Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

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Pudd’n Boots (Open Thread)

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Not an auspicious start!

Pudd'n Boots (Open Thread)

Maybe the pudding story is behind the tanking polls? The Daily Beast says two sources confirm that during a 2019 flight from Tallahassee to D.C., DeSantis ate a cup of chocolate pudding using three fingers instead of a proper utensil. (The pudding flavor and number of digits are oddly specific details that lend credence to the allegation, IMO.)

In an interview this week, Piers Morgan asked DeSantis if it was true that he ate a cup of pudding on an airplane using three fingers while governor of Florida, and he said “I don’t remember doing that.” Which means he totally DID do that and is just afraid to deny it in case video evidence surfaces. Wouldn’t a normal adult person who did not eat pudding with their fingers four years ago simply deny it?

Someone posted an excerpt of this NBC News report on DeSantis’s flailing campaign in the overnight thread, but it bears repeating because HA!

WASHINGTON — Ron DeSantis may be missing his moment.

A number of the Florida governor’s donors and allies are worried his recent stumbles suggest he may not be ready for a brutal fight against Donald Trump. Some feel DeSantis needs to accelerate his timeline to run for the GOP presidential nomination and begin directly confronting Trump if he’s to have any chance of thwarting the former president’s momentum. Others believe DeSantis should sidestep Trump altogether and wait until 2028 to run.

At a Sunday luncheon following the annual Red Cross ball in Palm Beach, Florida, a group of 16 prominent Republicans, described by one attendee as a mix of DeSantis backers and Trump “skeptics,” discussed misgivings about the governor’s standing for the future if he tussles with the former president.

“They liked him — many of them might even support him,” the person who was at the event said of DeSantis. “But they thought on balance that his long-term future was better without him trying to take Trump head on.”

“He will get scarred up” by Trump, the person added.

Then there’s conservative billionaire shipping goods magnate Richard Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, whose $500,000 in combined contributions ranked them among the most generous donors to DeSantis’ 2022 re-election campaign.

A person familiar with the strategy around Uihlein’s spending said that right now, “The brakes are pumped,” adding, “The polling really made different people pause.”

These people advising DeSantis to tiptoe around Trump were likely homeschooled or rich little snots who had personal security details because they don’t know how to deal with a schoolyard bully.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

162Comments

  1. 1.

    Math Guy

    To paraphrase LBJ: I know he doesn’t eat pudding with three fingers; I just want to make him have to deny it in public.

  3. 3.

    lollipopguild

    If trump was not in the way Gov. freedum would probably be the frontrunner at this point.

  6. 6.

    Cameron

    What was that old commercial?  “The best part of fucking up/is fingers in your cup?”  Something like that.

  7. 7.

    danielx

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
     No “seems” about it, and nothing unholy either. Can’t think of a governor who deserves it more. Okay, maybe Greg Abbott and that douche rocket from Mississippi.

  8. 8.

    Gary K

    Please make sure TFG gets wind of your epithet. I’d love to hear that phrase spew out of his mouth.

  10. 10.

    Anyway

    Lololol!!!!  I didn’t eat pudding with three fingers… Bwahahaha!

    This made my weekend.

  12. 12.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Eats pudding with his fingers. OK, a little weird but hardly disqualifying. He needs to grow a pair.

  13. 13.

    Hungry Joe

    If he’d just said something vaguely human, like, “Yeah, you got me. There were no utensils around, but I mean, I was REALLY in the mood for chocolate pudding. So I figured, What the heck, and went for it,” he’d probably have GAINED some points. But he doesn’t have it in him.

  14. 14.

    Kay

    Betty, you need to watch the Piers Morgan interview. DeSantis has this big, phony fake laugh now. It’s bizarre because he opens his mouth WAY too much. I think this fits with his disgusting table manners, actually.

    The fake laugh/fake smile is going to become a point of ridicule. It’s very funny to watch.

    Someone must have told him the sour, whiny, high pitched voice and unpleasant demeanor was bad but that’s who he is so the cure is sort of worse because it’s so fake. 

  16. 16.

    suzanne

    DeSantis ate a cup of chocolate pudding using three fingers instead of a proper utensil.

    :::barf:::
    I bet he made slurping sounds, too.
    :::BARFFFFF:::

  17. 17.

    Baud

    Three-fingered Ron would be a good epithet.

    I wonder if the issue is that Ron doesn’t remember how many fingers he used.

  18. 18.

    Josie

    @Hungry Joe: ​
     This is exactly what I was thinking. He could make a joke about it and have people laughing and agreeing with him that eating chocolate pudding is more important than the correct utensils. Who among us has not sucked the chocolate chip cookie dough off of our fingers at one time or another?

  19. 19.

    Doc Sardonic

    Ohhhhh……I bet Dollar Store Jackie O is pissed. Things are prolly a little tense in the mansion, wonder what her tantrum tossing item of choice is.

  23. 23.

    different-church-lady

    They could ask him why he’s a fascist, but instead they ask him about pudding.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    BC, did you take that screenshot?  Ron looks quite weird in a monstrous sort of way.  It’s like his true soul is trying to break free of its human host.

  26. 26.

    Redshift

    The thing I find kind of hilarious is these GOP oligarchs abandoning DeSatan on polling at a point when it’s still probably all name recognition. It may week be the only reason he was doing better earlier is because TFG wasn’t leaving Mar-a-Lago and didn’t look like a real candidate (that is, what really happened is mainly TFG’s numbers went up.)

  27. 27.

    Warblewarble

    Too good to miss,De stenches  “TOP GOV” video where he struts around in a flying suit  cosplaying a tough jaw jutting Mussolini, but comes across a glass jawed george bush. He can be emperor for life in  Fuck You I’ve Got Mine Floriduh. Man is a graceless bumbling no hoper . Time for the media and oligarchs to move on to the next great white hope.

  30. 30.

    Baud

    Which means he totally DID do that and is just afraid to deny it in case video evidence surfaces. Wouldn’t a normal adult person who did not eat pudding with their fingers four years ago simply deny it?

    And this right here is why Ron is not prepared to be the GOP standard bearer.

    ETA: Trump would have lied, and when the video surfaced, would have kept on lying.

  31. 31.

    Hungry Joe

    @Josie: I m not trying to one-up you, but …

    Who among us hasn’t, late at night, discovered some fried chicken in the fridge and snarfed down a couple of pieces while standing over the sink? (Well, the current governor of Florida, I guess. But is he really “among us”?)

  38. 38.

    Delk

    Ron three finger and Marge three toe…it would be irresponsible to speculate. (or vomit 🤮)

  44. 44.

    West of the Rockies

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I agree.   There are multiple reasons to dislike the man.  The pudding thing is sort of like getting caught picking his nose.   Gross, but we’ve all done it or something akin.  But he is vile in so many more substantial ways.

    But if he keeps letting Trump take his lunch cupcake, shoving him into a wall, and calling him Buttface, his constituency will dwindle.

  45. 45.

    There go two miscreants

    Or Dave Barry’s* line about “a nutricious but easy to prepare meal of peanut butter gouged out of the jar with a forefinger.”

    *IIRC

  46. 46.

    Cameron

    The downside is that the more he’s mocked nationally, the more he’ll take it out on the residents of Florida.  Well, those residents who his base wants him to beat up, anyway.

  49. 49.

    Alison Rose

    (The pudding flavor and number of digits are oddly specific details that lend credence to the allegation, IMO.)

    Yeah, my thoughts too. Also…this would be a really fucking weird thing to make up about a person to try to embarrass or discredit them or something. Especially a Republican. It’s not like the allegation is that he ate Dijon mustard with a demitasse spoon or something equally liberal and horrifying.

  52. 52.

    tobie

    Far be it from me to judge finger eating etiquette (nah!), but why in hell would you need 3 fingers to eat pudding from a plastic cup. I can imagine one finger to circle the sides, maybe two to pick up more stuff, but three? Man he was scarfing it like a pig. I guess a feed bag wasn’t available.

  55. 55.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I am a homemade pudding girl snob and I would never each store-bought pudding out of cup, so I was only guessing what the cup would be like.

    So the pudding cups are flexible?  Who knew?  Then you only need to lick what’s left on the sides fo the cup!

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    DeSantis might have done better to wait until 2028. But I think he’s too far in to bail on next year’s race, even though he looks like he’s not really ready and he might even know that.

    I thought DeSantis’s early support was founded on a negative: elites believe Teump will lose and drag other Republicans down with him. They hoped that DeSantis was someone who could avert that, and they thought he was the only one.

    DeSantis’s clunky rollout is making elites doubt his campaign skills. I think there is another unanswered question about him, because he is centering cultural/social issues so much: can these themes stand up in a general election, or will they fall flat? Personally, I don’t think they’ll move most voters.

  58. 58.

    kalakal

    He doesn’t remember doing it because he normally uses 4 fingers. 3 would be out of character

  63. 63.

    Another Scott

    TheBaffler:

    […]

    Fleener paused to take a breath. “Those were the standard mantras back then,” he explained. “All of it was false.” The facts were that many innocent people were being shackled, screamed at, beaten, and sexually assaulted at Guantánamo. Some died. Others were coerced into making false confessions.

    Adayfi—who’d been planning to enter university when Afghan warlords kidnapped and funneled him to the U.S. military, which was then offering big bounties for “suspicious people”—always maintained his innocence. And he initially hoped that DeSantis was a genuine lifeline. Adayfi said he and others expressed numerous concerns to DeSantis and his colleagues: they were inadequately clothed, needed medicine, and could barely sleep thanks to loud noise machines. Many asked for prison guards to stop desecrating the Quran. DeSantis heard these concerns, but his presence quickly appeared to be pretextual. Adayfi claimed he failed to fix issues and may, in fact, have been collecting intel on detainee complaints so as to better understand how to inflame suffering and squash solidarity. He was, in other words, a mirage of military accountability.

    Shortly before DeSantis arrived at the prison, the New York Times reported on the military’s concerns over an ongoing hunger strike prisoners had undertaken to protest their conditions that had lasted for months. The story further revealed a series of brutal measures meant to break the strike. Most often, service members strapped striking detainees into restraint chairs, stuffed plastic tubes down their noses, and pumped them full of Ensure nutritional shakes, sometimes for hours. Adayfi, who participated in the strike, said he was force-fed up to five times a day. While numerous humanitarian organizations, including the UN Commission on Human Rights, later characterized this force-feeding as torture, DeSantis seemed unperturbed. “We were crying, screaming. We were tied to the feeding chair. And [DeSantis] was watching that, he was laughing,” Adayfi recalled. During one session, Adayfi said, DeSantis approached the chair and told him, “You should start to eat.” He responded by puking on the young JAG’s pretty face.

    […]

    DeSantis, on the other hand, doubled down. Rather than blow the whistle, he honed an uncanny ability to obscure the truth. He’s still never strayed from the company line, even as evidence continues to accrue of unjustified abuse by guards and the widespread innocence of detainees. “It is a very professionally run facility,” he claimed in 2016. His blind faith to the military in its worst moments—including during his post-Gitmo deployment to Iraq during the bloody 2007 surge—doesn’t bode well should he ever claim the title of commander in chief.

    And that is clearly where his ambitions lie. As he eyes the presidency, DeSantis is selling himself as strong and independent, a righteous fighter for freedom. He still operates under the assumption that so long as you’re draped in the American flag, nothing you do can be deemed wrong or off-limits, no matter how inhumane. It’s unclear whether this is a cynical calculation or a genuine belief. What is clear is that DeSantis has revived the rhetoric of 9/11 to launch a ruthless campaign against the basic rights and dignities of civic life. As governor of Florida, he has banned books, amped up surveillance, diluted citizens’ voting power, and leveraged the National Guard for his own ends. Some are rightly worried that he’s taking cues from the likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a fellow military veteran and master of doublespeak. But DeSantis is also deeply American: a protégé of George W. Bush and other Republican forebears who understood the appeal of strength and brutality to voters, even as the incriminating evidence of unjust conflicts lays all around them.

    So distressing is DeSantis’s worldview that he’s created common cause among Adayfi and Davis, the man once charged with locking Adayfi up. Davis said he views DeSantis as a fascist. He lumped Florida’s governor in with senators Lindsey Graham and Roger Wicker, two former JAGs he worked with directly, describing all three as “men motivated more by their lust for power than the principles the military represents.” Adayfi sees DeSantis as a relatively minor cog in the Gitmo machine. Still, he’s troubled that the governor remains a diehard defender of the place, even as a wide swath of politicians, including Bush, have said the prison should be closed. “[He’s] a man who saw what happened as legal actions—torture and abuses—and never reported it, never even objected to it,” Adayfi told me. “I believe that he’s going to bring this mindset inside the United States.” In truth, he already has.

    […]

    A 27 year old obviously didn’t run the place. But his actions and what he did and didn’t do there matter. And it matters how he paints the history now.

    People shouldn’t let him whitewash his past. People need to believe their own lying eyes…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    Betsy

    @Kay: That man has EYE SHADOW on.  It’s not subtle either. It’s full contouring in multiple shades.  I don’t have a problem with it, but I mean, trans alert!

    I do think the used-car-salesman/ televangelist haircut is both revolting and hilarious.

    He’s a two-bit stock character from an H.L. Mencken essay.

  71. 71.

    Jinchi

    @different-church-lady: They could ask him why he’s a fascist, but instead they ask him about pudding.

    Just scrolling through these comments, you can see why questions like this are far deadlier to the DeSantis campaign than literally pointing out that the guy is a fascist.

    It’s a weird anecdote that’s loaded with double entendres and a basis for a visceral feeling that the guy is just gross. Like Santorum getting his name defined in the urban dictionary. It’s not even close to the worst thing the guy has done but it makes him repulsive in a way the hard facts never will.

  72. 72.

    kalakal

    @Betsy:

    He’s a two-bit stock character from an H.L. Mencken essay.

    He always reminds me of the Clarence Beeks character in the film Trading Places. 

  76. 76.

    Sure Lurkalot

    The guy is so uncomfortable and awkward in his own skin it hurts to watch. Or delightful.

  80. 80.

    Sister Golden Bear

    In fairness, DeSatan is used to using his fingers to gnaw on the bones of dead trans kids.

    On a more serious note, DeSatan just hired a fanboy of white nationalist virgin Nick Fuentes to be his speechwriter. Can you say Nazi-adjacent, boys and girls?

    Last year, Hochman participated in a Twitter Space with white nationalist virgin Nick Fuentes — and lavishly praised him. “We were just talking about your influence and we were saying, like, you’ve gotten a lot of kids ‘based’ and we respect that for sure,” Hochman said. “I literally said, I think Nick’s probably a better influence than Ben Shapiro on young men who might otherwise be conservative.”

    Hochman agreed with Fuentes that women “should have no authority over men” and that women “just really have no business in politics.” Fuentes has openly praised Hitler and visited Trump at Mar-A-Lago alongside fellow Hitler fan boy Kanye West.

  83. 83.

    Kelly

    Yeah he missed a chance lighten up his image with a bit of humor.  I like pudding or applesauce for a snack when out hiking. I’ve eaten them with my fingers lots of times. It’s the best way to get the last tiny bit.

  84. 84.

    gVOR08

    Pudd’n Boot is perfect. But I’ll continue to use DeUseless with audiences not addicted to the news enough to know about the pudding thing.

  85. 85.

    zhena gogolia

    Others believe DeSantis should sidestep Trump altogether and wait until 2028 to run.

    Oh, if we let TFG win in 2024, he’ll be running again in 2028, Putler-style. There’ll be no “sidestepping” him.

  88. 88.

    Frankensteinbeck

    In so much of life, the mistake is less important than how you handle it.  How DeSantis is handling this makes him look weak.  Because he is.  As badly wounded a candidate as Trump is, DeSantis is never going to be able to take him down.

  93. 93.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    the cure is sort of worse because it’s so fake

    What isn’t fake about deathsanta?

    He’s got nothing on a 50 lb sack of flour in the way of charm, intelligence. class, and the flour is actually far more useful. His entire persona is fake, makes him look even less human, if that’s possible. He’s doing everything he can to prove that he’s incapable. Of anything whatsoever – positive. So he’s the preverbal rethuglican politician.

  94. 94.

    Bill Arnold

    @Shalimar:

    Why would you need more than 2 fingers to eat pudding? how big was this cup?

    That’s what increases the odds that this is an info-op. At least on my hand, three fingers is the size of a serving spoon, and two fingers are a tablespoon. So either RonD has small fingers, or he used two(or one) and somebody is trying to get him to deny three. (or it didn’t happen, but probably it did.) If the info-leak was an op (it was), respect for the perpetrator, even if they are on team DJT. Because funny.

  97. 97.

    Tony Jay

    All he had to do was perk up, nod enthusiastically and ask Morgan if he had any puddings on him. Pissyface Piers is such a cringing suck-up he’d have happily played along and suddenly this embarrassing exposé becomes a back-slappingly funny anecdote that both humanises and provides valuable guy-creds for the fascist boot-fetishist.

    But he couldn’t do it. Too slow. Too humourless. Too self conscious. So he just told the obvious lie, badly.

    Ron DeSantis? More like Ron De Santos.

  98. 98.

    different-church-lady

    @Bill Arnold: ​
     

    and somebody is trying to get him to deny three.

    Remember when we tricked the president of the United States into proving he could drink a glass of water? Good times, good times…

  100. 100.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Exactly, and I kind of get it. If the man was going at full speed that day without meals, he was likely famished and solved the problem of having no spoon.

    Frankly, it normalizes him in my book a bit because that is such a “me” move that doesn’t cultivate a certain demeanor and image.

  105. 105.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Got a flyer of Easter specials from the local Costco.

    Includes kim chee and Kalua pork. That bunny sure do get around.
    :)

  108. 108.

    Chris Johnson

    I thought it was three in the pink and ONE in the chocolate pudding. No accounting for tastes…

  109. 109.

    sdhays

    @kalakal: LOL. A real journalist would have followed up with, “So, how do you typically eat chocolate pudding, and how often?”

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    @Shalimar:

    Just big enough to get 3 fingers in.

    (I used to fly a lot. A LOT. Way, way more than I ever thought I’d want to. And I was right.)

  112. 112.

    Ruckus

    @Jinchi:

    This.

    We all – or at least the vast majority of us have done things with food (or food like products) to get them in our mouths at least once in our lives, like when we were infants, that we will likely never admit to even remembering, because food/hunger/desire. We likely didn’t do it on an airplane but still, we’ve been there.

  113. 113.

    Another Scott

    @Bill Arnold: It’s good they mentioned cats and toddlers – under really does work in those cases.  Otherwise, only barbarians think that under is the preferred orientation.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  115. 115.

    Mike in NC

    It appears that Florida has an inexhaustible supply of far-right billionaires willing to bankroll sleazy assholes like DeSantis, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott. Another reason to stay as far away as possible.

  116. 116.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Doc Sardonic: i saw a pic of Casey with what I call long wedding gloves and,yes, a Jackie O dress. Honestly, my first thought was who wears that in Florida in the heat? It looks stupid.

  117. 117.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: I’m not sure Florida has gone deep red. It’s legislature is deep red but that’s due to gerrymandering. Over the last decade, most of the state and Presidential races have been within 4 points, and some within 1.

    DeSantis’s 10 point win last year definitely makes Florida seem red. The very large disparity between DeSantis’s and Crist’s funding may have accounted for for 2 or 3 points of that 10; maybe this can make that big a difference there. But politically, Florida is terra incognita to me.

    The trend in Florida sure looks red though. I guess the question is: will the trend continue in a straight line or is will it flatten out? Next year’s Presidential and Congressional races will tell us something about this.

  118. 118.

    SFAW

    @Baud:

    True confessions: I eat cereal with my hands.

    Boy, I almost had a heart attack when I misread that as “with my pants.”​

  120. 120.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @sdhays: by 2028 there’ll be other  governors and senators who’ll be more seasoned and ready to go. I am surprised people don’t talk more about Iowa governor Kim Reynolds. Also, I wouldn’t count out former AZ governor Doug Ducey.  If AZ turns back red/purple and TFG is out of the picture, Ducey could blame Mark Kelly’s and Katie Hobbs’ wins on TFG.

  127. 127.

    Ruckus

    @Jinchi:

    Most of us wouldn’t have a clue about the daily duties of being a governor. Sure we might be capable to do the job, but really who knows a lot about the day to day duties of jobs they’ve never done?

    But eating? Or even just existing. I used to own a business in a part of town where people sometimes/all the time slept and other things, in public. Humanity doesn’t need a lot to exist, but it is a hell of a lot easier and nicer when many of those things do exist. But on a plane there is someone to fetch you a plastic spoon to eat your pudding.

  131. 131.

    Geminid

    @Mai Naem mobile: There are a lot of good Republican prospects for 2028. Brian Kemp looks strongest to me right now.

    But that is a long way away. I can think of only a couple real prospects for next year, maybe just one, besides Trump and DeSantis- if DeSantis is in fact a real prospect..

  133. 133.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Pulled it off Google images. There were a bunch with that chyron, and I picked the one where he looked weirdest. I’ve got an agenda! ;-)

    @WaterGirl: That actually happened to me once (except it was flan rather than pudding), and I made a crude utensil with the peel-off foil top. I mean, it was FLAN!

  135. 135.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @schrodingers_cat:

    A friend of mine claims that it’s a result of the combination of the die-off of the original cohort of NY/NE snowbirds, along with a massive influx of mid-south rednecks and all of the worst people from the Midwest.

    He grew up there, maintained a home there throughout his navy career. Says that it was always funky and fun in the past, but is now unrecognizable to the point where he’s definitely moving his wife and kids away when his current DOD contractor position expires.

    Carl Hiassen never anticipated this.

  139. 139.

    wonkie

    The pudding story is the stupid kind of shit the media used to use to degrade Democrats.  Obama likes tasty salads! The only way it reflects on DiSantis is in his failure to lean in on it. Trump and many other thuggish Republicans understand that to appeal to the R base–which means appealing to people who enjoy the pleasures of vicarious bullying–one must never apologize and never explain. He should have laughed and said, “It was good pudding!”  Maybe he is a bad campaigner. I hope so because I think he is worse than TRump and possibly more electable with the general population.

  141. 141.

    Tony Jay

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Nothing self-deprecating about loving the pudding and being demonstratively proud that you’re so manly and down-to-earth that you don’t need to mess around with one of those fancy-dancy ‘spoons’ like some coastal elite.

    It could have been a ‘thing’. Owning his pudding peccadilloes could have been Ronda’s pussy-grabbing moment. Cross-platform commercial opportunities for selling “He Can Use Three Fingers On My Pudding!” T-shirts and caps with “Chocolate ✔️ Mouth ✔️ Fingers ✔️“ logos. A nice little feud with Warner Bros over misuse of Harley Quinn’s image and catchphrase. Coming out to rapturous crowds all chanting “Did ya like your pudding, Ron?” and answering “You’re damned right I did! But I’m ready for the main course!”

    But he fluffed it. So sad.

  142. 142.

    StringOnAStick

    @Kelly: Fever is a serious drag.  Yesterday would have been my 50th ski day this year, all of it backcountry and mostly powder, but too sick.

  145. 145.

    Josie

    @Geminid: ​
     Who is, in your opinion, the one real prospect besides Trump and/or DeSantis? I’m very curious to hear your ideas.

  146. 146.

    No One You Know

    @Geminid: if DeSantis does have genuine deficits,  for whatever reason, in social skills or cultural skills, his focus makes perfect sense: he’s trying to create a space where he belongs. And he doesn’t know,  or maybe cannot learn, that a culturally competent person doesn’t have to demonize and bully to do that.

  147. 147.

    The Lodger

    @Baud: Can’t do both with the same roll at the same time. There’s a no bell prize (or a front page post) for anyone who proves me wrong.

  148. 148.

    Anyway

    @Baud:

    So why isn’t the Midwest improving?

    Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois … maybe Wisconsin (fingers crossed) flirted with disaster but huge improvement last November. Cautiously optimistic about the Great Lake states, Ohio is a goner though.

  149. 149.

    Anyway

    @Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:

    A friend of mine claims that it’s a result of the combination of the die-off of the original cohort of NY/NE snowbirds, along with a massive influx of mid-south rednecks and all of the worst people from the Midwest.

    Also maybe recent Latino immigrants are more conservative — Venezuelans, for example.

  151. 151.

    Geminid

    @Josie: Here I am just speaking to the nomination, not the general election: I think Mike Pompeo has the elements of a strong candidate. Pompeo says he won’t make up his mind for a “few” months, but I’m pretty sure he’s running.

    Pompeo was the Kochs’ “Blue Eyed Boy.” They fostered both his business and then his Congressional careers. So he’s got good access to donors, I believe.

    And Pompeo has made a good name among conservative evangelicals. He laid some of the groundwork for this when he was Secretary of State, and he has been wooing them since.

    Pompeo has been preparing for this campaign a couple years now, just in a low key way. It’s hard to predict how regular Republican voters will respond to Pompeo and his message. Thematically, I think he’ll basically run in the “tough and steady Daddy” lane. I think Pompeo will be better prepared than DeSantis, and I don’t think he is intimidated by Trump either.

  152. 152.

    Tony Jay

    @Steeplejack:

    That was a very satisfying Twitter thread.

    Can’t help thinking there’s a “Three fingers/One cup” joke out there waiting to be made.

  156. 156.

    RaflW

    Late to this, but as I said in a thread a couple days ago when his poll drop was reported, that he’d go even more nuts anti-gay. And indeed, he has.

    I’m keenly aware that the GOP is attacking trans rights in dozens of states, and pushing related anti-LGB and Q measures. But I think the anti-gay stuff is actually some part of his fall in favorability. Trans rights are very much in the crosshairs, and that has to be resisted and countered.

    But going broadly anti-LGBTQ really only pleases a narrow base. And that base already is predisposed to Trump. Yes the orange-hued vulgarian is opposed to same-sex marriage and other broad LGBTQ rights. But to my recollection it was just the necessary noises to meet his base. It’s not central to his campaign like calling immigrants ‘rapists’ is, for example.

    Anyway, rambling along to a point, here: As national voters get to know dullard Ron, finding out that he actually seems to hate gay and lesbian people isn’t a plus. 61% of Americans tell Pew that marriage equality is fine with them!

  158. 158.

    Gvg

    @schrodingers_cat: it hasn’t. Gerrymandering is fixing the state elections but the margins are mostly not that big. Now we did have some fall off due to voter intimidation but, we’ll look at how we vote on proposed state referendums. We voted to restore former convicts voting rights. Then the republican elected officials just refused to do it. Because of gerrymandering they don’t lose their seats. This has been going on for awhile, like a couple of decades, especially on how the voters want schools funded and handled. We vote for laws but the gop will not implement.

  161. 161.

    yellowdog

    @schrodingers_cat: I believe there is a reason why nobody accused E&S, the company that provides election equipment to FL, of changing the votes in Biden’s favor. They are big GOP contributors and their results CANNOT BE INDEPENDENTLY AUDITED.

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