DeSantis is the dog that caught that car candidate, basically. Actually putting right wing culture grievances into practice is an entirely different thing than just whipping people up about them.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) April 18, 2023
to put it a little differently: to give the GOP base some extremely limited credit, while they absolutely love generalized dogwhistle bigotry, a non-trivial amount of them actually do get slightly uncomfortable when you actually take out the calipers and start measuring skulls.
— William B. Fuckley (@opinonhaver) April 18, 2023
The (Absolutely) Base wants tough rhetoric, low taxes, and the abuse of ‘those people’. They don’t want to give up any of their existing entitlements, to have their Disney experience soiled, or to lose their housekeeper / gardener / nail tech because ICE gets amped. Most of them don’t even want to give up contact with members of their family, or their community, because suddenly it’s not safe to be other than genetically heterosexual in their state (whatever vague misgivings they might have about mythical ‘groomers’). DeSantis may’ve gotten out over his shrimper boots already.
it does not bode well for the Republican Party that the donor class and activist base sanctified a Successor over the course of two years and several weeks of donald calling him "meatball ron" reduced him to nervous tears and chapter 11 bankruptcy
— Christopher Hooks (@cd_hooks) April 17, 2023
To be clear, I don't think this field-clearing is deliberate or complete, it's mostly just a function of donors being too timid for also-rans to get their money's worth. I think DeSantis has until Christmas to at least pull in close with Trump. Time enough for lots to happen.
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) April 15, 2023
This is from the Guardian, back at the beginning of April. Being abusive towards someone else has always made TFG feel better about his own manifest inadequacies:
… The former president was buoyed, according to a source familiar with the matter, over new post-indictment polls that placed him far ahead of his expected 2024 rival, the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and other Republican primary challengers.
According to a Yahoo news poll, Trump was beating DeSantis 57% to 31% in the one-to-one contest, and was attracting majority support at 52% when pitted against a wider, 10-candidate field including DeSantis at 21% and the UN ambassador in the Trump administration, Nikki Haley.
Trump also improved his lead over DeSantis in polling done for his campaign by McLaughlin and Associates, which surveyed 1,000 likely 2024 general election voters and found Trump beating DeSantis 63% to 30%, improving his lead from January when Trump was at 52% and DeSantis at 40%.
The sharp uptick in polling numbers – and a corresponding reversal by potential 2024 rivals trying to come to Trump’s defense over the indictment after previously trying to distance themselves – was so sudden and marked that it took some of Trump’s own advisers by surprise…
And/but “on hold” gives donors a lot of wiggle room to resume with DeSantis without fully breaking from him.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 15, 2023
TOP TEN THINGS RON DeSANTIS NEEDS TO FIND OUT BEFORE HE DECIDES WHETHER HE’S RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2024
10. Is he willing to spend every waking moment of the campaign defending himself against attacks from the last Republican President
— Dreamweasel (@Dreamweasel) March 27, 2023
9. What’s the national mood for Presidential policies centered around flushing gays and trans people out of public life
8. Are the people with TRUMP signs on their lawns & TRUMP flags on their trucks who wear shirts saying “TRUMP Is My President” open to voting for someone else
7. How do moderates and undecideds feel about political stunts involving gleeful cruelty to refugees at the Southern border
6. If he wins a primary, what’s the plan for convincing the rest of the GOP that it’s not a media-driven Deep State conspiracy
5. Is Volodymyr Zelenskyy a hero for defending his people against Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attack, or is he an unwitting tool of the Deep State globalists who deserves to be taken down a notch
4. What’s the best way to get past the superficial stuff like the white boots & the chocolate pudding & direct the focus to his objectively terrible policies
3. Will suburban soccer moms be willing to vote for a loathsome authoritarian ghoul who also happens to be kind of short
2. Given the sum total of mankind’s knowledge of science, mathematics, and philosophy, what is the probablity that Donald Trump will actually go to jail in the next 15 months
1. What the hell does “woke” mean?
it’s wild that republican PACs know so little about the voters they’re trying to win. “donald trump should stop being mean to ron desantis” is like dropping all of the blood in a blood bank into a lagoon full of piranha https://t.co/Nwacldg7LB
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) April 17, 2023
Odie Hugh Manatee
Let’s start with cats! More cat news at the Manatee abode just because…
Our vagabond girl, Gigi has settled in to garage life quite nicely but really need to find a forever home. And with this sentence I have just sat down to resume typing after Stewie brought me his nightly ‘kill’ offering, which is a black 6″ tie wrap. I thanked him and gave him his reward, some Temptations treats. So…
Gigi is settling in and I’ve been hard at work trying to bribe another vagabond girl, a Maine Coon I’ve named Kiki into staying in the garage at night. I open up the garage every morning at sunrise so Gigi can go out and do her duty and yesterday morning I came out to the garage when I got up and both Kiki and Gigi were camped out in two chairs I have set up as beds for them. Kiki stayed for treats but took off afterward. She likes to come around in the evening to eat so I have used that time to get her used to me petting her. She now lets me pet her before giving her treats and will even nuzzle my hand when I put it out so progress!
While I need to find a forever home for Gigi, we might be able to adopt Kiki because for some reason Stewie and Morty leave her alone where they keep attacking Gigi every chance they get. I keep them off of her most of the time but I can’t be there every second. It might be size; Gigi is a big girl and Kiki is really small but fluffy. Time will tell…
Finally, we have found out that Chuckie is in to baked goods after finding two chewed up croissants on the kitchen floor. Corn bread, croissants, biscuits, muffins, coffee cake and more, he loves ’em. He’s a weird cat…
Good morning all… 😎
Raven
Fucking cortisone injections! They have never given me much relief but I’m guaranteed not to be able to sleep after I get one!
Dirk Reinecke
Late night there, morning here. South Africa also had elections coming up in 2024. There is a chance the ANC might finally lose an election.
rikyrah
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
The animal antics🤗🤗🤗
rikyrah
@Dirk Reinecke:
ANC lose?
To whom?
ColoradoGuy
Reflecting on the tweets above, I think the Repubs really crave a “mean daddy” figure. It’s how they see their Old Testament God, and it’s how they see their own families. None of this namby-pamby “God Is Love” crap. They want vengeance, and they want it NOW!
Not sure DeathSantis can convincingly pull off that act. Floridians apparently want Victor Orban, but the rest of the GOP country wants drama – something between WWE, QAnon, and the FoxNews crawl – a nonstop feed of acting-out crazy. If MTG were a man, that might be closer to what the Base voter wants and craves … but no question about it, they want a showman, a really, mean vicious one. That’s hard to fake.
NotMax
Sleep?
Have heard tell of it.
Hildebrand
DeSantis going hammer and tongs against Disney doesn’t help him in the slightest. It’s really tough to sell the idea that the House of Mouse is some great lurking villain.
I imagine DeSantis’ grudge against a company as profitable as Disney makes billionaires wonder about his judgment.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@rikyrah:
They keep me on my toes, that’s for sure!
@Hildebrand:
I’m pretty sure his moves against Disney have killed his presidential chances. What business is going to want him in office and turning the power of the federal government against them?
President Puddin’ Boots…lol!
Baud
DeSantis is a dweeb.
Tony Jay
I said yesterday that I can sort of see the logic behind what Ron D’oh Santos is trying to do. Despite all of his Florida-centric awfulness he’s still got a “Show you’re a better bully than Trump” shaped hole to fill with national MAGOP voters and he thought, or was advised to think, that he could shove a broken and defeated Disney Corporation into it. Turns out he and/or his advisors were morons to think that one of the world’s largest natural reservoirs for cut-throat lawyers could be outfoxed by a team of low class grifters and an over-promoted junior state senator in Barbarella boots.
By the time this is done, Ron D’oh will be wishing he’d limited his fucking about to getting teenage students drunk at the local Shooters.
Baud
The big difference between Trump and DeSantis is exemplified by the fact that DeSantis didn’t even bother to throw paper towels at the people of Ft. Lauderdale after the recent floods.
Manyakitty
@Dirk Reinecke: fascinating. I have colleagues in SA (Bloem and Capetown). I’ll get their takes at our meeting tomorrow.
Manyakitty
@NotMax: it’s been scarce around these parts of late.
Dirk Reinecke
@rikyrah: Well to a coalition of the other parties.
There are projections of them getting less than 50% of the vote.
At the moment we are going through “loadshedding” a euphemism for rotational blackouts. This means that there is no electricity for around 10 hours a day, and we are heading into winter when electricity demand picks up.
This is due to mismanagement and corruption at the monopoly energy company, government intransigence on renewables.
The country has also been grey listed for failing to abide by international finance regulations.
Also, our country has invited Putin to the Brics summit, but our Constitutional court has previously held that our country must honour the warrants of the international court.
The ANC sucks up to Russia, with whom we do no trade, and angers the west with who we do most trade.
The ANC is like the GOP. Good at propoganda, useless at anything else.
Manyakitty
@Dirk Reinecke: that loadshedding is a drag. Based on their Teams status, our SA group ends up working really odd hours. No good at all.
Aussie Sheila
This time last year I thought tfg was finished.
Wrong again, Sheila!
The names tfg have thrown at him are genuinely funny, like tfg can be. I think the trump base is a lot more secular and irreverent than even I thought. Barring actual incarceration I think he has got the nom. Even then, who knows?
I still believe Biden can crush him at the polls all things being equal. Which they often aren’t but I can’t believe the US electorate will want another go around with the chaos and nonsense, especially since Biden and his administration have been a model of decent and careful governance.
In any case, until things really hot up, I must say I am experiencing a guilty pleasure in the stuff tfg is throwing at Meatball Ron. The pudding ad was genuinely disgusting (to me at least), but I think it will be very effective. Most people would be disgusted with the visuals, but the stuff about social entitlements at the end was genius.
I think tfg has a shrewd understanding of his base, which is very different from the one Meatball Ron has in his head. MR is a performative Ahole. TFG is the real thing, with bells on.
Shalimar
@Aussie Sheila: I think we learned in 2016 that the worse Republicans are going to do, the more news outlets and Russians put their thumbs on the scale to even it up again.
Aussie Sheila
@Shalimar:
I am sure they will try again, but I have to believe that everyone concerned with such efforts are better informed and armed this time. In any case, while I believe the Russians did interfere in 2016 and that they actively assisted trump, I still don’t believe they were dispositive in the result. That was an eff up of monumental proportions, ably assisted by more domestic sources, like the nyt and Comey.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
We’re in SA right now. Didn’t notice the load-shedding at the One&Only in Cape Town (that system was seamless), but heard all about it.
At Franschhoek, we stayed at Mont Rochelle – it took a couple of minutes for the generator to boot.
I’m at a resort outside Kruger at the moment (flew into Skakuza yesterday), and the load shedding is notable for frequency of the generator kicking in.
I think your solution is going to have to be a combo of solar and tidal.
lowtechcyclist
@ColoradoGuy:
The difference between the two, IMHO, is that Trump has a genuine talent for connecting with his audience, sharing and empathizing with their grievances. Whatever he does, none of them believe he’s going to eat their faces. (People he’s done business with have been played by this talent of his, and wound up with their faces munched.) And his targets, whether they’re individuals or vaguely-defined groups, aren’t usually people they are close to or depend on.
DeSantis, OTOH, has little of that power to connect with people, and his assholishness is indiscriminatory. Even being hostile to Disney might be OK, but I bet even conservative Floridians might be having second thoughts as he destroys their school and university systems.
After all, only so many of them have the money to send their kid to the local Christianist school, or the time, energy, and ability to home school. And I don’t care if they say they believe the Rapture is coming any time now, most of them still want their kids to be prepared to make their own way in the world when they grow up.
And it’s one thing to pull a couple dozen books off the school library shelves because they’re a little too approving of gay and trans persons, but it’s another to clear the shelves wholesale until every last book is checked for any content that might offend some evangelical parent who doesn’t even send their kids to the public school. The latter’s got to be making a lot of people nervous that wouldn’t have been bothered by the former.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: Some of Trump’s campaign advisor, like Susan Wiles, have worked for DeSantis. I assume one of them was the source for the pudding story.
Reports are that Trump’s campaign staff has drawn grudging respect from Republican anti-trumper operatives. They contrast his operation to the gang of amateurs who ran his 2020 race, and credit it some for his continued strength in the party. Like you (and me) they thought Trump would have faded by now.
There are a lot of anti-trumpers, especially among elites. They fear a Trump nomination will bring on a Blue Wave that washes away their other candidates. I think they are right, but am reminded of a boxing truism: “Ya gotta have somebody to beat somebody.” Now the elites are wondering whether they have “somebody” in DeSantis.
But if they look beyond him, they see slim pickings. They may may have to make damage mitigation their priority for the next 18 months.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
You have said the thing that I have thought. If MR fades which it looks like he will, the best hope is that the divisions in the repub coalition will cripple them in the general. I did think last year that MR winning the nom would make trump smash the Republican Party in the general, but now I think the best hope is that trump in the general raises up a much more focussed and widespread opposition. Like an electoral ‘popular front’ that goes from Liz Cheney to the DSA.
Of course that envisages that the soi dissant US ‘left’ actually understands what’s at stake.
Let’s hope this time that they do.
Their performance in 2016 was utterly disgraceful.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: The remaining members of the American “Left” who do not back Biden are are very noisy but not that numerous. It seems to me that the more pragmatic ones have joined the Demmocratic coalition. Thanks to Warnock’s and Ossoff’s wins, Democrats finally were in a position to get things done. They may not have made the most of the opportunity, but they did enough to show open minded lefties that this is where the action is.
The DSA’s fortunes may demonstrate this. Their membership grew from 55,000 in the aftermath of Senator Sanders’ run in 2016 to almost 100,000 going into 2020. Then it stalled, and some reports are that membership now is in the 80,000s.
There are conflicts over their “inside/outside” strategy of backing DSA members in Democratic primaries. This succeeded in that they now have several members in Congress, but these do not vote the DSA line and that is frustrating.
Their policies on the Ukraine war and other foreign policy matters create tensions also. DSA delegates to their biennial convention in Chicago this summer will have lots to talk about.
Baud
@Geminid:
Chicago is convention city!
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: One key component in an electoral “popular front” against Trump will come from Independents. They tend to run around 30% of voters, and more in some states like New Hampshire, Colorado and Alaska. It’s hard for Democrats or Republicans to win many purple states and Congressional districts without carrying a majority of the Independent vote. Joe Biden’s and Mark Kelly’s Arizona wins in 2020 are two of many examples of this.
Some Democrats get very frustrated when they hear politicians like Reps. Sharice Davids (KS-3) or Abigail Spanberger (VA-7) emphasize their bipartisanship while campaigning. The critics rightly point out that this will not win over Republican voters. But Davids and Spanberger know that Independents like to hear this line and that is who they aim it at.
In Trump’s case, his hold on Republicans has remained strong, but his attraction to Independents has plummeted. That’s what has people like Karl Rove concerned.
Kathleen
@ColoradoGuy: I call them “Rethuglican Bully Daddies”.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
I get the frustration of the genuine left in the US. In the absence of PR or preferential voting, people are left with often very unappealing choices.
Nevertheless, starting at a local level and building support for more radical policies at that level is the best way to build a coalition for change more broadly. Broad change in a FPTP system requires support that is either very broad, albeit shallow, or very deep in a few very strategic locations. Either way, such a system is tough to beat for coalitions that are easily split along various lines, especially when money and influence is easily arrayed against any emerging consensus before it has time to ‘gel’.
Geminid
@Baud: I like to think that this year’s DSA convention will be like the Shootout at the OK Corral, except with resolutions instead of revolvers and manbuns instead of cowboy hats.
RSA
Not to detract from your main point, but this is one of the things DeSantis has done:
Baud
@RSA:
I doubt there are enough private schools in Florida for everyone to take advantage of the program. I can venture a guess as to which group of people will primarily benefit from it.
Ken
His advisers can’t be that good, if they’re surprised to find that the Republican “rivals” are a bunch of cowards and lickspittles who will enthusiastically line up behind whoever’s in first place.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
I can appreciate that. At the same time, we shouldn’t forget that there are centrists who feel the same way because they think the Dems are too left. The reality is, decent people all have to learn to deal with it.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
Yes that resonates with me. So called ‘independents’ are what I like to call ‘performative centrists’. They are actually conservative, but don’t like loudly proclaimed ugliness, even if they might agree with it deep down. I get why some Dems have to perform for them in a general election. In a FPTP electoral system that is a necessity in many areas. In Australia last year a slew of ‘independents’ ran against our equivalent of the republicans in solidly upper middle class electorates, and wiped out the moderates in the LNP.
It was a gotterdamerung for the conservatives, and has assisted in splitting the conservatives between their feral right wing base, and more economically prosperous but socially liberal brain space.
The best I can see for the US is that some kind of similar movement takes place so that the centre right coalition is fractured so fundamentally that it has to remake itself.
sab
@Geminid: The bipartisan line didn’t work for Tim Ryan. It lost him the black women voters and they are the heart of the Democratic base.
Manyakitty
@sab: hey hey!!! I would love a meet up. Feel free to request my contact info and we can get it going.
Kay
The undercounting of the cost of voucher programs is deliberate. The budgeting doesn’t make sense now because they aren’t done yet. Privatization will culminate in a low value voucher for each (and every) child, with families making up the difference. Those on the Right are already floating student loans for K-12 to finance the gap between what the state will pay and what families will have to pay. People who think K-12 education is unequal or inequitable now are in for a real shock when they see how inequitable privatized systems will be. The biggest losers will be special needs children- the additional cost of that is spread out over the whole public school population now- with universal vouchers it’s individual. It can be 25-30k a year in a state like OH, where the state subsidy for kids w/out special needs is about 7k.
SFAW
@Baud:
You haven’t of the new chain of private schools being readied to take advantage of the program? The “TRump University-preschool for ‘Murican Patriots” — also known as “TRUMP Prep” — based out of Mar-a-Lardo, will be opening any day now. One of the “draws”: if you attend TRUMP Prep, you are GUARANTEED admission into Trump University, perhaps the greatest institution of higher learning in the history of mankind
Betty
@ColoradoGuy: MTG definitely has the mean stuff down. I don’t know that being female is disqualifying as long as she seems to effective in attacking those the base loves to hate.
Aussie Sheila
@sab:
Presumably he made a bet on the best base to win and he lost. In the absence of any evidence, I can’t believe that sophisticated voters like Black women would have stayed home because they thought Tim Ryan was worse than JD Vance.
That is disrespectful of the political nous of the base in a way I don’t believe. I know Party bases. They don’t make those kind of fundamental errors.
SFAW
@Baud:
Oh, thank FSM that I don’t have to worry about it then.
mrmoshpotato
Too many words Billy Bitchass Fucktard!
DeathStantis sucks Dump butthole who sucks Putin butthole!
Fixed! (No, not translating!)
Baud
@SFAW:
If I win the lottery, I’m investing in CRT Academy so I can get in on the grift.
sab
@Aussie Sheila: They didn’t stay home. They just didn’t fill in the little box for him. His own Congressional district voters stayed with him, but in the rest of the state they didn’t trust the Italian American Catholic school guy to look out for them.
ETA I think Kay was right, as usual. There was no way he could have won whatever approach he tried. Statewide we are now a very red state.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I think American Independents are a more diverse group than you give them credit for. They run the gamut ideologically; the main thing they have in common is that they disdain the two major parties. Most vote consistently for one party or another, and Republicans cadidates seem to get more of these.
Only a small number are actual centrist “swing voters.” But even the former groups are not as tied to their favored party as are self-identified Republicans or Democrats.
Independents form a majority in Alaska, and that state has come up with an interesting electoral system that to some extent replaces the pure “FPP” system of most states. Like Louisiana, Washington, and California, Aladka holds an all-comer “jungle” primary. Then the top four finishers advance to a ranked-choice runoff in November. I think this model will spread to other states, albeit slowly.
M31
I know, but we need a majority
Geminid
@sab: It worked for Sharice Davids, Abigail Spanberger and many others. They ran in purple districts and states, though. Tim Ryan ran in a red state.
Spanberger and Davids also did not neglect messaging designed to motivate strong Democratic voters. That may have been Ryan’s deficiency.
Manyakitty
@sab: in the last thread, argiope also expressed interest in a NEOhio meetup.
Manyakitty
@Geminid: Ryan got no help from the national party. Was actually shameful.
sab
@Geminid: I watched my husband throw his shoes at the tv every time a Ryan ad came on. And we live in a Ryan district and have followed him for twenty years. My dad’s nurse’s aide, who didn’t live in his district, was extremely skeptical. She never believed that he was the solid Democrat that he actually is.
Kay
@Manyakitty:
The national party can and should prioritize though, IMO, and they don’t see a return on Ohio. It pains me to say it but it is true. They’re looking to AZ and GA and they should.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
I hope ranked choice voting spreads in the US. Here in Oz it produces electoral outcomes that are a lot closer to the actual political disposition of a majority of the electorate than not at each point in the electoral cycle. A disdain for major parties is not unique to the US. It is common across all democracies and has been in train for at least thirty years, at least here, and I would guess in many other places.
The end of the Cold War and a depoliticised economy since the ‘90s has underpinned that imo. For better or worse, the left must deal with realities that have been apparent since the turn of this century, and do a much better job of meeting current political realities.
If it doesn’t then there will be a return to something that the broad centre is unequipped to deal with competently and safely.
mrmoshpotato
@Geminid: Please listen to the Professional Left podcast, because American “inpendents” are really just cowardly Rethuglican shitstains*.
“I never liked the tweeting.” – a mocking bluegal
*And Australian OzzyMan would call them shitc**ts (I would hope.)
OzarkHillbilly
I guess he really wanted to meet Unca Joe.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Aussie Sheila: This isn’t about the presidency. The presidency is work and neither Trump and DeSantis do work, this is about the GOP nomination because the presidential nominee gets control of the party and all those donations.
SFAW
@Baud:
Except for legacy systems/equipment, are cathode ray tubes even available these days?
[Yes, I know what you meant, but my inner tech-nerd still auto-completes it that way.]
sab
@Manyakitty: Yikes! This could actually happen!
sdhays
@Manyakitty: I recall Tim Ryan making it clear he wanted the national party to stay away.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I have mixed feelings about ranked choice voting. I’m glad it is being tried out in a few states and cities first so we can better see the system’s unintendeded consequences.
Personally, I like runoffs better. But Ranked Choice is quicker and easier, qualities better tuned to an age of impatience.
Dirk Reinecke
@Manyakitty:
Load shedding is really harming productivity and profitability. It places a lot of strain on getting things done while one has power. It also adds costs to everything. The university of pretoria is spending around R3 million a day on fuel for the generators.
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
There are many potential solutions, but the ANC is just in the way.
The minister of Minerals and Energy (Gwede Mantashe) sees renewables as being a western plot.
If you see African Wild Dogs or Ground Hornbills take pictures of them and send it to the orgs tracking them. Wild dogs all have unique patterns.
OzarkHillbilly
Ready! Aim! Fire!!!
There will be blood. Also too:
It won’t surprise me in the least if DeBrow has a side deal with trump.
Aussie Sheila
@mrmoshpotato:
Well here down under at the last federal election, the two major parties managed to get just over 60% of the vote between them. Remember we have compulsory voting, and in the event, 95% of the electorate actually cast a vote. The minor parties, plus independents actually wiped out the conservatives, thanks to preferential voting.
I understand the exigencies that FPTP puts on a political party but at some point I think that electoral coalitions can grow so large they are almost impossible to manage over time. The performance of a creep like Sinema illustrates the point nicely. Strong partisanship coupled with competent electoral strategies tailored to local conditions is far better ordinarily imo.
However 2024 will probably not be an ‘ordinary’ election in the US.
Geminid
@mrmoshpotato: Well, I don’t do podcasts. Anyway, my idea of learning about Independents is reading sound research on them by social scientists, and watching their behavior in my state and others like Arizona.
For instance, Arizona voter registration going into the 2020 election was Republican 35%, Democrat 32%, and Independent 31.7%. Joe Biden and Mark Kelly won though, and it was a high turnout election. They could not have won without carrying a majority of Independent voters, and no podcast is gonna convince me otherwise.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Does DeSantis know about Walt’s granddaughter? She is apparently woke!
Hildebrand
@sdhays: I recall that, as well. He ran the race he wanted to run – and lost. Maybe, just maybe, it would have been better for him to broaden his coalition beyond working class white folk.
Kay
There was a brawl, a melee, at daycare Monday and my grandaughter was right in the middle of it. She was punished- they took away her (and the others involved) spot at “show and share”. So sad. She loves show and share.
I approve though. They can’t be wacking each other, even if they are 2 and 3. I told her that. Siding with the authoritarians again.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid:
I’m not sure how ranked choice differs in detail from preferential voting. I guess the main thing is that here, preselection of candidates is strictly a matter for each party, and is managed by parties privately and with no official electoral commission input whatsoever. I approve this. I heartily disapprove of semi official party preselections.
Once an official election happens, state, federal or local, the Electoral Commission conducts the election in accordance with laws governing public elections.
Baud
@Kay:
Glad no one was shot.
Geminid
@Hildebrand: People sure are obsessed about working class white voters. Are there not also middle and upper middle class voters in Ohio? Might Ryan have been trying to appeal to those voters also? Those were the Republicans most likely to defect.
Baud
@Geminid:
I’m finally getting around to listening to Rachel Maddow’s podcast about the right wing coup attempt before WWII. I’ll finish it because the story is interesting, but it reminds me why I don’t like the podcasting style.
Jinchi
Lets not try to rehabilitate Trump by pretending he was just a genius a branding and DeSantis is an idiot for actually implementing policy. Trump was perfectly happy to round up and deport you kid’s undocumented nanny. Hell I remember him publicly kidnapping hundreds of kids at the border and locking them in concentration camps.
DeSantis’s problem is that he isn’t rich, didn’t have a 40 year PR campaign builiding his brand, and isn’t going to defeat Trump by playing on Trump’s turf.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Is it Kristi Noem who was bragging that her 1yo granddaughter already owned a gun? I wouldn’t want my kid at the daycare she goes to.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I would be appalled if American Democrats started selecting their nominees by party committees instead of primaries.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
If it’s a right wing daycare, I’d be more worried about the grooming.
Kay
@Jinchi:
A lot of not-political Trump voters here knew him from the tv show. I agree that he benefitted from 40 years of media promotion.
Geminid
@Baud: I just don’t have the high speed data to listen to podcasts. That’s fine by me; my phone and I are not on speaking terms and I aim to keep it that way.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
If I win the lottery, even grifting would be more work than I’d be willing to do.
Kay
@Baud:
My daughter’s very progressive on education- much more so than granny- and she attended a sort of Right wing daycare – they’re all Right wing here. There won’t be any Right wing daycares in that child’s future.
sab
@Baud: How sick a society we are that these jokes about grooming gun toting toddlers are funny.
Baud
@sab:
Many jokes are about social ills. Always have been.
OzarkHillbilly
My sons still haven’t forgiven me. :-)
Geminid
@Kay: I gotta say, I admired the restraint of your comment in the previous thread. Your argument was careful and well reasoned.
lowtechcyclist
@Jinchi:
I don’t think acknowledging that Trump appeals to a lot of people DeSantis doesn’t, and understanding some of the reasons why, constitutes rehabilitating Trump.
OzarkHillbilly
Those pesky gun laws preventing the free flow of blood amongst 2 year olds. Blood wants to be free!!
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Dude. Bovine University is where it is. Listen to financial guru Ralph Wiggum.
mrmoshpotato
@Aussie Sheila: Sorry. I wasn’t addressing Aussie politics. I just like Ozzyman more forceful words.
schrodingers_cat
Trump will be the Republican nominee unless he can’t run for some reason. Rs did not stand up to him when he was polling in the 30s and was a former gameshow host. They are not going to stand up to him when he is the former President.
mrmoshpotato
@Geminid: My point is that “Independents” are cowards who won’t own that they’re really Republicans.
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
I think that’s less true than it used to be. A lot of independents these days are young liberals who have decided not being labelled a Democrat is socially safer than committing to an imperfect coalition.
Geminid
@mrmoshpotato: That is a common udea, but it is factually untrue.
Geminid
@mrmoshpotato: That is a common udea, but it is factually untrue.
Fortunately, successful Democratic politicians in purple states and districts know this
Frankensteinbeck
10. No. DeSantis is a coward who can’t punch back, and that loses him the nomination. Note that Disney doesn’t hit back, they just shrug him off like a fly.
9. Among Republican primary voters? They demand it. Among general voters? It’s poison.
8. Yes. Those flags mean “Fuck you, libs.”
7. Turned off.
6. No plan needed. The overwhelming majority of the voters will fall in behind the new white supremacy champion eagerly. But he has to get there, first.
5. Eh. Not actually important, which is why the party is split on it.
4. Go on the offensive, but he’s too weak to do it.
3. No.
2. Impossible to say, and it looks like DeSantis’s only hope. Trump can’t campaign in jail.
1. Anti-bigotry. Everyone knows the answer to this. Republicans sure as Hell do and are laser-focused about it. Why keep pretending it’s a mystery?
Crucially important, folks: Right now it’s Trump vs. DeSantis and nobody else. Trump leads by default, because DeSantis sad faces and says “Thank you, Sir, may I have another?” and not because Trump is still loved.
It’s very possible that nobody else will run because they’re all that weak. Even the other declared candidates just lurk in the distant background with zero publicity. We’ll see. But Trump is a badly wounded animal winning because the only other option is a pathetic wimp.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I did it a lot, sided with teacher. I think teaching is a really difficult job and most of them aren’t just arbitrarily punishing for no reason. This was fair, too! They all got busted :)
My grandaughter is tall and strong and my daughter said “she has 20 pounds on some of those kids” – lol
mrmoshpotato
@Geminid: I’d like to see the ballots of every “independent” before I make that assessment.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I was an independent for the first year when I became a citizen. I was waiting to see if any party would woo me, send me their literature, pizza (There is actually a Pizza Party in the MA recognized by the Secretary of State). So when none of the above was forthcoming I registered as a D before 2018 elections.
I was voting straight D in the elections though.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Baud! 20XX!: He woos you!
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: First send pizza, then we will see
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
:-)🍕
Frankensteinbeck
@mrmoshpotato:
Democrats won independents in 2022. There is a chunk of ‘independents’ that are embarrassed Republicans, but there are actual swing voters and they are crucial to victory.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Some independents may be embarrassed Rs but there are some human weather vanes who fluctuate wildly.
Ohio Mom
@Kay: The other thing to remember about special education is that you want your kid to be where there are other kids with the same or similar disabilities because you want the teaching and intervention staff to have had lots of experience.
The worst thing you can hear is, “I’ve never worked with anyone like Johnny before.” Great, they have little or no idea what to do.
You absolutely do not want your kid to be the token in a private school so they can show they are inclusive. You want a public school because that’s where the critical mass is.
Anyway
I am registered Independent — no interest in D primaries — that’s the only reason i see to register D.
schrodingers_cat
@Anyway: In my blue state, its the primaries that are actually the more important election.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
Agree. I don’t think anti public education people have a good or real sense of how public systems work. It’s groovy to say ‘the money follows the child!” but universal K-12 public ed is a system– it’s not a group of individuals making choices.
It’s amusing to me because there’s nothing magic about “private schools” unless it’s their ability to exclude children who require more resources or effort. We have a weak Catholic school here- it is understood to be worse than the public school but religious parents seek it out for religious reasons.
System wide they will run into the exact same problems public schools have- they already found this out with charter schools. They privatized New Orleans. New Orleans has the exact same systemic and out of school factors as they did prior to privatzation so their scores have stalled. There is no cheap and quick fix.
One thing that is really alarming to me in Ohio is the privatization proponents are not requiring private schools to take or submit test scores. They don’t want anyone to know privatization doesn’t increase quality. The test scores came back, private schools didn’t outperform publics in Ohio and all of a sudden the voucher cheerleaders exempted their schools from standardized tests.
lowtechcyclist
@mrmoshpotato:
I called myself an independent for fifteen years during which time I voted exclusively Dem and didn’t so much as consider voting R. (I was living in Virginia most of that time, and there’s no registration by party in the Old Dominion.)
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
People here use open enrollment w/in publics to choose schools that are considered strong in areas. It’s interesting to watch. There is a smaller rural district here that is considered the best for special needs kids, although it is not strong on test scores county-wide. It has become popular thru word of mouth of special needs parents, which also attracts committed special needs teachers, so it’s a kind of virtuous circle.
I think open enrollment can work as “public school choice”. I sent mine to the biggest school – also my home district- because big schools have economies of scale that allow them to offer more in school choices and I wanted them to try a lot of areas.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Yep, there is a group of voters who want to be on the winning team. Bandwagon voters or, as you called them, human weather vanes. One may not respect them, but their votes count just as much as those of devoted partisans. Getting their votes is one of the reasons I support positive, confident messaging.
Geminid
@mrmoshpotato: Election results prove it. Look up the party registration in states like Colorado, Arizona and Virginia* and compare it to the totals in two-party races.
*My state does not register voters by party, so I look at the Wason Center’s polling of party self identification. They consistently show Independents at 31-33% with Democrats around 35%, and with the exception of 2021 Democrats have won every statewide race since 2013. They could not have done that without Independent voters. Same with Arizona in 2020.
The Moar You Know
@mrmoshpotato: Eh, I’m an “independent” who is too chickenshit (for job related reasons) to own that I’m really a Dem. I work in an industry (defense) where it would be a problem.
I voted, reluctantly, for a local Republican at the behest of the local teacher’s union back in the late 00s and he promptly proved me right by turning on them and doing his level best to wreck them. The union president was a fucking moron.
Never before, never again
FWIW I flat-out consider myself a Dem.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: And there are some Independents on the left. They may not consider the Democratic “progressive” enough to identify with. I suspect they are inconsistent voters, like some Independents on the right.
My brother-in-law is a centrist voter who almost always votes Democratic because Republicans are so hard-right. He still has reservations about the Democratic Party, though.
Kay
@Geminid:
I think my youngest won’t identify as a Democrat because it’s not cool. He has so far voted for Democrats but he makes a point out of reminding me he is not one, because we’re all “moderate Republicans”.
His gf is a normie Democrat though so I think she’s pushing him in that direction. He’s less annoying on politics than he was.
The Moar You Know
@Geminid: that is interesting. I guess I do too, but until a hard-left pro-labor party that can compete and win at the national level shows up, Dem it is and I don’t think about it.
The way the abortion psychos are about abortion is kind of how I am about labor; the Dems are the least bad choice, but I’m not seeing them take on a broad range of labor issues. What they’ve done for the lower tier of workers is real and was the most needed. But now I want not only those gains to be maintained, but to start going after the CEO class that is burning the middle class to the ground. The middle class needs help too, a lot of it, and they are not getting it from anyone.
The student loan issue is a great place to start. But more is needed.
Barbara
@OzarkHillbilly: This is no joke, the kind of thing you can get disbarred for doing, regardless of whether you have a conflict. The flip side of this is that opposing counsel would commit an ethics violation if they contacted represented parties on their own to make an offer (or for any other reason). So there is no ethical way for an opposing lawyer to inform an opposing party of an offer other than through their counsel. An offer of immunity from prosecution is obviously a huge deal in a criminal proceeding, but any offer of a resolution of any kind has to be disclosed.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: You read a whole lot into Kyrsten Sinema’s apostasy. To me, she is an exception to Democratic unity, and only gets by because she has a six year term. She will be out of office in early January, 2025 and I think there is a much better than even chance that Ruben Gallego will take her place.
Omnes Omnibus
@Geminid: But you are just a silly American who doesn’t properly understand American politics.
Geminid
@Omnes Omnibus: I may be a simple meteor, but I am a citizen of the universe!
Manyakitty
@Kay: sigh. I wish you were wrong.
Ksmiami
@Hildebrand: Lloyd Blankfein – (gs billionaire) was making fun of him on Twitter yesterday…
Manyakitty
@sab: ermahgerd!!! Yes!!!
Manyakitty
@sdhays: Maybe. I also remember him begging them for support.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: Ron’s got alot of money, but he doesn’t have more money than the Mouse.
Paul in KY
@RSA: The schools will just raise their tuition. These schools aren’t physically equipped to triple their number of students.
Paul in KY
@mrmoshpotato: Well said.
Paul in KY
@sab: He was better than the alternative. That’s all that matters.
Paul in KY
@Kay: That’s how it starts…