Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

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

Let there be snark.

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

Conservatism: there are people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

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

So many bastards, so little time.

The gop couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Dank Sweaty Grey Dawn Open Thread: After the Brawl

Dank Sweaty Grey Dawn Open Thread: After the Brawl

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Dank Sweaty Grey Dawn Open Thread: After the GOP Brawl

(Clay Bennett via GoComics.com)

 

======
Best I can gather from my particular twitter-surfing, on-stage consensus of the evening: That smarmy little techbro grifter is *hella* annoying! And it’s not just the other candidates who think so, either…



Speaking of clips…

RIP, Ramaswamy.

======

I’ve now decided that Nikki Haley is actually running for the 2028 GOP slot (against Kamala Harris) on the Not-Angry-Just-Disappointed-Mom Did I Not Warn Y’All What Bridge You Were About to Jump Off?!? platform:

… And, Murphy the Trickster God willing, Chris Christie will be her VP candidate / strong-arm goon:

======

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Reddit comment

    Vivek Ramaswamy came off as the highschool debate team kid who got enlightened by Ayn Rand and preferred The Fountainhead because Atlas Shrugged was too mainstream.

  2. 2.

    Princess

    My FB friends all seem to think Haley was the best but the press seems to be pushing Ramaswamy. The main thing I notice though is that no one is talking about TFG and his interview. I guess that was a flop.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Vivek Ramaswamy gets booed after calling climate change a hoax:

    This is the most impressive thing I’ve heard about GOP primary voters in a long time.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Everyone is hungover from the drinking games and sleeping in.

    Or dead from alcohol poisoning.

  9. 9.

    Warblewarble

    Gangster whacked in gangster state. Biden wins republican debate. Cue Lou Reed “Perfect Day”

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    Vivek’s the reason I’m gonna get my pet Constitutional amendment passed (the one where you have to have held statewide elected office for a term or more before you can file to run for president)

    So…go Vivek!  =)

  12. 12.

    Ascap_scab

    What I got out of it was –

    Nobody attacked DuhSatan even though he is still farther ahead then all the rest. That means they all think he is finished. Why waste ammo on a zombie corpse?

    Ramaswamy is an insufferable prick. Perfect for the current death cult formerly known as the Republican Party.

    All the rest were Star Trek red shirts, soon to be eaten by the alien monster.

  13. 13.

    Tony Jay

    That’s all the Republican Primaries are in the Age of Orange, a spectator sport where, one by one, each not-Trump nomark squeezes into view like a stray dog’s erection, only to get chewed up and spat out by a feral MAGOP base that knows what it wants and an atomised Republican punditocracy that hasn’t got a fucking clue how to sell these nobodies on the open market.

    Just enjoy it while it lasts.

  14. 14.

    montanareddog

    The clips from the debate were the first time I have actually seen Ramaswamy. Boy, that is one annoying dork.

  17. 17.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Anne Laurie:
     ​You do a great job monitoring the crazy. I’m curious are the Tankies who supported Tulsi Gabbard in 2020 supporting this Putin lacky, Vivek?​

  18. 18.

    tobie

    My powers of repression astonish me. I should have been curious about the Republican debate. Instead I read a novel and went to bed at 9:30, immune to whatever venom was being spewed on the stage in Milwaukee.

    I hope Dem spokespeople crow today that it was and is the Biden admin that’s restored the US’s global leadership and united NATO behind Ukraine. Suck on it, Nikki.

    Before I forget, good morning Jackals.

  19. 19.

    Jeffro

    Vivek getting booed for the “climate change is a hoax” line is kind of a big deal.

    When even Republicans know that shit won’t fly anymore…progress!

  20. 20.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Princess: ​
      I didn’t see any of the commentary on Xhitter or on CRNN, but he’s getting ripped to shreds on Morning Joe

  22. 22.

    Anyway

    Where did this notion of bombing Mexico come from? I believe the orange one refers to that in his speeches as well. The idea of casually referring to bombing a populous neighbor just makes me seethe. Is that big in talk radio/ Josh Rogan/ other RW fever swamps?

  24. 24.

    p.a.

    @Baud:

    Vivek Ramaswamy gets booed after calling climate change a hoax:

    This is the most impressive thing I’ve heard about GOP primary voters in a long time.

     

    The dumbass should have just blamed ‘woke’.

  26. 26.

    Baud

    I’m surprised DeSantis went all in on abandoning Ukraine.  Didn’t he walk that back a few months ago when he got some pushback?

  28. 28.

    tobie

    @Anyway: i didn’t watch the debate but I gather from reading the reports that Ron DeSantis promised that on his first day in office he’d send special forces to Mexico.

  29. 29.

    satby

    @Princess: Yeah, right now it’s just after 7 am, the overnight low was 80° and the humidity is 95% (not raining) so the heat index temp is already over 91°. People don’t even with that shit anymore here.

  30. 30.

    Warblewarble

    Ramaswamy going for the all important “cut off  your nose to spite your face vote”.

  31. 31.

    satby

    @Baud: I never watch it, but there was some Twitter commentary about Scar ripping the national* news framing of Biden’s trip to Maui as B.S. (yesterday? on his show) Evidently he brought receipts in the form of local Maui news coverage and people’s comments. Interesting, hmm?

    Edited to clarify.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    @Ascap_scab:

    Ramaswamy is an insufferable prick

    My husband watched first half and he agrees. He was relieved. He thinks his personality is bad enough that he’s a nonstarter. He told me “no one will like him – everyone on stage with him hated him”.

  34. 34.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     he’s so obviously a vapid con man that it’s grating to listen to him, but also great because he’s so obviously a vapid con man that it’s just transcendently funny anyone’s falling for this shit

    They never do. Every cycle there’s an Alan Keyes or Ben Carson or Rand Paul who get applause and support on Hate Radio but translates to none at the ballot box.

  36. 36.

    lowtechcyclist

    So, did all the candidates deny the existence of global warming?  Or did most of them just dodge the question?

  37. 37.

    Kay

    I love the “climate change is a hoax” people because they pretend to be so sophisticated but it’s not even that that they’re not sure or they don’t believe the models, it’s that they believe a huge, complex conspiracy theory that involves hundreds of people and tens of institutions and governments. REJECTING the theory of the sheeple, but pulling a different theory out of their ass.

    I always want them to be asked to explain “the hoax”. How does it work?

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    Btw I think they missed the point (or “buried the lede” here): the issue’s not “who’s in 2nd place?” it’s “why are they running for 2nd place?”  And of course, the answer is, they’re terrified of a twice-impeached, one-term, 90+ indictment loser.  It’s just amazing.

    Taken together, it’s entirely possible that the likeliest way for Mr. Trump to lose the nomination involves the mounting weight of his legal challenges, rather than a conventional electoral defeat on the campaign trail and debate stage. That weight could take a variety of forms, including some well short of a conviction, like the possibility that Republican voters gradually reassess the seriousness of the risks facing Mr. Trump as a trial nears — but realistically we’re talking trial, conviction and even imprisonment.
     
    If we stipulate that these risks are in fact the greatest ones facing Mr. Trump, a certain strategy for his opponents begins to take shape: a strategy premised on capitalizing on Mr. Trump’s collapse, should it come. It might involve avoiding conflict with Mr. Trump, rather than trying to bring him down, in hopes of winning the former president’s supporters once he falters. It might involve attacking the other minor candidates, so as to emerge as the likeliest to capitalize on a potential Trump collapse. In time, it’s a strategy that might yield victory.

     

    The whole of the GOP, minus the hardcore MAGAts, is just a-hoping and a-praying that trumpov miraculously keels over and saves them.  The candidates are hoping the same…and just hoping that they happen to be #2 in the polls at the time.

    Not indicative of a healthy party!

  41. 41.

    Anne Laurie

    @Anyway: Where did this notion of bombing Mexico come from?

    Can’t be arsed to search for Patient Zero, but the Build-Our-Wall loonies have really ramped up on the proposal over the past few months.  As far as I can tell, it seriusly chafes their nethers that there’s all this extremely kewl ka-boom!!! footage on the news clips, and “we” (the Freedumb Carcass) doesn’t get to crow about any of it.  If ‘we’ can’t keep this week’s Danger Substance (fentanyl, at the moment) out of ‘our country’ with a wall, can’t we at least make some really newsworthy new ditches and kill a few randos, so all the GOP candidates can flock back down to Texas and squint meaningfully at the Rio Grande?

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    You can kind of see why they’re afraid of Trump when you look at Chris Christie though. Christie is REALLY unpopular. He’s lost nearly all GOP support and picked up no Democrats. His political career is over. Media adore him so he’ll always be paid hundreds of thousands of dollars as a pundit but he has no constituency.

  43. 43.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Baud: ​
     He’s been sinking in the polls, his crowds are weak, he gets heckled at events, his boring crap isn’t generating any low dollar contributions, he fired his campaign manager two weeks ago, the desperation is palpable. I’m thinking he’s signalling for help from Putin and/or going back to aping Dump.

  44. 44.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Anyway:

    Where did this notion of bombing Mexico come from? I believe the orange one refers to that in his speeches as well. The idea of casually referring to bombing a populous neighbor just makes me seethe. Is that big in talk radio/ Josh Rogan/ other RW fever swamps?

    I’ve been hearing references to it for awhile.  I think the underlying RWNJ ‘logic’ is that Mexicans are brown people so it’s OK to bomb them, and illegal immigrants and illegal drugs are coming from Mexico, so they’ve got it coming.

  45. 45.

    Trivia Man

    As a former Jersey boy I was shocked that Christie came off as competent, comfortable in his own skin, and rational. When they asked him about UFO news he handled it as well as he could. Others would have taken it seriously and either answered it DEEP STATE!!! or just pivoted to HUNTER’S LAPTOP SECRECY.

    I wish he’d gone after Rhonda, if only for the viral clips it would have spawned.

    Niki sounded surprisingly firm and not pandering – Somehow she reminded me of Darth Cheney with a golbalist/ MIC/ billionaire lover vibe.

    Did Vivek notice he’s the wrong skin tone for that party? I liked the dig from Christie about age “you can’t be too old but you can be too young”.

  47. 47.

    Jeffro

    btw over on Twitter/X, there’s a CNN focus group clip running where some schmuck asks a dozen Iowa GOP voters “who do you think won the debate?”

    2 for DeSantis

    0 for almost everyone else.

    4 for Nikki Haley

    5…5!…for Vivek Annoying Guy.  They really do just want to be entertained, no matter how utterly stupid or spiteful the entertainer.

    I propose that all Republican voters be disenfranchised for, oh, 20 years or so.  They need time to let it seep in that we’re not running a freaking reality tv show and anointing a winner here.

  48. 48.

    p.a.

    @Kay: I always want them to be asked to explain “the hoax”. How does it work?

     

     

    “Big Ice Core Sample” and “Big Fossilized Pollen” are objectively anti-American institutions.

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @Jeffro:

    I don’t think we’re quite there yet but I wonder if we’ll see that – the GOP base moving further and further away from normal people even on basic things like “does this guy  seem like a decent person?”

    They admire horrible people. Trump probably wasn’t a one-off. They like the people most people dislike. It could continue and intensify.

  51. 51.

    Barry

    @Jeffro: I assume that their *hope* is that collapses, and they can step over his body.  And that’s not 100% futile.  DeSantis tried this, but assumed that Trump would not do what he did in 2016, and take out the guy right behind him.

    However, now he might be too busy, stressed and broke to do that.

  52. 52.

    oldster

    Thanks for the link roundup, Anne Laurie! Hugely helpful to those of us who no longer have access to the middle school gossip table, née Twitter.

  53. 53.

    Jeffro

    @Jeffro: per that thought (the ‘spiteful entertainer’ thing)…I’m racking my brain trying to think of the most insufferable heel on the GOP side (or even some blessed ‘independent’) who could mock trump mercilessly and entertainingly enough to win the nom.

    Maybe Tucker, pre-firing?

    None of their actors or musicians (excuse me, ‘musicians’ ) have what it would take.

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    Ramaswamy is an insufferable prick

    Is he trying to be the Republican Andrew Yang?

    I didn’t watch the debate. I watched a bit of CNN post debate discussion with a panel of snarling pundits. Then I watched a clip of a South Carolina TV station that supposedly was interviewing ordinary citizens who watched the debate, but somehow ended up interviewing the head of the South Carolina Republican Party.

    I guess I might be interested in the reaction of groups of real people to the debate or, failing that, maybe the results of post debate polls.

    I’ve now decided that Nikki Haley is actually running for the 2028 GOP slot (against Kamala Harris)

    Even though she appears to be dumping on Trump now, might she accept the GOP VP nod? Even though Trump probably loses, she might use this to help her in 2028.

  55. 55.

    snoey

    @Jeffro: Those focus groups tend to go for all the inside baseball who made their points better analysis instead of who made it more likely that I would vote for them.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    @Brachiator:

    Then I watched a clip of a South Carolina TV station that supposedly was interviewing ordinary citizens who watched the debate, but somehow ended up interviewing the head of the South Carolina Republican Party.

     
    The media guidebook says that GOP officials are ordinary citizens and, on occasion, undecided voters.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @p.a.:

    So many scientists and research entities and governments, all in lockstep cahoots! This is BY FAR the biggest, most complex “hoax” ever and they believe that theory with no evidence but the rest of us are stupid dupes for believing climate scientists? One would have to be MUCH more gullible to believe the “hoax theory”.

  58. 58.

    tobie

    When do Democrats get to swoop in as the adults in the room? All this talk of the GOP & about the GOP makes me nervous because it’s part of a continuing pattern of ignoring what the Biden administration has done.

    US manufacturing is booming. Does this ever get mentioned once? (No, Nikki, you need to spend money to make this happen. It’s called ROI.)

  59. 59.

    Baud

    @tobie:

    It’s hard for the GOP to not make news the morning after their first debate.

    The bigger oxygen suck are the Trump criminal cases.

  60. 60.

    Suzanne

    It’s not just that nobody attacked DeSantis. He also seemed to be doing nothing to differentiate himself. All of the other candidates — even weirdo Burgum — wanted to be seen and to stand out and so they jumped in to speak multiple times. DeSantis did not. I mean, he wasn’t compelling when he was speaking, so I can see why.

    Vivek was annoying, but he wasn’t boring.

  62. 62.

    PST

    @Jeffro:

    With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
    Here we are now, entertain us
    I feel stupid, and contagious
    Here we are now, entertain us

  63. 63.

    Kay

    @tobie:

    US manufacturing is booming

    Agree. I personally have never seen anything like it.

    But it seems like people prefer the story where US manufacturing is dead – “they’re closing down the textile mills cross the railroad tracks, etc”. Seems like it’s hard to buck that narrative with the reality- the reality is everyone is working and everyone is making money. It’s BROAD. Bottom to top.

  65. 65.

    tobie

    @Baud: post debate coverage is to be expected. I just wonder how Dem talking heads will respond. Campaign season is on and the most common line I’m hearing is that Americans are sick of both parties. It’s the new both-sidesing and it needs to be addressed.

  67. 67.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Take away civil rights, take away healthcare, take away your ability to retire, take away education, take away America’s credit rating and credibility all while pretending they are working for you.

    Modern GOP  has really degenerated into nothing more  “were against it because the other people like it”  Ethnonationalism and Fascism simple aren’t evil enough for them now.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @tobie:

    Obama had 8 where he invested in US manufacturing – it started to pay off – and hopefully Biden will have 8 too. In that context Trump will be just be a blip – a 4 year period of no work within 16 years of productive investment and policy.

  70. 70.

    tobie

    @Kay: Sing it!

    I actually think this is the Democrats best argument. US manufacturing is thriving, the trade deficit has been reversed, Democrats bet on America and it paid off in spades. Heck, you could post flags everywhere on this kind of pitch.

  73. 73.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kay:  That’s because everyone idea of manufacturing is stuck in the 60s and they think it’s thousands of people on an assembly line turning screws so these modern factories with their robots and automatic testing don’t count.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    @satby: Yup.

    I’d like to think that voters have rejected the “let’s shake things up and vote for the rich guy who’s never held elected office” approach, but Gov. Fuzzy Vest shows that it still has appeal with too many of them.

    They are dangerous voters, and we have to overwhelm them.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    Ken

    @tobie: When do Democrats get to swoop in as the adults in the room?

    I suspect at least half the people on that stage want the Democrats to keep being the adults in the room, because they see their only path to victory as a Trump conviction. When it happens, they’ll be screaming about partisan witch hunts, but cheering inside.

  76. 76.

    Nelle

    @Jeffro: My guess is that Iowans are used to meeting candidates personally.  That counts a lot and Vivek is everywhere.  As noted before, even I ended up in a 10 minute “conversation” with him and I’m rarely in public.  My impression is that Mummy and Daddy’s special boy thinks his smile is so dazzling that it will render voters into helpless adoration and they will thus be eager to vote.  He believes in his own superiority Uber alles and will surf on white, male superiority of the republican party to victory.

  77. 77.

    Brachiator

    @tobie:

    Campaign season is on and the most common line I’m hearing is that Americans are sick of both parties.

    This is a continuing complaint. Despite this, voters tend to elect incumbents for statewide offices. They’re just unhappy with other people’s choices.

    But this complaint got Trump some play in 2016.

  78. 78.

    Kay

    @tobie:

    Our local Democratic group told Tim Ryan that he needed to tone down the “manufacturing is dead” rhetoric because it …isn’t true. He was in our county which had 3% unemployment and EVERYONE working overtime moaning about how there was nothing for working class men to do. It was literally us looking at one another and going “is he talking about Ohio?”

    I feel as if the people who say this don’t spend any time around working class people. They’re doing good! They have affordable housing in rustbelt areas and their wages went up and they have a lot of leverage- they’re in demand as workers.

    Things can be true and then change and no longer be true. I don’t know when this became a difficult concept.

  79. 79.

    Suzanne

    @Kay: I’m not sure people “prefer” the trope about manufacturing being dead….. but it is true that manufacturing is much more high-tech than it used to be. It doesn’t require brawn like it used to.

    So, it requires different kinds of people.

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @Brachiator:

    I agree, but the one caveat I have is that I think they’re going to push for third party voting again like they did on 2016, so we’ll probably hear a lot more of that rhetoric than usual.

  81. 81.

    Freemark

    @Kay: My brother certainly does. After spending time with him I truly think the more logical something is the less believable it is for them.

  82. 82.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Anyway: Apparently everyone on The Right is convinced drug cartels have big factories just over the border.  Typical conservatives, they think with a TV and when they watch a movie like Sirocco they ignore all the bits of how the militarization of the War on Drugs is just making it worse and think “send the Navy SEALS in, fuck ya!”

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    They romanticize that work too, though. Producing spark plugs was always hard and dull and dirty. These young men who insist they got a raw deal because they would have loved their fathers manufacturing job are kidding themselves. No one loved those jobs. They did them.

  85. 85.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    The media guidebook says that GOP officials are ordinary citizens and, on occasion, undecided voters.

    Yeah, I have seen that trick before. Unbiased voter panels are probably impossible. Or the networks don’t even bother trying to screen participants.

  86. 86.

    M31

    were they really booing the idea that climate change is a hoax or did they just boo because they heard the words ‘climate change’ and they think it’s a hoax?

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    @tobie: Since Trump isn’t going to pick up many new voters he didn’t have in 2016 or 2020, his real shot at winning is for people who might vote against him to stay home or possibly vote third-party. General weariness with politics, lack of enthusiasm for the options– these make this a lower-turnout election and lower turnout favors Trump, as do strange phenomena like Cornel West or RFK Jr. dividing the left. So the media who want a close horse race, or just want Trump back, are going to be hitting those notes hard.

  88. 88.

    Freemark

    @M31: Reading Kos over at the GOS he thinks Pence won. The fact no one is talking about him here means that may be true. Basically he says Pence comes across as a reliable adult. Personally I doubt it a lot that it helps with Republican voters though.

  89. 89.

    Suzanne

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: They also keep talking about drugs coming from Mexico, and I’m like, you know that cocaine comes from South America, right? And heroin from Pakistan and Afghanistan? And meth from wherever you cook it up?

  91. 91.

    Brachiator

    @Baud:

    I agree, but the one caveat I have is that I think they’re going to push for third party voting again like they did on 2016, so we’ll probably hear a lot more of that rhetoric than usual.

    I understand where you’re coming from on this.

    But if Trump becomes the GOP nominee, his legal status might be so toxic that it repels the people who might otherwise vote third party into aligning with the Democrats.

  93. 93.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay:

    Things can be true and then change and no longer be true. I don’t know when this became a difficult concept.

    Right? It’s like they can’t help but swerve back into that same well-worn groove.

  94. 94.

    gvg

    @Kay: Florida and a lot of states don’t have as much manufacturing. So we aren’t seeing what you are. It’s interesting to hear from you but it’s not universal. Florida actually has agriculture underlying the tourism and fishing and seaports. Fishing has been dying for decades and agriculture is hurting because of Citrus greening wiping out I think it was 200 Billion down to 17 billion in just 20 years. Something like that and the last 3 years have been catastrophic. The companies that pack the fruit and ship it are gone. California is now the biggest citrus growing state but they haven’t grown, and they have greening now too.

    I think you are going to have to tell the rest of the country many times about manufacturing booming. don’t assume it’s obvious or being covered up. It isn’t evenly distributed to all parts of the country.

  95. 95.

    tobie

    @Kay: I guess we’re addicted to the “American carnage” narrative.

    @Matt McIrvin: That narrative depresses turnout. Does the media really benefit from that? Yes, races are tighter but less folks follow politics.

  96. 96.

    Soprano2

    @satby: Not quite that bad here but close – overnight low was around 75, humidity is 94%.  Today’s projected high is 95 degrees. It’s supposed to break on Sunday.

  98. 98.

    Anne Laurie

    @M31: …was Pence even there?

    I get the impression Pence feels about running for President the way Kay points out blue-collar men used to feel about their factory jobs:  It’s not fun, it’s not glamorous, it’s sweaty & arduous and *still* the best option available to him.  He doesn’t have much in the way of political skills (which is why he was chosen as TFG’s vice president in the first place), he’s really dumb, and there’s an Ever Given freighter’s worth of competition for sinecures on the Deeply Religious Christian circuit.

    The ‘campaign’ keeps his name out there, he & Mother get to charge off most of their living expenses, and — who knows? — maybe there will be another (Putin-aided) miracle, and he’ll get offered the VP slot again.  Besides, as mentioned earlier, Mike Dense is the epitome of ‘not very bright’.

  99. 99.

    gvg

    @Kay: Affordable housing is also a problem here in Florida. Of course that is IMO because for so long the economics pushed most builders into all trying to get the luxury buyers market and ignoring the larger middle and lower income market. Then the expensive houses took a long time to sell because that market was saturated. But apparently the numbers didn’t work for profit at lower costs due to land and material costs compared to available. I think that means wages were too low too. Now we have a shortage.

  100. 100.

    Soprano2

    @Jeffro: When you think that they had an easy way to get rid of him for good, by senators voting to convict and then voting that he could never hold public office again, it boggles the mind that they didn’t take it. What were TFG’s voters going to do – quit voting for conservatives? They’d be mad, but eventually most of them would come around to the next awful candidate who promised to do everything TFG did.

  101. 101.

    LadySuzy

    @tobie: I agree. Two challenges for democrats: 1) Pierce the wall of noise and demonstrate to Americans that the democratic party is the one who has solutions, and who has had success… when they are not blocked legislatively by the republicans. 2) New Labels !!! Corporate America will try very hard to lure dissatisfied Americans into voting for New Labels. New Labels, financed by secret corporate money, is a tentative by Corporate America to rebuild a conservative party without the crazies. A conservative party who will continue to push for supply-side economics, for protection of Oil Companies and Big Pharma, for deregulation in banking, environment protection, etc.

  102. 102.

    Betty Cracker

    I saw most of the debate, and I thought they were all terrible. I personally found Pence the most irritating of the lot. Remember what a gross sycophant he was during Trump cabinet meetings, where he’d utter pious, lofty paeans to the shitgibbon’s matchless leadership? He uses that exact same tone to praise himself now.

    I think Pence prepped for the debate by playing endless loop clips of Ronald Reagan tremulously delivering treacly odes to American greatness composed by Peggy Noonan. Ramaswamy is an annoying dickhead, but IMO he did land one effective zinger on Pence when he informed him that it’s not 1980 and Morning In America.

  103. 103.

    tobie

    @LadySuzy: “Pierce the wall of noise.” Very well said!

    I think your two points are closely related. “Supply side” economics is part of the wall of noise, and having the admin tout what they’ve done and the value of investing in America may pierce that credo…or, better yet, myth.

  104. 104.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: It’s all about their framing of it as an “invasion”. Under that logic, we ‘re being “invaded” by people coming from Mexico, so we’d be justified in bombing Mexico to stop the “invasion”. It’s nuts, but that’s the logic.

  105. 105.

    JML

    Nikki Haley definitely bringing the “goddamn it, I’M the GOP’s token minority!” at Vivek & Tim…

  106. 106.

    Betty Cracker

    @gvg: We’ve also got the highest inflation in the country here in Florida, but none of DeSantis’s rivals bothered to point that out, at least not that I saw. (I missed the first part because our baseball game went into extra innings.)

  107. 107.

    tobie

    @Betty Cracker: Hats off to you for surviving that shitshow. I hope you spent some time doing something for yourself afterwards. I don’t think I could have stomached the debate live. You’re made of sterner stuff.

  108. 108.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Good morning! Did I miss anything interesting last night?

    For me the funniest story line in all of the tweets up top (yes, they’re still tweets. And the downtown airport in DC is still Washington National) about how awful Vivek is, how he’s an obvious con man spouting empty rhetoric, how only an idiot could think there’s a there there… followed by Musk saying “hey this guy is really impressive”.

  109. 109.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: For God’s sake, our local community college just built a huge facility dedicated to educating student for the manufacturing sector! It is booming, but because the white blue collar guys are still butthurt that we don’t have factories like we did in the 1960’s, the press is also stuck in that past.

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Oh yeah, my mother had a job like that in a GE motor plant. It was good money but she never romanticized the work-  it was a paycheck for dirty, monotonous work. Toward the end, she talked about how it was so much more computerized than it had been before, and you had to know more – you couldn’t be illiterate and work in a factory at a job like hers.

  111. 111.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Soprano2: I heard one quote to the effect of “I have a wife and family who I have to worry about”. I suspect that undercurrent of worry about physical danger at the hands of enraged MAGAs is out there and pervades the entire party. Those voters are literally a tiger-by-the-tail situation.

  113. 113.

    Torrey

    @M31: ​
      The way I heard it, they could equally have been booing Ramaswamy’s opening remark that he’s “the only person on this stage that isn’t bought and paid for.” The booing starts at the same point where someone says “whoa whoa whoa” and settles down pretty quickly, even as he continues talking about climate change.

  116. 116.

    M31

    “Now that both Republicans and Democrats agree climate change is real, why vote for Democrats?”

    –the New York Times, probably

  117. 117.

    Another Scott

    @Soprano2: Yup.

    National politics has the attention and memory of a (insert favorite small insect here).  Can’t impeach TIFG or it’s the End of the Republic!  Can’t impeach TIFG again or it’s the End of the Republic!  Can’t indict TIFG in a civil case or it’s the End of the Republic and there will be Civil War!  Can’t indict TIFG in a criminal case or it’s the End of the Republic and there will be Civil War!!1

    And on and on.

    3 months after TIFG was removed by the Senate, he would have been just another an low-level white-collar crime boss being investigated and prosecuted by professional prosecutors and he would have been on page D-17 of the newspaper.  And life would go on.  Pence would have had his 3 week honeymoon, the greybeards of the GQP would say they’re taking over from the insurrectionists, etc., etc.  And the country would have been much better off for it.

    We all know that normies don’t pay attention to this stuff the way we do.  Pundits and expensive reporters refuse to believe that, because it affects their eyeballs and clicks…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  118. 118.

    sdhays

    @Suzanne: Never forget: Republican Senator Mike Daines of Montana lamented that artisan Montana meth shops couldn’t compete with the glut of cheap Mexican meth.

  119. 119.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Jeffro: Curmudgeons unite!

    My Dad who grew up in NYC taught me “there’s no such thing as Avenue of the Americas, it’s Sixth Avenue.” I remember a whole funny bit about street renamings in “Mad About You” (revealing as always that I’m an Old).

  120. 120.

    Kay

    @gvg:

    Oh, absolutely. But I’m talking specifically about “the plight of white working class men in the rustbelt”.

    Here’s the top ten states. No one ever guesses California as #1 :)
    Top 10 U.S. Manufacturing States
     

    State
    Number of Manufacturing Jobs
    Number of Manufacturing Companies

    California
    1,385,974
    23,078

    Texas
    1,088,582
    17,637

    Ohio
    864,867
    14,907

    Illinois
    735,084
    14,660

    Michigan
    711,807
    12,238

    Pennsylvania
    710,372
    13,511

    New York
    378,345
    13,996

    Indiana
    585,789
    8,188

    Wisconsin
    574,469
    9,242

    North Carolina
    554,784
    8,723

  121. 121.

    geg6

    @Kay: ​
     
    For real. My dad was a steelworker and he ran heavy machinery for his friend’s cemetery on the side. He worked so hard because he wanted his six kids to never have to do that kind of physically demanding, intellectually unsatisfying work.

  122. 122.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2:

    It was good money but she never romanticized the work-  it was a paycheck for dirty, monotonous work. Toward the end, she talked about how it was so much more computerized than it had been before, and you had to know more – you couldn’t be illiterate and work in a factory at a job like hers. 

    Yeah yeah. Manufacturing takes much more technical skill now than it used to. A couple of years ago, I toured a factory that makes really great building enclosures. Think all those cool metal panels and rainscreens and the like. Basically, the workers controlled everything with software and essentially laid out the raw material only. Robots did all the production labor.

  123. 123.

    Bill Arnold

    @brantl:

    Vivek being a tech dude, he has to know better about climate change. Has to.

    I have seen no evidence in the last month or two that he is a tech dude. He seems more a con man, his utterances the output of a chatbot fine-tuned on right-wing talking points.

  124. 124.

    Marmot

    @Kay:

    Do you have the % population in manufacturing? When I was briefly in Ohio, manufacturing pervaded the culture or feel or whatever. Not so here in TX.

    If it’s not % of population, is that just about history and regional stereotypes, like goddamn cowboys here?

  125. 125.

    Glidwrith

    @Princess: I wonder if they’re going to treat SFB the way they do rape, kiddy diddlers and climate change: pretending he doesn’t exist until he goes away.

  127. 127.

    Ruckus

    Take away civil rights, take away healthcare, take away your ability to retire, take away education, take away America’s credit rating and credibility all while pretending they are working for you.

    Danelle Dodge.

    One short sentence, she says it all.

  128. 128.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Kay: ​These young men who insist they got a raw deal because they would have loved their fathers manufacturing job are kidding themselves. No one loved those jobs. They did them.

    My father didn’t love the job he had for >30 years, running a large machine that took two huge spools of two plastic-clad wires and fused them into one huge spool’s worth of plastic-clad paired wires. But he was utterly, consistently grateful for it. It beat the hell out of growing up on pasta made with government relief flour and then being stuffed into uniform and sent off to the Pacific. It allowed him to buy a house, buy a new car every so often, eat meat six days a week, raise a family, send his kids off to college so they’d never have to come home from work and scrub their hands with Lava soap before supper, and live comfortably in retirement for the last 20 years of his life. Those are no mean accomplishments for a kid growing up in Appalachia during the Depression.

    The important fact you miss is that those postwar “good manufacturing jobs” for the most part didn’t even require a high school education – and them as romanticize them don’t want to (or can’t) do the schoolwork that would qualify them for the jobs in the current marketplace. The important fact they miss is that what made those jobs available in large numbers to the marginally-educated from 1945 to 1975 were economic and historical conditions that will likely never be seen again.

  129. 129.

    VOR

    @Betty Cracker: I personally found Pence the most irritating of the lot. Remember what a gross sycophant he was during Trump cabinet meetings, where he’d utter pious, lofty paeans to the shitgibbon’s matchless leadership?

    IMHO, Pence both came off as a pompous blow-hard (I was in the hallway where it happened) and as one of the few adults on the stage. Except he is running to lead a party which doesn’t want adults, they want con men telling them stories about the evil other. I simply do not understand who possibly could be Pence’s constituency.

    I have zero doubt Haley would take Trump’s VP slot if offered. She would memory hole every past criticism so fast it would make your head spin. But it is curious they refer to her as Governor and not Ambassador.

    Vivek is fully in line with TFG’s American Carnage idea. Everything is bleak. RdS keeps citing Florida (!!!) as a success story to be emulated and I keep wondering whether that will survive this year’s  hurricane season.

    Hutchinson also came off as one of the few adults. I remember he came to prominence as one of the managers for Clinton’s impeachment. By 1990s Gingrich standards he was a far right ideologue but in 2023 he’s practically a RINO.

  130. 130.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:

    My dad brought our first numerical control/computerized machine in 1973. I was the one that learned to program it, run it. The last two machines I brought about 15 yrs later were highly specialized types that cost $450,000. for the two of them, could run 24 hrs a day unsupervised, worked to very much small tolerances. The concepts computers  brought have changed manufacturing rather dramatically, along with the rest of our lives. Think about what we are doing here on this blog, discussing everything from ten or thousands of miles away, as if we are talking over the back fence to a neighbor. Or being able to know what goes on, on the other side of the country or halfway around the world, as it happens. As a plus we get to see how some of our “politicians” are far worse than useless, they can be outright dangerous to us all. (Bet you know who I mean…)

  131. 131.

    Geminid

    @VOR: Hutchinson may have learned things as a Governor that he did not know as a Congressman. It’s a more responsible post.

  132. 132.

    Paul in KY

    @Kay: The ‘hoax’ is that people are responsible for it. Really it’s animal farting (pigs/cattle) that is responsible, dontchaknow.

  133. 133.

    VOR

    @Geminid: Agree. Republican representatives seem to be heavy on performance theater and light on accountability. Hutchinson was head of the DEA and later part of Homeland Security so actual responsibilities. And as you note, 8 years as governor dealing with messy reality including the COVID pandemic.

    I suspect Mr. Hutchinson and I would disagree on almost everything, but I think he at least acknowledges reality so that puts him ahead of the MAGAts.

  135. 135.

    lee

    @lowtechcyclist: It has been a multi-pronged approach this time.

    Here in Texas is it razor wire to stop the ‘invasion’.  Then there is the fentanyl. On top of that is the occasional US tourist that gets killed in Mexico. Then Abbott and DeSatan are busy trafficking the immigrants to dehumanize them.

    I’ve always countered the whiners about ‘illegal immigration’ with two points which quickly shut them up. If you really want to shut down immigration from Mexico you realistically have two choices:

    1) Go after the employers hard with serious jail time.

    2) Annex Mexico. Make Mexican states US states 51-83.

    They don’t particularly like either option.

  136. 136.

    Geminid

    @VOR: I am glad Hutchinson is in the race. He seems the most disinterested of that motley crew. The rest are pretty obviously trying to get something or somewhere.

  137. 137.

    artem1s

    The whole deplorable field of GQPer candidates have outed themselves as grifters with that stoopid promise to support TFG. If any of them were serious about running and winning they would be refusing to get swamped by that quagmire. The only one who might has deluded himself into thinking he is actually running is that asshole God-botherer Pence. He’s just vain and dense enough to believe God wants him to be president so it will magically happen. And even he is mostly in it for the bucks.
    Gifters all the way down. Even Nikki is auditioning for a 2028 VP slot with Darth Cheney, Jr.

  138. 138.

    wjca

    @VOR:

    it is curious they refer to her [Haley] as Governor and not Ambassador.

    Not sure it’s that curious.  Governor is high status.  Ambassador implies you consorted with furriners, and are therefore suspiciously close to “those people.”  Goes double if you look like you are one of “those people” yourself.

  139. 139.

    Citizen Alan

    @Paul in KY: No, that’s a hoax too. Because if it really were because of cow/pig farts, it means we’d have to abolish factory farming. When they say climate change is a hoax, they mean “all bad weather is God’s will, so if the weather is getting bad everywhere, it’s because the whole world is sinful and we should go back to stoning gays.”

  140. 140.

    artem1s

    @Kay: ​ 

    Our local Democratic group told Tim Ryan that he needed to tone down the “manufacturing is dead” rhetoric because it …isn’t true.

    I don’t know who was running his campaign but they did a shit job and completely bought into the whole idea that they needed to appeal to the WWC Diner assholes. He made no effort to reach out to the African American base in Cleveland or Akron/Canton areas. He can’t grasp that no one who believes this Libertarian/Chamber of Commerce/MAGAt crap is going to vote for him over Vance. It’s so frustrating – it’s like he’s never set foot outside Youngstown.

  141. 141.

    evodevo

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: ​
      Yep…my son, who was 20 at the time, worked at a factory line job for a whole THREE WEEKS before he cut his hand and just ghosted it…never went back lol…was a deciding factor in getting his butt back in college after he flunked out.

  145. 145.

    Fair Economist

    @Bill Arnold:

    have seen no evidence in the last month or two that [Vivek] is a tech dude. He seems more a con man, his utterances the output of a chatbot fine-tuned on right-wing talking points.

    Tomayto, tomahto.

     

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