Can't be emphasized enough that DeSantis's primary appeal is to Republicans who never wanted to vote for Trump in the first place https://t.co/RaMdXCk8DW
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) March 16, 2023
Obligatory response https://t.co/rNnRh9KQ6d pic.twitter.com/TGNnnrclkh
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) March 15, 2023
TFG complaining about anyone’s ethics is deeply ironic, but give him credit for picking out an opponent’s weak spots — “Ron DeSantis hit with an ethics complaint from Trump super PAC”:
… Make America Great Again Inc. is filing a 15-page complaint Wednesday with the Florida Commission on Ethics, a draft of which was obtained exclusively by NBC News.
It asks the commission to probe whether pro-DeSantis super PACs, his “personally lucrative book tour” and a continued wave of state-level campaign contributions, among other things, “are unlawful because they serve his personal political objectives, are in furtherance of his personal financial gain at the expense of Florida taxpayers, and are intended to influence his official decision to resign from office.”…
Trump’s allies face a tall order in getting the commission to investigate DeSantis, considering he appointed five of the nine members.
In theory, if he did face penalties, they could include fines, public censure, ballot disqualification, removal from office or impeachment.
DeSantis is widely expected to run for president but has not yet formally announced. The complaint alleges, however, that he has already checked all the boxes for someone considering a run for the White House, including making stops in early primary states; writing a book (his is titled “The Courage to Be Free”); raising tens of millions of dollars to go into a state-level committee that could be transferred to a federal super PAC; and watching a constellation of supporter-led super PACs and an outside nonprofit group pop up, some with the stated intention of getting DeSantis to run for president.
The pro-Trump super PAC says those steps, when taken together, violate a handful of Florida laws about officeholders’ accepting illegal gifts…
It’s not supposed to stop DeSantis — it’s just intended to grubby his image.
Ronald DeSantis' handlers made the mistake of allowing him out of his comfort zone—you know, fighting off public health and intimidating elementary school librarians. https://t.co/YP8dhdcsA5
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) March 14, 2023
… Since he’s running for president now, even if he hasn’t formally declared his candidacy, they let him talk about foreign policy, reminding everyone that he was once considered one of the bigger bags of hammers in the House of Representatives…
Say this for DeSantis: He knows his audience, and he knows his cues when he hears them.
“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”
A “territorial dispute”? Seriously, Governor Brainiac? Like the “territorial dispute” between Germany and Poland? Like the “territorial dispute” between Italy and Ethiopia, or between Japan and Manchuria? The early 1940s were a good few years for “territorial disputes.”…
DeSantis is isolated from the Florida press, & he hasn’t yet been touched by the national press. He & his Florida team are going to get chewed up in a presidential campaign. https://t.co/motu5k7xWs
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 16, 2023
Aaand the final insult — a ‘newsletter’ note from Puck‘s journalistic botfly, Tara Palmeri:
Is DeSantis Taking Ozempic?
The talk of Tallahassee has been that Ron DeSantis is losing weight, and fast. Juxtaposing photos from his inauguration, two months ago, to pictures from his State of the State speech, last week, suggests a dramatic difference. Not as dramatic as, say, Mike Pompeo, but his boxy suits are looking even baggier. “He’s a shell of his former self,” said one Tallahassee insider.If there’s one thing that’s been documented about DeSantis, it’s his ability to shove anything in his mouth. Staffers used to lure him into meetings with cupcakes, as I once noted. He loves fried chicken from Zaxby’s. The Daily Beast chronicled a brilliant anecdote about him eating pudding with his fingers. This sudden change has some wondering if DeSantis, like the rest of Hollywood and the Upper East Side, is on Ozempic, the diabetes-turned-weight-loss drug. Of course, it could just be the stress of running for president or perhaps he’s taking Trump’s body-shaming meatball dig to heart…
War for Ukraine Day 386: Is It Friday Yet?
frosty
Thanks for all of these posts, Anne! However many hours you’re putting into them, it’s all worth it. There’s no way I would find this stuff without you.
ETA: Am I supposed to say Frist? Is it OK if I don’t? Is frOstY close enough? I hit the consonants!
HumboldtBlue
Meatball Ron seems to be sticking, and it’s a name that does stick. Like pudding on your fingers.
It’s been said many times here, he can dance around local and state media, but he’s got all the jazz and style of a vice-principal. He sounds funny, he looks funny, and he’s a vicious fat little fuck. Let’s hope that sunlight sends his little cockroach ass scampering.
Anyway
What is ESG – afraid to Google and get TedCruz-cooties… ewww
Amir Khalid
About the chocolate pudding story: how did it not occur to DeSantis to ask for a spoon?
frosty
@Amir Khalid: Spoons are woke. Weren’t you aware of that?
Aussie Sheila
Well in between maga world law suits and the real indictments raining down on trump in the next 3-4 months, it will be a good time for Attorneys in America.
Honestly, has there ever been a polity so enamoured of using litigation to pursue political ends? I understand completely the need and necessity of bringing trump to much needed and delayed justice. But filing a law suit against his political opponent for some issue is so USA.
In any case, my very small bet with friends here is that trump wins the nom and the odious Mussolini wannabe little D will flame out. Even if he doesn’t flame out, and by some miracle beats trump, even from here he looks like a loser, with little appeal. He lacks the ‘crude moxie’ that took trump over the line in 2016, and his appeals to the base seem synthetic, even to me, who hates the whole enchilada with the heat of a thousand suns.
One thing people can sniff out, no matter how detached from politics and policy, is a phony. Tiny D reeks of it to me.
HumboldtBlue
Dragging this up from below, Stormy Daniels and Jim Nantz. Smells like March Madness.
gene108
So DeSantis might get the sort of critical attention Trump should’ve gotten in 2015, but the media decided he wasn’t serious and never publicized much of anything about his sleazy life. Trump led in polls of Republican primary voters shortly after he announced his candidacy, and maintained that lead going into the primaries.
gene108
@Anyway:
ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. A push by investors to make sure their money goes to businesses that try to be good for things other than just the bottom line.
Businesses want those investment dollars, so they try to find ways to fit investor’s criteria.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Al Capone filing a police complaint on Frank Nitti
Aussie Sheila
@gene108: Do you expect the US ‘serious’ press to give DeSantis a good going over during the nomination campaign? Seriously asking.
After the unbelievable pass they gave trump, because they thought he couldn’t win, do you think they have learned any lessons?
Both candidates are seriously dangerous, trump because he is a chaotic fascist and tiny D because I think he is the real deal, if only as a simulacrum. We can only hope the press this time goes over tiny D with a fine tooth comb. As for trump, my guess is he will be so embroiled in so much litigation that press scrutiny will simply need to amount to an update on the latest evidence and witness statements. It doesn’t mean trump won’t win the nom. I think he will. But the US mainstream print press needs to do some serious reflection on their dereliction in 2016. I will never tire of writing and saying. From a distance, it looked entirely possible that trump could win in 2016.
Many people outside the US predicted as much.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@frosty:
I’m a spork man, myself
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Tiny D looks like he’s wearing Herman Munster’s boots (photo) 😂
Geoduck
@Aussie Sheila: Any discussion of 2016 should remember that a whole lot of people, in the press and out, absolutely despised Hillary Clinton. The same just isn’t true of Biden; they may dislike him, but the bone-deep hatred isn’t there nearly as much. Doesn’t mean the GOP can’t win, of course.
opiejeanne
I take Ozempic to help control my diabetes 2, and if I eat more than I should while on it, I pay a price: a tummy ache. It’s unpleasant but not terrible, just a reminder not to eat so much and it does train you to eat less. Because it helps with weight loss, it has become difficult to fill my prescription for the dose that I’m prescribed. I can get the 1 mg pens, but the 2 mg pens are difficult for my pharmacy to get. It’s really annoying to have to stick myself twice to get the proper dosage.
Aussie Sheila
@Geoduck: Yes. I think that is right. The calumny thrown against Clinton in 2016 was terrible. A lot of it emanating from the soi dissant left as well. Clinton of course would have been so far the superior President that it is to laugh. However in hindsight I think Clinton’s candidacy was a mistake. The Bush/Clinton dynamic reminded too many people of too many elite directed disasters in the US.
The left and right might disagree about which ones, and the exact provenance of all of it, but I do think there was a unity ticket among low information voters that there was not much to distinguish between them, and with Comey assisted mightily by the nyt, there we were.
Now the genie is out of the bottle, and 77 years after WW2, real, existing fascism is here again.
The question is whether the so called ‘centre’ of US media and politics is up to the challenge.
Mai Naem mobile
Eating pudding with your fingers as an adult is disgusting. Maybe when you’re a toddler but not as an adult.
Frankensteinbeck
@Aussie Sheila:
Trump was their clown. Absolutely no candidate, ever, has gotten the vast amounts of free advertisement Trump did. Trump was goofy and outrageous, a media rather than political figure. Of course, he was a Nazi speaking openly racist hate to his voters, but that doesn’t affect the press. They’re into the clown show.
DeSantis is personally dull and is not going to get free, spontaneous interviews on national television. Trump is a known quantity with a negative narrative, less coherent than he used to be, whiny, and less fun. The discussion won’t be “What crazy thing will Trump say today?” it will be “Is Trump a loser fascist about to be put in jail?”
Fun Uncle Biden is going to be the guy who you don’t know what he’ll say next. Right now the press can ignore what Biden says. As a candidate, they won’t:
The not hating Biden like they hated Hillary factor is real. They merely disapprove of him as a Democrat. They loathed Hillary with a rabid, frothing bile.
Also, if Trump goes to jail, it’s over. He can’t hold rallies in jail and his interview options are limited. His campaign will disappear.
lol chikinburd
I apologize for missing the previous thread wherein this might have been answered, but is the pronunciation like “Squamous Amos” or “Squamous Thomas”? I’ve heard both claimed to be exclusively correct.
Aussie Sheila
@Mai Naem mobile: Do you think it is true? It might be of course, and if so, it is disgusting. However I discern early mud throwing shenanigans here. I think tiny D is just starting to feel the pinpricks of the full court press that the magas are going to throw at him. I am all for it of course, but I don’t pay much attention to this kind of junk, except to note that trump operatives are about to spray him with petrol and throw matches. I’m in for it, so long as they they immolate each other in the general election.
The Republican base polls are the ones to watch, not shit flinging junk about dessert eating habits.
opiejeanne
@Aussie Sheila: Excuse me, but the Clintons were viewed as anything but elite. They were outsiders, unlike Bush and company.
Aussie Sheila
@Frankensteinbeck: From your lips to Gods ear. And I’m an atheist!
I do think Biden is the ideal candidate against both of these clowns. Not just because I think he has been the best President in my political lifetime, but because his ‘old guy whiteness’ has a way of tamping down on the absolute crazy. Of course that mustn’t be the case going forward, but for the next few years it has to do, until political organisation catches up with the current dangerous era.
BellyCat
The media loved Trump so much from a profit perspective that they CAN’T WAIT to explore the promise of profits that full blown fascism would surely provide…. (until they are banned under it).
Aussie Sheila
@opiejeanne: Maybe in the 1990s. But 30 years later? They were the ‘establishment’ by any measure. It doesn’t matter how acute your own political memory is, for most people, politics is simply who’s in power, who’s not. I get the Clintons were despised by the Washington elites in 1992. That is a generation ago, and they did things differently in the past.
Frankensteinbeck
Please remember, folks, right now “either Trump or DeSantis” is inevitable because no one else is running. The couple of announced candidates aren’t campaigning yet. Only Trump and DeSantis have any press. We’re in “Rudy Giuliani is our next president” time.
Trump is a badly wounded candidate. DeSantis is weak. Both struggle in even softball interviews. Trump because he’s an obsessive, senile whiner and DeSantis because he’s… well, weak. Ask him an even slightly tough question and he fish eyes, then leaves the room.
A lot can happen. The show hasn’t even started.
Aussie Sheila
@Frankensteinbeck: True dat. But Haley? Pompeo? Pence? I can’t see it. There may be others, but I think viable candidates from republican land are going to wait until 2028. Why wouldn’t you? Let Biden win in 2024 and then run in an open field. It’s what Reagan did. I’ll bet there’s a ton of them watching this play out.
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
Isn’t Nikki Haley a declared candidate too? Not that anyone’s paying her any serious attention.
Shalimar
One of the replies to the Trent Kelly tweet is basically “at least questions were taken, unlike Biden who runs away”. To a video where cops literally removed reporters from a public school rather than let them ask questions. I see video of Biden taking questions from reporters all the time, so I guess Fox and other rightwing outlets form their “senile” narrative by never showing any of that video.
Shalimar
@Amir Khalid: Nikki Haley is basically declaring that she wants to be someone’s VP. We get a half-dozen of those every cycle.
Frankensteinbeck
@Aussie Sheila: and @Amir Khalid:
Pompeo is viable. Evangelicals adore him. He has an established record of being an asshole and plotting to start the Rapture. These are virtues in a Republican primary. We haven’t seen him campaign and don’t know how he’ll function on the stage.
There is lots of time for anybody to declare, if they decide Trump and DeSantis can be taken down. That’s the biggest question.
Haley and Pence are also-rans. She’s a brown woman, unacceptable in a role too big to be a token. Pence is a traitor, a loser, and almost as weak as DeSantis. All he knows how to do is endlessly parrot a talking point with no improvising.
Shalimar
@Aussie Sheila: The “Why wouldn’t you?” answer is Mike Huckabee. He didn’t have the guts to run in 2012, when he would have been the favorite instead of Romney and had a better chance against Obama. And no one even remembers he was one of the 276 Republican candidates in 2016. Sometimes, such as with scum like Hawley, your only possible time is now.
Shalimar
@Frankensteinbeck: I understand Pompeo has thought he was viable since at least pre-school, and Evangelicals love him. But he’s never even run a statewide campaign. He won’t be able to put together an organization capable of challenging Trump.
NotMax
Meth.
Aussie Sheila
@Shalimar: I hadn’t thought of Hawley. However a smart Republican fascist will wait until 2028 imo. I think the Republican nomination process is going to open more splits than Dairy Queen. I trust and hope the Dems make the most of it.
rikyrah
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch:
😂😂😂😂
Chris T.
@lol chikinburd: According to Merriam-Webster, it’s ˈskwā-məs![]()
(rhymes with Amos or famous) but also ‘swkä (rhymes with Thomas, promise, etc). So use whichever you like.
NotMax
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Name of the sole Vulcan stand-up comic.
“I just flew in from Earth and boy, are my arms tired!”
Chris T.
@Mai Naem mobile:
Depends on whether this is “pudding” (UK, dessert) or “pudding” (US, goopy stuff made with milk etc). Although some desserts are goopy stuff too.
Aussie Sheila
@Shalimar: She won’t be trumps VP nor tiny Ds given his position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think she is the dead parrot of the Republican field. Truly unbelievable. I just can’t figure what she thinks she is doing.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
The best other person we had in 2016 was Biden, who didn’t run because of family issues. But he’s just as establishment except to misogynists.
NotMax
@Amir Khalid
Sharing a diner booth along with Vivek Ramalamadingdong.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: He’s got the advantage of being so old that he might as well be a woman for the eff knuckles. In any case he’s not trump or tiny D. and on that basis alone, plus being the incumbent, I reckon he has a two to three point advantage going in. Which he will need of course.
Since he was never part of a dynasty, he has never been thought of establishment like Clinton or a Bush. Luckily.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
The dynasty claim was always as much BS as the concern over emails. It was an excuse to hate her, not a reason.
ETA: The notion that Biden was never considered establishment is silly. Of course he was. Far more than either r of the Clintons. But he has a penis.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: I get that for people who take notice of politics Biden was/is establishment . But he isn’t a Clinton or a Bush. Most people wouldn’t have a clue about Senators, and the fact that he was Obama’s VP would mean little to most who, again, take little to no notice of the details of politics.
I believe that misogyny did have a great deal to do with Clinton’s defeat. But I also think that her links with the past and a Presidency that became associated with much of the subsequent changes in the economics of the US, no matter how muddled that might have been, did her in. Among other things of course. The 70,000 odd votes in the end in 2016 can’t be parsed exactly, but hindsight has shine a lot more light on that issue imo.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
You keep using the passive voice, but the fact is people actively pushed a fire hose of propaganda against Hillary to get people to feel that way. It wasn’t an organic reaction.
ETA: it’s not all that different from what people are doing to make everyone focus on Biden’s age.
Betty Cracker
Margaret Hartmann at NY Mag says the story about DeSantis eating pudding with his fingers “will end his 2024 bid.” Here’s an excerpt:
LOL! I’d rather voters decide smarmy, mean authoritarians are bad, but I’ll take it.
There was a spate of “DeSantis is an unelectable dick” stories in the political press yesterday. Good.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: Yes I understand that. There was a firehouse directed at her. I followed it all closely. But show me a Presidential election that isn’t a firehouse of BS against the Dem candidate? Kerry? I remember it well. I thought he would win. I couldn’t believe that his previous service would be used against him so effectively. So forgive me if I maintain that while Clinton was a supremely well qualified candidate for President, she wasn’t the best candidate to run for President in 2016.
ColoradoGuy
It’s hard to convey to non-Americans just how pervasive the TV-media landscape is here. The media protects its own, and T**** was a creation of NBC TV thanks to the decade-long reality show. Millions of people are addicted to reality-TV trash, especially the lower-middle-class demographic, and especially in rural areas and the South.
The Democrats shun drawing candidates from the movies and TV, but the Republicans elected Reagan as California governor in the mid-Sixties, and did it again with Schwarzenegger in the Nineties. T**** was the third time around for them, so they had plenty of practice, and willing accomplices on NBC and other networks.
There was plenty of TV coverage showing empty podiums awaiting the miraculous arrival of the airborne sky-god that closely mirrored the opening scenes of Triumph of the Will … a film I showed in our college film club. No other candidate in 2016 got the empty-podium treatment, or the following shots with the mighty aircraft with enormous T**** letters on the side, artfully angled right behind the podium. T**** would never made it out of the primaries if it hadn’t been for massive TV coverage and the pre-sold appeal of a TV star. It was more than a thumb on the scale; it was a media blitz more than a decade in the making.
On the other side of the fence, the New York Times campaign of invective and non-stop innuendo against the Clinton family went back to the early Nineties. It never stopped; the NYT has always despised the Clintons, and have always had ugly stories in the back pocket … while reporting on T**** was kept in the Entertainment (and gossip) section.
NotMax
@Aussie Sheila
Wow. How arch and condescending. Have you a shred of evidence to back up that “most?”
Aussie Sheila
@Betty Cracker: Meh. It is disgusting if true of course, but it’s just oppo flimflam . This is maga world trying out to see what sticks, imo.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
The fire hose against Hillary was far more than anything any other candidate had experienced. It was cross-ideological and cross-border.
Like I said, we had no better possible candidate in 2016 other than Biden.
Betty Cracker
@Aussie Sheila: From the tone of the article, I think Hartmann was being facetious, but you never know what will stick in voters’ minds.
Aussie Sheila
@NotMax: Yes. I have seen credible surveys that show most people don’t know who their congress representative is, and while I assume people might know who their own State Senator is, I don’t assume they know any others outside their state. This is not a condescending observation. Most people pay little to no attention to the nuts and bolts of politics. In this country as well as well as yours.
Outside his own state, and those Dems who follow politics closely, can you say most people knew who Biden was before he was Obamas VP?
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It would be better if there were video.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck:
@Shalimar: Mike Pompeo has weaknesses, but all the Republican candidates do. He can probably raise the money. Pompeo’s political career was fostered by the Koch Brothers, I think that is still a viable donor network, and that Pompeo willl have appeal for wealthy donors in general.
The question is, how will the Republican primary electorate respond to him? Right now, I can only guess. There is certainly a substantial group that wants no one but Trump, but I think a somewhat larger group is up for grabs. Some of these never liked Trump but voted for him because they thought the Democratic Party was worse. Others might have liked Trump but now they think he carries too much baggage to win, and they want a winner. I think that a lot of political evangelicals fall into this category, along with a bunch of more secular conservatives.
Pompeo might be able to attract these latter groups. I don’t expect to know if he or someone else can attract them, or their numbers relative to the Trump loyalists, until this time next year if then. I just know this nomination race is going to suck up a lot of money, and I am hoping it creates a lot of lasting hard feelings among Republicans.
Shalimar
@Aussie Sheila: No. Just no. Forget the but. This is not about a presidential campaign. There was a decades-long campaign starting in 1991 to destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton’s reputations. Foundations set up for that specific purpose. Dozens of people whose full-time jobs for 20+ years was to feed negative stories about them to the press. Why did Richard Mellon Scaife and others hate them so much from the start to finance this? Who the fuck knows. But there is nothing else like it in US history. And unlike Bill and his affairs, 99% of the crap they made up about Hillary was false.
Baud
@Geminid:
It’s still early, but I can see other candidates waiting to declare while Trump and DeSantis beat themselves up.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: I’m no good at guessing who will have mass appeal, especially for Repubs, but Pompeo seems like one of those guys who sound good on paper (West Point! Secretary of State!) but lacks some intangible needed to break through.
NotMax
@Aussie Sheila
In the sense of recognizing the name? Yes, can say that without reservation.
Sad to admit not always in the best of associations either. See: Anita Hill, the Neil Kinnock contretemps, two separate brain surgeries, etc.
Shalimar
@Aussie Sheila: I’m not sure about the average person, but among people who could actually name 10 Senators, Biden would have been one of the first 10 named starting at least by 1991 with the Thomas hearings. He was nationally known for a long time before Obama picked him.
Aussie Sheila
@Shalimar: I know it was false, ftr, all BS. But that is my point. She would have been a great President. She wasn’t a great candidate for President, for reasons I have already written. Anyway, I think this is going round in circles.
Matt McIrvin
@Aussie Sheila: Yes. Biden had run for President several times previously, and had had a fairly high-profile run in the 1988 cycle. People were familiar with him just for that. There was a scandal of sorts in which it turned out part of his stump speech had been lifted verbatim from Neil Kinnock–it was an extended quote he’d been using that, on one occasion, mutated into an unattributed insertion. That was probably the thing he was best known for for years.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: It’s true that Pompeo does not seem to possess much natural charisma. Some slick advertising might be able to build him up as a tough, level headed Daddy figure, though. That could carry Pompeo a ways, and Trump’s and DeSantis’s weaknesses could open a path to the nomination.
NotMax
@Betty Cracker
re: Pompeo, has there ever been a viable candidate officially branded persona non grata by a global superpower?
Baud
@NotMax:
That would probably be a selling point for him.
Chris T.
I’m afraid that the average American is dumb as a stump. See any episode of Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” for instance. 😀 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpqmQJXdqrM
Geminid
@NotMax: Pompeo: “I wear this as a badge of honor. I am the candidate the Chinese Communist Party fears most!”
NotMax
@Chris T.
“Say what now?”
– Stumpy McStumpface
;)
Trouble with bits such as Leno’s is we never know how many sequences were edited out because they clashed with the premise.
dave319
@Aussie Sheila: Frank Wilhoit’s in-group, not bound by the law but protected by the law, against any out-group not protected by the law but bound by the law.
Matt McIrvin
@Aussie Sheila:
Reagan tried to primary Ford in 1976. He just lost, though he was a serious contender and won many state primaries.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Chris T.: Those videos are fake. Australia tee vee actually looked into this and found out they’re as rigged as a quiz show (link)
MisterDancer
Yes, this! DeSantis has already harmed real people. He’s not a joke, and he’s not joking.
We’re dealing with people who want to eradicate entire groups, and suppress critical parts of history and culture, just for money and power.
I’m not here to debate if DeSantis could get elected. I’m here to point out that even having him in the running, having him and that FL supine and evil Legislature act as they do, has already been toxic as fuck to a lot of good people, and not just in Florida.
evodevo
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: they’re “cowboy” boots…for wannabees..plus the high heels give you the same result as “lifts” but with added “manliness”
dave319
@Baud: Uhhh, no. Recall the 08 Obama/Clinton matchup. Her campaign’s sense of dynastic entitlement sliding into frantic race-baiting when the numbers started turning frankly repulsed many engaged political laypeople. Oh, and let’s not forget the “We came, we saw, and he died” photo-op gloating over Gaddafi when she was SoS..Not sayin’ the vast right wing conspiracy didn’t whale on her, but Jeez, the party couldn’t field a better candidate? Really?
Princess
I find it interesting that many in the GOP managed to unite against Meatball Ron’s position on Ukraine and seriously (I believe) damage him in the process — but those same people, who are all the ones who silently wish Trump would disappear, have not done the same thing to him, even though Trump’s views on Russia-Ukraine are identical or, if anything, more pro-Russian. Attacking Meatball, they damage him and make it more likely Trump will be their nominee.
Baud
@dave319:
No, she was far and away the best person we had with Biden out.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: This morning Politico put up an article on the conflicts the Trump versus DeSantis race presents for Florida’s Republican politicians. It’s based on a survey of the 22 Republican Representatives from Florida. Many were reticent and cagey, as suggested by the article’s title:
Baud
We might have had more options in 2016 had Dem voters stuck with Obama and not allowed the GOP to make so many gains in the states and in Congress. But many Dem voters during that decade were fixated on the cult of the presidency. I think we have improved in that area, and am hopeful we will continue to do so.
ETA: If you don’t have a good farm system, you’re major league team is going to suck.
Betty Cracker
@Princess: You mean people like Graham? My theory is it’s cowardice. They’ve run into the Trump buzz saw and don’t care to repeat the experience, even as the orange fart cloud seems to be dissipating. They’re not afraid of DeSantis yet.
Princess
@Aussie Sheila: you tell us you watch all this “closely” and know better than we do what goes on here and then you can’t even get the terminology right. A person’s “state senator” and the senator of that person’s state are two different people who operate at different levels of government.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: 🐓 💩
Manyakitty
@Betty Cracker: I’m surprised the stories about his time at gitmo aren’t making more waves.
Princess
@Betty Cracker: yes, they’re still afraid of Trump, and they know de Santis voters will just vote for someone else but Trump voters — the ones who are personally invested in him and only him — will just stay home.
RedDirtGirl
@Mai Naem mobile: to me it just doesn’t seem like a very effective delivery system, even for a toddler.
Expletive Deleted
@Baud: This.
Also, while I can see an argument that the campaign should have been better, the revisionist view that there was a lack of enthusiasm for her is not reflected in the results.
She got nearly three million more votes. People were perfectly happy ro vote for her, and many were very enthusiastic indeed.
Strategy can and should be analyzed, but I hate that it’s becoming an accepted fact that the US “wont elect a woman” or hated Clinton so much that they switched en masse to TFG.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@dave319: I miss Khadaffy. Who could forget the fun times blowing up airliners, arming the IRA, invading African neighbors, and assassinating Sadat. Those were the days.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Aussie Sheila: I think DeSantis will get scrutiny not because the press has learned a lesson, but because Trump will force them to by flinging dirt
RedDirtGirl
@Frankensteinbeck: Has anyone else noticed how sickly Pence has been looking in photos lately? Strangely wrinkled and patchy skin tone. See photo at linked article.
zhena gogolia
@HumboldtBlue: Okay, this is it. I didn’t know TFG had called hm Meatball Ron. That’s not just about weight — that’s about being ITALIAN. This is what will kill him with the base, he doesn’t look Aryan.
Layer8Problem
@dave319: Gee whiz, put that way I guess we deserved to get Trump. After all, those clouds and shadows and the bad optics. Maybe that Johnny Unbeatable fellow we heard so much about would have been the right candidate.
Geminid
@Princess: The Georgia Senate runoffs showed Republicans how disaffected Trump voters can hurt them. Perdue’s vote dropoff from November to January was twice that of Ossoff. Normally it would have been the other way around.
Part of this might have been due to effective turnout efforts by Democrats, but there also were some Trump supporters who believed their guy had been done wrong, and took their anger out on the Republican establishment by staying home.
Republicans cannot afford to lose many voters at all, so this is a real dilemma for them.
Kathleen
@Geoduck: I think some of the visceral hatred of Biden I’ve observed is due to his choosing a Black woman for his running mate. I’ve concluded the mainstream press is riddled with racist, misogynistic fascists who are happy to promote that agenda, mostly those in the pundinasti class. There are still brave reporters doing excellent work but the nasties dominate the conversation and are not paid to realize how their perfidy in 2016 harmed the nation.
Kathleen
Kathleen
@Baud: Excellent point!
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@MisterDancer:
Yup. He’s gone all in for the train that is never late; pushing bills that would forcibly remove Divine 9 organizations from college campuses. These organizations have given us, among others:
John Lewis
Kamala Harris
Hakeem Jeffries
MLK
Langston Hughes
Roy Wilkins
Bobby Rush
Bennie Thompson
He has no idea of the hornet’s nest he just stuck his micropeen into, but he’s about to find out.
Matt McIrvin
@Kathleen: In 2020 many of the rumors about Biden being senile claimed that Kamala Harris was the evil puppetmaster holding his strings. They may not have liked him but you could tell they were terrified of her.
Denali5
People tend to forget that the media is driven by profit, and no one ever brought in clicks like TFG. The news is about the fight between TFG and DeSantis because it brings the clicks. That is it.
Is anyone else wondering whether the banking crisis is happening to divert attention from long-awaited indictments?
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Kathleen:
Thank you for this. This is indeed the ugly truth about our Press Corpse – it’s not just doing their owners’ bidding, it’s NOT cluelessness – it’s aiding and abetting. They’re in on it, and they’re ALL IN!
Kathleen
@Matt McIrvin: I think the terror is rooted in the fact she is Black and female. And brilliant and dogged. I contend that the root of all our ailments is racism, as it is for any country that has colonized other nations.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Kathleen: I will tell anyone who asks – either white supremacy dies or the country does.
Manyakitty
@Aussie Sheila: FWIW, I follow politics pretty closely, and while I know who my state rep is (monstrous Kristina Roegner), I have no idea about my state senator. That said, I know who my US representative is (heyyyy, Emilia Sykes) and also my US senators. (Still cannot believe the morons chose Vance over Ryan)
Manyakitty
@Shalimar: sing it louder for the people in the back.
Mai Naem mobile
I think Glenn Youngkin might end up besting TFG, DeShithead, Haley and the others. The GOP base is not voting for a brown woman in the primary. Haley is dumb to even think that. She’s better off making lobbying $$$ or grifting. Youngkin is a white male paying enough attention to woke stuff but not going crazy like DeShithead. He also won in a purplish/blue state. And the vest thing makes him look like an every man and,more importantly, he seems comfortable with the vest. Chris Sununu might have a chance too but TFG will probably connect him to Bush I via Sununu’s dad and turn him into an old GOP dynasty pinata.
Uncle Cosmo
@frosty: Stay firsty, my fiend… ;^D
Kathleen
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: I totally agree.
Kathleen
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: Yes. Their behavior is proof of that.
Uncle Cosmo
Mussolini-wannabe without the style or panache. Everything awful about Italian-Americans rolled into a ball of overcooked pasta.
Shana
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: why do men sit like that? Serious question here. Is it meant to imply their junk is too big to put their legs together? Is it a dominant “I’ll take up as much room as I want “ thing?
Josie
If the Republicans were smart, they would nominate Sununu for a variety of reasons, not the least of which he is a reasonable person. I suppose that means he doesn’t have a chance.
Barry
@Geoduck: “Any discussion of 2016 should remember that a whole lot of people, in the press and out, absolutely despised Hillary Clinton. The same just isn’t true of Biden; they may dislike him, but the bone-deep hatred isn’t there nearly as much. Doesn’t mean the GOP can’t win, of course.”
Note that the press have been openly pressing for a recession.
The press have worked very hard to launder DeSantis’ fascism, like painting painting massive censorship as ‘taking on the education establishment’.
In the end, the owners and their top executives like fascism. They might change their minds later, if and when they get scared, but that would be far too late.
Geminid
@Josie: Sununu is young enough to wait for 2028. He may decide to pass on what will likely be a brutal primary next year. Youngkin can choose that path also, as can Brian Kemp.
DeSantis could have waited for 2028 too, but I think he’s too far in to back out now.
Josie
@Geminid:
I had forgotten about Kemp. He would also be a good nominee for them.
Barry
@Shana: “why do men sit like that? Serious question here. Is it meant to imply their junk is too big to put their legs together? Is it a dominant “I’ll take up as much room as I want “ thing?”
All three. And it’s not the ‘junk’, it’s the balls.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck:
But, but, Ronnie had $134,367,665 in campaign contributions in the 2022 cycle and that’s a lot therefore he will win.
That’s the way it always works because, as President Phil Gramm taught us in 1996, and President John Connally taught us before that in 1980, the guy with the most money wins.
Money is objective and numbers don’t lie, you see.
(groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Aussie Sheila: One of the problems of our current media is that these wannabe Mussolinis, etc will deny deny deny that they are ‘fascist’. The ones we fought had specific ‘fascisty’ things they did (wear uniforms all the time & fetishize the military, among other things and were proudly ‘fascist’). Since ours have been more on the down low about being fascists, our supine press corp will deny they are, as they don’t do the specific same things Hitler & Mussolini did (ipso facto they can not be ‘fascists’).
Paul in KY
@lol chikinburd: I think it is like the Thomas one.
Another Scott
@Aussie Sheila: She won the popular vote. She lost the EC because of Comey.
Cheers,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: Nikkky has announced.
Paul in KY
@Aussie Sheila: Reagan beat an incumbent president (fuck).
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: I hope so. GQP primary voters are famous for overlooking stuff, extremely disqualifying and odious stuff, if they have a hardon for the candidate.
Another Scott
@Frankensteinbeck: Pompeo gave a speech in-person at CPAC (the conference sensible people ran from after the allegations against its head). Nobody cared.
KansasCity.com:
We’re losers, but we have a winning message!
In my speech I say we must to more than make speeches! Make Tough Choices™!! But what that more is? Beats me!? Vote for ME!!
Giant war in Europe with a nuclear-armed russia? Not a problem. The real problem is Jyna!!1
He’s a bully and a clown. Normie women aren’t going to vote for him – people remember the Mary Louise Kelly interview – he’s the awful boss that everyone hates. He doesn’t have the “winner” aura of the reality TV show host. He doesn’t have millions to threaten lawsuits. It doesn’t mean that he’s not dangerous, but it’s hard to see how he breaks through the Trumpist cult to get the nomination.
Cheers,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: Agree on that, Betty. They are more afraid of TFG than of DeSatanis.
Paul in KY
@Princess: Seems like for DeSatanis, the best thing that could happen for him (and this is akin to Henry V conveniently dying for Charles VII), would be for TFG to croak.
Paul in KY
@Kathleen: Also losers on the hot woman front and thus hate women (especially attractive ones) in positions of power.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: President Phil Gramm!!! Ha!!! Sure glad that didn’t happen. Good point.
dnfree
@opiejeanne:
I started taking Ozempic just before Thanksgiving, and my doctor warned me to take very small helpings, eat slowly, and wait an hour for seconds. She memorably said “If you eat too much too fast, you WILL throw up.”
moops
Anyone who thinks Ron eating pudding with his fingers will turn off GOP voters somehow has forgotten how gross Trump is all the time. Trump is a vile and disgusting human. GOP voters will either vote for Ron, or not, and afterwards use stories to justify their decision, not the other way around.
brantl
@Frankensteinbeck: Plenty of dirt on Pomposity.
brantl
@NotMax: She’s not wrong, my in-laws despised H. Clinton, and couldn’t have told you what state she represented.
brantl
@Princess: seriously, you don’t have better than that? Bitching about a foreigner’s syntax?
brantl
@Shana: Yes to all of the above, also fat and/or lazy people sit like that.
henqiguai
@Shana:
3 days later… Physiology. Our pelvis is proportionately narrower than females and our joints are much more tightly bound; cooling – gotta keep things cool as heating can lead to loss of fertility (so sayeth my HS biology teacher). And yeah, also too, probably some subconscious ‘display’.