNBC IMHO.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: A 3rd party nom does allow him to keep fleecing his rubes for campaign contributions.
Josie
@West of the Rockies:
“Both DeSantis and Pompeo are wildly arrogant, pampered, and churlish. They are bullies, junior high bullies in men’s suits.”
What a perfect description of both men.
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: I do wish foreperson McDitzy would STFU. I assume she was paid for some of these gigs.
Matt McIrvin
@Ohio Mom:
As a software guy, I’ve learned that when you’re hunting down a bug, you want to steer directly into the center of maximum cognitive dissonance. Something completely impossible seems to be happening? Heighten the contradictions!! The thing you got wrong is going to pop up very, very soon.
If people have the right mindset, those are the moments when they REALLY learn something. But if they haven’t, well…
RaflW
@Hoodie: I don’t know if she’s got the standing to go farther, but I’ve been fairly impressed (from afar) by FL House minority leader Fentrice Driskell. Maybe y’all have further guidance on her possible trajectory?
To be unfortunately blunt, I’m not that worried that FL Dems would be uncomfortable with a successful black woman lawyer/legislator advancing into greater statewide politics. But winning for FL Gov or senate? Hmmm. (And Ms. Driskell may not have those aspirations)
TriassicSands
@Hoodie:
Another comment I just posted acknowledged the problem with Crist.
It remains to be seen how DeSantis plays nationally, but counting on the intelligence and awareness of the electorate is just crazy.
If Biden were 65, I think (actually, I’m sure) he’d have a much better chance of being re-elected. Despite the lack of meaningful evidence, the media will play up his age as a fatal defect, and many Americans will buy it. I’d prefer a younger president, but that is partly because it would mean a better future outlook for the party and the country. A future I probably won’t see.
I care more about who gets elected than whom I will vote for. Realistically, there is a reasonable chance that Biden won’t make it through a second term, whether because of death or disability. That will mean Harris as president. And there doesn’t seem to be much evidence at this time that the majority of Americans look on her favorably. In 2024, given Biden’s age, the Democratic VP candidate may have more significance than at any time in my life.
Developing candidates. Yes, that seems to be a real problem. Some of the most promising younger Democrats keep losing elections (O’Rourke and Abrams) or have no place to run for higher office (Buttigieg).
The biggest winner in 2022 was probably Whitmer in Michigan. She led a statewide election triumph for Democrats in a state that could have been viewed as teetering. I mentioned her in a much earlier comment (months ago) and a B-J commenter came back with 100% negativity.
Harris’ position as VP gave her a boost, but her own independent campaign was a flop and her approval ratings are not good.
Buttigieg is probably the most articulate “young” Democrat, but would this country elect a gay president? I don’t know. But, then, I don’t really have much confidence in voters. Democrats can win elections in which the GOP candidate is bat-shit crazy and/or is incompetent (Trump, Walker, Lake, etc.) but I doubt if they’ll view DeSantis as that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@geg6: the smirking, drawn-out, “look at me I’m going to be hip” references to rap lyrics made him virtually unwatchable. I left his show on a couple of times recently to see if he had any good guests, and listening to someone with– as someone on twitter pointed out– about five years experience actually practicing law smugly and patronizingly lecturing Merrick Garland on how he should conduct what is probably the most complicated criminal prosecution in US history didn’t sit well with me. YMMV.
Cameron
@Paul in KY: I don’t think she’s running for President, though, so no need to be as extreme in MAGApandering. BTW, I actually got to spend a day or two in Gulf Shores many years ago when I was at a conference in Mobile. I liked it quite a bit, although I suspect I couldn’t afford to live there.
pat
I watch MSNBC in the evening: Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes, Ari Melber, and I can’t imagine what you are talking about.
Jeffro
110%
And if they admitted that income matters…that out-of-school factors are at least as important as “grit” (grr)…why, then they might feel like they’re supposed to do something about that…and that might cost them a few bucks in extra taxes.
catclub
Hideous Bugblatter Beast of Traal reference.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I saw a sign about ducks & geese to not give them cheetos & white bread & stuff like that, as it can make them too fat to fly.
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
Yep, but would that be enough to finance a credible third party campaign? Wouldn’t he also need big donors?
Paul in KY
@AM in NC: Understand. Know you let them have it. Very sorry for the situation your child was caught up in. Hope the gun brandisher is prosecuted to fullest extent of law.
Jeffro
@Brachiator: does trump care about being “credible”?
especially at that point??
he’d just be out for revenge against the GOP and $$$ in his pockets
RaflW
@TriassicSands: The thing I will say about Biden’s 80 years: He has seen enough to just pierce right through so much bullshit. It is entirely possible to have that at 65, but I think it was Biden’s eight years riding shotgun with Obama, starting in Joe’s later 60s, that finally crystalized for him that ‘bipartisanship’ is good as far as you can throw it, but if the other major party is losing it’s grip on reality, you play the game when it works, and you absolutely don’t when it can’t.
I was an enthusiastic Obama vote both times. But Barack will be 63 in two years. And of course he can’t run again, but I’m not convinced he and many similarly aged politicians haven’t released their nostalgic views of Republicans.
For that, one needs to reach down to the people who came into political awareness while the insipidly cruel and moderately stupid Bush II was president, and after.
TriassicSands
@Paul in KY:
The sad truth is that the electorate in general is poorly informed, disengaged, fickle, and easily swayed. Despite all his accomplishments, Biden is widely seen as a failure. That is ridiculous. One problem is the short-sightedness of voters. Very little legislation will have an immediate impact on people’s day-to-day lives. As has been almost universally acknowledged, Democrats are poor at messaging. That isn’t entirely their fault — it’s a lot easier to message bigotry than it is real-life complex issues.
Single issue voting is a huge problem and much of that is related to religion, the single most negative force in Ameican politics today (see the SCOTUS). Being able to vote against one’s own personal interests is not necessarily a bad thing — I’ve always voted for what kind of state, country, world I think is best, not how much my taxes will be. But religion has no productive place in politics at all. I always admired Carter as a person, but hated his public religiosity. He’d have been a good person, even if he never mentioned God.
Paul in KY
@TriassicSands: I would say the ‘progressive’ voters probably lied about being progressive. Or they thought the word meant something else that an informed person would say “that’s not progressive at all!!”
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: I can’t remember but, didn’t early polls show Crist very close to DeSantis?
RaflW
@TriassicSands: Biden’s approval rating has tipped over 50%. I don’t think the general populace has written him off yet, and things like the economy/jobs/inflation have a year to run before that calcifies into the ’24 election view of him.
Paul in KY
@different-church-lady: Nothing existed ‘here’ (i.e. our Universe) and then it all did!
ian
@Mike in NC:I don’t get why gendering Ron DeSantis as a women is supposed to be an insult.
Don’t we have better arrows to sling at that fascist asshole than calling him by a woman’s name?
Redshift
@different-church-lady:
Lots of people are amateur astronomers, I’m an amateur cosmologist. 🙂
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I think my daughter was actually having more trouble with Zoom school than she let on, particularly with Algebra I. But she and we are long past that now.
(Her in-person schooling was probably what gave us all COVID, just as you’d expect, but at least it was after we’d gotten a few years of COVID shots.)
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@ian: He’s going after drag performers. That’s a very drag name. I don’t do it myself, but I derive plenty of mirth when I see it.
cain
@TriassicSands:
The media since Reagan has been wired for GOP. The entire apparatus is probably filled with folks whose political maturity came during Reagan. So messaging is often times difficult because the framing is always from the GOP point of view.
They are also lazy. They’ve used the same framing since the 90s – complex issues like taxation is whittled down to bites of “tax and spend” liberals and various other bits from yesteryear are applied today. Completing ignoring that today’s conservatives are not remotely fiscally conservative just from the numbers alone.
They also like to apply yesteryear’s view of farmers, workers, and others – we are no longer that country.
different-church-lady
@RaflW: Check out where Reagan was in his second year.
Cameron
@ian: Actually, ‘fascist asshole’ would do nicely, with the advantage that it’s gender-neutral.
Marmot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Huh. I don’t know a thing about the field, but it sounds like it’d draw flexible thinkers. Guess it ain’t necessarily so.
Matt McIrvin
@TriassicSands: For what it’s worth, while Biden’s average approval rating is still under water, it’s rising again, is ahead of where Trump was at this point, and also ahead of first-term Reagan (who was suffering from a major recession). So, not an unsalvageable situation.
I think the “Biden had documents too” story has expired as an object of attention–that lasted about a month, he was recovering mojo before that hit.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW:
In one outlier poll. It’s not really that good.
Paul in KY
@Cameron: That could be why she seems to be more reality-based than your average GQP governor.
different-church-lady
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Yeah, that was the context when I first saw it, something like, “There ought to be a drag queen in Florida who starts calling herself Rhonda Santis.” It’s not merely feminization in and of itself, it’s contextually clever.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Just adding I’m pretty sure it’s a celebrated drag tradition to have a sexualized and mocking stage name.
Cameron
I read recently that Nikki Fried is seeking the job as chair of the Florida Democratic Party. From what little I know about her, she sounds like a pretty good choice. Would appreciate thoughts from the real Floridians here.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: If he gets to 3rd partyland, it’s gonna be a tug of war between his instincts to sabotage whomever got the GQP nod & grifting those sweet, sweet rubes.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Paul in KY: These aren’t mutually exclusive. Infact, fleecing the rubes leaves less for the broader GQP.
lowtechcyclist
@Bupalos:
We’re not doing any of that, though. We’re just refuting the usual RW bullshit that big cities in blue parts of the country are crime hellholes.
And for that, a simple “there’s less crime per capita here than in your own state” suffices. Who cares what factors cause NYC to be safer than Florida if all you need is for it to be true? We’re not doing science here, we’re just trying to deep-six this bullshit talking point and move on.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: Revenge against GQP means having a credible/financed 3rd party try. Fleecing his rubes does not require that. Would be interesting to see which part of his id comes out triumphant.
Jeffro
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: exactly
The GOP ought to just negotiate a price with him to just walk away, never tweet, never say a thing (other than to praise whomever the eventual nominee is). I bet he’d start the bidding at $5B, and one of the Kochs would pay it, too.
I’m being quite serious. Just buy him out, Rs. It’s the only thing that’ll work.
Paul in KY
@TriassicSands: I do not think that (among all voters) that Pres. Biden is ‘widely seen as a failure’. No way. Maybe among all the (insert Upton Sinclair quote here) stenographers were are cursed with.
M31
and totally rocking those high-heeled white shrimp boots
Soprano2
@Kay: Do you follow Jess Piper from Missouri at all? She’s on Twitter, and she recently became part of “Public Voices for Public Schools”. https://pv4ps.org/voices/jessica-piper/ She ran for the MO House as a Democrat; she calls herself a “Dirt Road Democrat” and talks a lot about how vouchers and school choice don’t help rural students at all, but instead hurt them by taking money away from their schools. The voucher people NEVER talk about rural students; they’re obsessed with urban schools for some reason….what could it be……?
TriassicSands
@RaflW:
The issue of age has less to do with age and more to do with perceptions. Bidens verbal missteps now are attributed to age, but he was no different when he was younger. However, expecting American voters to know more than what is right in front of their faces today is unrealistic.
I am confident that Biden — if he lives and is not disabled, either of which is a possibility at his age — can complete a successful second term. But he has to get re-elected. I’m old and it isn’t ageism to think that a president, ideally, would be younger. What has surprised me is that Biden is governing well to the left of Obama.¹ That was unexpected for “The Senator from MBNA” — someone widely seen when he was a senator as in the pockets of big banks. He was from Delaware and if one knows anything about where big banks were HQed back then, Biden’s relevant politics weren’t a surprise. But they still sucked.
Ego keeps people in many professions from quitting. Of course Biden wants a second term. And there isn’t currently a truly viable alternative. His rearranging of the primary schedule is designed to help him at the expense of anyone who might choose to challenge him and further makes it less likely that someone will decide to do so. Plus, how do you tell a successful president (regardless of how the media protray him or the average voter sees him) he must retire?
If he is the candidate in 2024, which seems all but certain, I will definitely support him. But in the long term, I believe that Democrats would be better served if they had a truly competitive alternative. But that would require him to voluntarily step down. And it is harder for him to do that because that alternative doesn’t seem to exist. Round and round we go.
2024 will be interesting, but i doubt it will be much fun.
¹ And Obama governed well to the right of where he campaigned.
Jeffro
@Paul in KY: Revenge just means siphoning off enough of the GOP vote in order to keep the R candidate from winning the general.
That’s not hard to do, even without spending a dime. He could tell his supporters to write him in, or whatever.
There’s a Post article up today that indicates about 20-25% of the current GOP is “forever trump” – they will accept no one else. How’s that for ‘credible’?
lowtechcyclist
@Bupalos:
Why does everyone assume that the only leftward alternative to the MSM is a liberal equivalent of Faux News?
There are miles of open ground between that sort of thing and where the FTFNYT and the network and cable news are now.
Hell, if they just stopped bothsidesing, and if they just stopped chasing every ball that the wingnuts roll out there, you’d have a much better (and less conservative) MSM without its actually being liberal.
Jeffro
Btw our good friend Gary Abernathy has his usual nonsense up at the Post today: “The GOP needs a MAGA candidate who doesn’t pick fights. Like Nikki Haley.”
I think this is what is referred to as a ‘category error’, as a “MAGA candidate” automatically means “someone who picks [culture war] fights”.
But keep on dreamin’, Gary…
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Donald, is that you?
Paul in KY
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: But if he really did try to do a ‘decent’ job as a 3rd party candidate, he’d have to spend alot of those bucks in tv ads, etc.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Paul in KY: You can do a lot of harm to a party’s political prospects without a whole ton of advertising. Ask Ralph Nader.
Besides, we know the media likes to put his ugly mug on TV for free
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: Ixnay on hethay uyingbay utoay!!
Soprano2
@Kay: Another thing that remote schooling during Covid did was to put to rest the insane conservative idea that we can do most schooling online. Remember that, the idea that universities would have a professor do a lecture and hundreds of thousands of students would take that course for college? Well, that’s gone now because we see how that wasn’t such a good idea after all. People want to be together, at least most people do, because you get things from being in-person that you will NEVER get through the screen of a computer.
Paul in KY
@M31: God, would that be funny. The dude who does that would have big steel balls (IMO), cause the rage munchkin would be going after them hard.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: Grifting it is!
TriassicSands
@cain:
I think the media are more about bothsiderism and false equivalence. Obviously, that can be viewed as pro-Republican, because it is denying reality, but what they seem to me to be committed to is presenting both parties as viable, responsible governing partners, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Op-Ed columnists for both the Times and Post frequently point out the bothsiderism of those papers, but it never makes any difference. That is on the publisher and editors. What that also is, I think, is a holdover from a time when the parties had different philosophies, but both supported democracy and at least minimally free and fair elections. (Probably the most notorious cheater way back when was “Landslide Lyndon.)
The GOP has long had a very dark side. However, there were, once, Republicans who were at least moderately socially liberal. All that is gone. As is rationality. Now it’s about division and hate. In the end, media outlets are profit-oriented businesses that will seek to attract as many readers/viewers/listeners as possible. Overtly acknowledging in the news sections of coverage that the Republican Party is now a mindless authoritarian threat to democracy looks like a bad business decision to the bean counters. As with virtually everything else, primary focus on profits leads to abuse and harm.
I don’t see a cure.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: If only there was a twinky that was actually good for you…
Paul in KY
@TriassicSands: ‘I think the media are more about bothsiderism and false equivalence. Obviously, that can be viewed as pro-Republican, because it is denying reality’
Ya think?
TriassicSands
@Matt McIrvin:
I remain hopeful, but hardly confident. After all, we have to depend on an electorate that has some very serious problems.
Democrats want to look at 2022 as a resounding success. In some ways it was. But at a time when democracy is on the line and women are being relegated to second class status voter turnout was down from the 2018 midterms. And the Republicans did regain the House. That doesn’t say much for the electorate — either the part that votes or the part that doesn’t bother.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Paul in KY: I never much cared for Twinkies. Now if there were a Hostess coffee cake that was good for you, that I’d buy.
Jeffro
@Paul in KY: LOL
It would be irritating for them to solve their orange douchebag problem, just like that.
gvg
@Cameron: I liked her until she came out and said something in support if cryto money, accepting it for state bills of something. That is a hard no from me and makes me think she is gullible.
Amir Khalid
@RaflW:
Actually, Barack — born two weeks after me — will be 63 next year.
gvg
@Paul in KY: 3rd parties are not automatically on all states ballots. Even a really popular guy would probably lose unless he was very careful and had a good team which Trump isn’t. Its a lot more work and he is guaranteed to lose. if he knows that…well it can only hurt republicans.
Paul in KY
@Jeffro: One thing about just every billionaire/multi-millionaire is that they didn’t get that way by giving their money away. So good ole greed would hopefully stop them from that gambit.
Betty Cracker
I’m finding the Murdaugh trial fascinating because I’m so familiar with that type of family.
Paul in KY
@gvg: I think the consensus would be grifting and just doing the minimum as a 3rd party candidate. So sad….
Cameron
@gvg: I didn’t know about that – that’s a major alarm for me, too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I think it’s the public, voters, especially more moderate Dems and Dem-leaners who have a romantic image of bipartisanship. That’s one of the reasons Biden talks about it all the time. And neither Obama nor Biden could get around Max Baucus (and I could name about twenty others from 2009-10) or Joe Manchin (and probably half a dozen others who don’t get as much attention because Manchin and Sinema are so eager to pose) who are devoted to the principle of “bipartisanship”. It was a (minor) media scandal when Obama said “You go have a drink with Mitch McConnell”, and that was long after MM had said his main goal in politics was to make Obama a one term president, pretty sure it was actually in Obama’s second term. The notion that Obama’s alleged naivety mattered more than the fact of Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan (and again, I could go on, and on, and I will if anyone wants me to, and that’s just the Senate) is persistent.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Marmot: Think of it as being about writing in non-academic settings, i.e. in most of the world. I did research on the communication practices of engineers.
Wapiti
@Jeffro: But if it isn’t trump…how does this GOP make him go away? How do they make him shut up?
I hate to say this… but the Vice President position wouldn’t be a bad place for some striver to put tfg. Put him out on the road mouthing stupid shit to the crowds while the Republicanpresident (c) does the real work of tearing down the safety nets.
Matt McIrvin
@TriassicSands: I’m struck by Democrats generally outperforming expectations in special elections since then. Biden turned out to be the right guy for 2020 but if anything it may be the party’s reverse coattails boosting him in 2024.
My attitude toward Biden running again is that while he has liabilities, he and the party probably have a better idea than I do of the best move for ’24.
If he does choose to run again (seems very likely at this point), the only primary opposition he gets will probably be from obnoxious fringe figures, so it’s not really up to me to make the call. Bernie Sanders certainly isn’t going to do it–he could hardly make the age argument and I think he and Biden are buddies anyway.
TriassicSands
@Matt McIrvin:
RE Sanders. Biden has governed far to the left of where Sanders probably expected him to be. He really doesn’t have much to complain about. I don’t dislike Sanders, but I never viewed him as a particularly good presidential prospect. It might be OK to associate yourself with the word socialist in a small state, but I can’t imagine Americans electing such a candidate. Most Americans have no understanding of what socialism is and yet their opinions of it are negative. Indoctrination works.
thruppence
@Alison Rose: Made my contribution, hope they get what they need.
Also, “Rage Munchkin”? The Munchkins were happy and noble people in their own right. Rage Gnome, maybe? He has that squashed face gnome look. Rage Goblin? Deserves further study.
Ohio Mom
@Mr. Bemused Senior: That story is so Asimov.
Brachiator
@TriassicSands:
Bernie supporters like to claim that it has been Sanders who has pushed Biden to the left. In a recent Face the Nation interview, Sanders comes close to implying the same thing.
Brooklyn Dodger
@Alison Rose: Thread is probably dead but thanks for the tip – I donated and appreciate the heads up for opportunities to help out these organizations.
Central Planning
@Redshift: I thought Lawrence Kraus’ A Universe From Nothing did a good job explaining how the universe came to be from basically nothing. I don’t think it was too technical.