Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fuck that bum, let’s go Joe!

Pelosi: “He either is stupid, or he thinks the rest of us are.” Why not both?

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

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

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Second rate reporter says what?

The words do not have to be perfect.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

A consequence of cucumbers

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

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

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

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

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Dank Grey Dawn: Reports From Last Night’s GOP Circular Firing Squad

Dank Grey Dawn: Reports From Last Night’s GOP Circular Firing Squad

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TL, DR: To the surprise of absolutely nobody, all five candidates campaigned urgently for the TFG VP slot. Vivek definitely put on the most ‘unhinged’ (his own word) performance, hoping to be the next GOP Goatse… but I personally doubt TFG would even let Ramaswamy in the same room with him, for fear he’d poison the Big Macs. (And for once, I gotta agree, I’d feel the same way.) Ron DeSaster is running because he’s too embarrassed to quit, at this point (and besides, Casey won’t let him). Nikki is burnishing her credentials for a Did I Not WARN Y’All? run in 2028, and if she weren’t a Republican I might even feel sorry for her. Chris Christie is running because it gives him a bigger platform to chew on TFG’s puffy ankles — I still think he could be Haley’s VP candidate in the next cycle, assuming he doesn’t succumb to an anger-related medical event. And Tim Scott is running because… well, what else has he got to do with his time, these days?



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Meanwhile: Increasingly addled loser plays his greatest hits for the hardcore 27%…

Reader Interactions

122Comments

  1. 1.

    bbleh

    Lol the Dark Brandon signs are genius.

    And yeah Dana Houle says really all there is to be said.  Only question for me is, who is more contemptible: the assholes who are out loud and proud about it, or the other 20-plus percent who go along with the assholes because they’ve thought about it?

  2. 2.

    Mel

    Based upon her history, Haley’s “obvious talents” include, but certainly aren’t limited to: homophobic hatred, shameless lying, being comfy with cults, etc.

    She’s damned dangerous and every bit as evil as the rest of the GOP horrorshow; she’s just a bit more clever, and wrapped in a prettier, more visually deceptive package.

  3. 3.

    Baud

    @Mel:

    Based upon her history choice of political party, Haley’s “obvious talents” include, but certainly aren’t limited to: homophobic hatred, shameless lying, being comfy with cults, etc.

  4. 4.

    Suzanne

    Deeper analysis is valuable, but here’s all the analysis that’s essential: about 30% of Americans are assholes, & most of them are Republican primary voters. And assholes love Trump.

    Yes.

  6. 6.

    mrmoshpotato

    Thomas Harris needs to threaten to sue Dump to keep one of his character’s names out of Dump’s Kremlin-and-Saudi-ass-sucking, resting-butthole-face whore mouth.

  7. 7.

    Princess

    I have to come in and kvetch. I just read the headline and first line of the stupidest Frank Bruno column of maybe ever. The premise was a parallel between dull plodding GHWBush and the best President of my lifetime, bar none, Joe Biden. Evidently the two are snoresville and Biden will lose just like “what’s a grocery scanner?” George did — I couldn’t read sooner. NYT must be offering a bonus for every Biden is old think piece. They must be thrilled with their poll showing it has an effect.

  9. 9.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I was all ready for that creepy DeSantis smile at the end of his closing.  I still hollered out when it happened and startled my sleeping dog.  He then grabbed a shoe and made me chase him.  Good times.

  10. 10.

    Jeffro

    It took about 100 minutes (out of 120) to get to the abortion question.  Great job, moderators/NBC!

    If he’s running in order to get his own Fox or Newsmax show, I’m not sure Vivek understands that he’ll need someone – anyone – to want to actually watch his schtick for more than 30 seconds without grinding their teeth.

  11. 11.

    Soprano2

    @Princess: Good grief! HW Bush lost partly because there was a recession but he acted like things weren’t that bad. I spent 7 months looking for a job while hearing him say that the job market wasn’t bad. I wasn’t as politically aware as I am now and that still pissed me off. He acted like not being able to find a job was a personal failure and your own fault. The job I finally found was way below what my skills and credentials merited, but I needed the money so I took it. I bet there were a lot of people like me. I can’t imagine Biden ever acting like that.

  12. 12.

    Soprano2

    @Jeffro: But they had time to ask how they were going to bring down prices! Do they want wage/price controls? Why does anyone with a brain think the president can do that?

  13. 13.

    gene108

    I don’t think Vivek’s beef with Nikki is about some Hindu-Sikh rivalry. Vivek doesn’t seem that religious and Haley supposedly converted to Christianity after her marriage.

    I think he sees her in a lane he wants to occupy as the non-threatening (to white people) brown minority candidate, and she’s better than him as a politician.

  14. 14.

    Jeffro

    This is interesting: The GOP Could Win With Normie Candidates

    I’m not sure I want the word to get out, though…hmm…

    It was a race that will never get the attention of an Ohio abortion vote, a Democratic governor winning reelection in deep-red Kentucky, or Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s failed attempt to wrest control of his state legislature.  But for the sake of the Republican Party, it perhaps should.

    While Gov. Andy Beshear (D) steered his way to a relatively easy victory Tuesday, Kentucky Republicans swept every other statewide race. And no candidate took more votes than Secretary of State Michael Adams (R).  Adams is merely the latest candidate to show his party how successful it can be when it doesn’t marginalize itself with such things as election denialism — and even fights back against it.

  15. 15.

    Jeffro

    @Soprano2: But they had time to ask how they were going to bring down prices! Do they want wage/price controls? Why does anyone with a brain think the president can do that?

    I know, right?  At this point, it’s kind of hopeless: many, maybe a majority of, Americans seem to think the President is in charge of prices (especially gas prices).

    I have no idea how many years and billions of education and/or ad dollars it would take to change this, but I’m certain it’s too many.  And it would all be swept away anyway the next time Party X or Y wants to take the quick route to win an election.

  17. 17.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jeffro:

    A simpler explanation for GOPers sweeping all those undercard races in Kentucky would be: that’s the default in Kentucky.  Beshear is the exception.

    Like Beshear four years ago, a Dem can win if the Rethug has some serious weaknesses to exploit and the Dem is a strong enough candidate to take advantage of them. (And it was a very narrow win anyway.) But that’s what it takes, so it’s not going to happen very often.

    Should I ask which idiot wrote that piece?

  18. 18.

    Marleedog

    @Jeffro: i think PAB needs to exit the scene before the GOP fever can break, and it will even take some time after that.  20 years hence, perhaps.

  20. 20.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Good grief! HW Bush lost partly because there was a recession but he acted like things weren’t that bad.

    Which is something Biden’s team needs to be wary of. The “economy” is doing great by economic standards. If you’re young and trying to buy a house, or if your wages didn’t keep up with the last bout of inflation, the “economy” sucks. So, touting his economic wins, of which there are many, while addressing the home budget stressors for a significant portion of the voting population, requires some finesse. IMO.

  21. 21.

    Anoniminous

    @Soprano2:

    Evangelicals are the controlling majority of GOP primary voters.  People who believe in talking snakes can swallow any old bullshit.

  22. 22.

    Jeffro

    @lowtechcyclist: the rest of the article talks about races and the GOP’s results all across the country, and how the election-denier candidates tend to do about two percentage points worse than non-deniers, on average.

    so, maybe not an idiot?  =)

  24. 24.

    Yarrow

    @Jeffro:

    Adams is merely the latest candidate to show his party how successful it can be when it doesn’t marginalize itself with such things as election denialism — and even fights back against it.

    And if he votes to ban abortion then he’ll be on record and that won’t be popular. It’s easy for him to seem non-threatening in a position like SOS.

  25. 25.

    bbleh

    @Soprano2: @Jeffro: also, has anyone besides me (and eclare a few threads back) noticed that gas prices have come WAY DOWN?  Like 40-50 cents here in cheap-gas-because-poor-people land, and in some places a whole dollar?  Anyone else noticed all the screaming headlines about that?  No?

  26. 26.

    Anoniminous

    @Jeffro:

    To the FTNYT and its readers Republicans winning in a state dominated by Republican voters is totally unexpected and needs analysis.

  29. 29.

    Dangerman

    @gene108: I think he sees her in a lane …

    … and hits the gas pedal.

    When the Dude says he’d be smoking them, I’m thinking, ah, it all becomes clear now.

  34. 34.

    sab

    @lowtechcyclist: The abortion thing should really help Sherrod Brown next year in Ohio. But the Cleveland PD did a graphic that shows that the win was with the major city turning out in droves and voting 75% yes for Issue 1 ( amd Issue 2.) They both lost in rural counties, but mostly not by much. So we have a chance in statewide offices with good candidates, but the gerrymandered legislative districts will comtinue.

  35. 35.

    SFAW

    @mrmoshpotato: ​
     

    Dump’s Kremlin-and-Saudi-ass-sucking, resting-butthole-face whore mouth.

    Too long to fit on a bumper sticker, but as rikyrah might say: “No lie told.”

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    @Anoniminous: The conservative evangelical vote varies state to state, region to region. I think they are a majority in states like Arkansas, Tennessee, and Alabama.

    In Virginia they are not a majority of primary voters, but their alliance with tea party cranks can prevail over the Chamber of Commerve/Country Club wing that used to call the shots in the party. That’s how Dave Brat beat Eric Cantor in their 2014 primary. One irony here is that the establishment welcomed the bible thumpers as reliable voters but lost moderates as a result, a zero-sum game.

    And those the establishment thought would be  willing junior partners aligned themselves with the populists who gathered strength from 2010 on. In 2021, Youngkin papered over the party rift with a lot of checks but those divisions still remain.

    I think further into the Northeast evangelicals are less of a force. That may be so  in the Midwest also.

  37. 37.

    Marmot

     

    @Jeffro:

    the rest of the article talks about races and the GOP’s results all across the country, and how the election-denier candidates tend to do about two percentage points worse than non-deniers, on average.

    Listening to NPR yesterday, the commentators did everything possible not to credit Dems. It was all about how abortion really won the various contests.

    Back here in reality, election denial and book-banning Repubs lost tons of races down-ballot.

    I want to ask the NPR folks which party stands for which things.

  38. 38.

    Yarrow

    @Jeffro: A lot of people generally just want things to be normal. Whatever that is. A Republican candidate that doesn’t scream about elections being stolen or about how women must be punished for their healthcare needs can come across as “normal.” I think Republicans could win with those candidates. The problem is, they have to win primaries and their base wants the frothing-at-the-mouth crazy.

  39. 39.

    Barbara

    @Jeffro: Snark aside, I guess the point is that you don’t actually have to be a freak to win as a Republican in a red state. Since Beshear, the non-freak Democrat also won, this does not seem surprising, but the message to Republicans apparently is that you don’t have to compete to be the biggest freak.​ So comforting.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    @Jeffro: I keep saying this: when the GOP gets over their abusive love affair with Trump (acute Long MAGA), they will definitely win again.

    Everyone was excited about Arizona going for Biden last time, and Kari Lake going down in flames….. but the non-MAGA GOP candidates there won their races. Even in those otherwise very blue years.

  42. 42.

    Ramalama

    That Vivek wanted to come off as unhinged, and DeSantis providing that smarm-lick / smarm-smile at the end of his God Bless, plus Trump’s generally disgusting everything: talk, dance, policies, and his courtroom antics all point to something Marcy Wheeler has beautifully laid out. GOP want you to focus on how gross or stupid their people are so we all don’t talk about how they Grand Ol Perverts have been been implementing fascism Lite already and will only continue to do so.

    Also:

    Trump doesn’t care if a bunch of self-satisfied people mock him as a clown. Indeed, that’s what he wants. Because every time they do so publicly, it reaffirms that he’s the guy on the side of average people, fighting the pencil-headed assholes who frown at the little guy. Plus, if you mock something as serious as a lifetime of defrauding financial institutions as a circus, rather than explain how it allowed Trump to get something he hadn’t earned, it tells everyone that Trump’s adjudged fraud isn’t really serious. In your actions, you confirm the argument he is making.

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    Ramaswamy is such an irritating prick. The most relatable thing about Haley is that you can tell she wants to take off a shoe and hammer his giant forehead with it.

    Speaking of shoes, I read that Ramaswamy made an opaque allusion to Ron DeSantis’s hidden wedge heels, but it was probably too subtle for the collected chuckleheads in the audience to catch. Pity!

  48. 48.

    SFAW

    @Baud: ​
     

    The Republican M.O. is to blow up the economy and then blame Dems for the aftermath.

    My brother, long ago, opined that Nassau County (NY) Rethugs, when they had elected power, would do just that — blow things up (George Takei voice: “Oh my!”), get thrown out of office, but the Dems would have to take such drastic measures to fix things that Rethugs would get elected the next time. Lather, rinse, repeat.

  50. 50.

    Princess

    Trump doesn’t debate these hasbeens because he doesn’t have to but that’s because neither they nor the press makes it an issue. Fact is, I think he’s scared to debate — he can rant at a rally but he can’t listen to questions and respond to them. We saw that in court. There will be no debate with Biden.

  51. 51.

    SFAW

    @eclare:

    I think TIFG was actually attempting to be “ironic.”

    In my addled mind, that seems more likely than him really thinking Lecter was “nice.” Of course, I am frequently worng.

  52. 52.

    MomSense

    I watched bits and pieces of the debate, and they are all so ridiculous.  And TFG is disgusting.  I can’t relate at all to what people find appealing about any of them.

  53. 53.

    sab

    OT: Emilia Sykes’s mother Barbara ran for one of the three open slots for school board. Eight candidates and she got twice as many votes as the next candidate. Impressive. And no Moms for Liberty this year.

  56. 56.

    Kay

    I think what Democrats have managed to do is turn some (enough) of their sporadic/ every four year voters into reliable voters. Trump/Republicans have not been able to do this.

    Which is remarkable, really. Sort of the holy grail of turnout but the edge won’t last – Republicans will figure it out eventually.

  58. 58.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Yes, but it’s things like early vote too. We can reach sporadic voters in a really granular, methodical way over weeks, banking votes.

    Voting is a habit. We’ll retain the edge w/out Trump or Dobbs. They’re now regular liberal voters – less “normie”

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Suzanne:

    But voters perceptions of themselves change – if they voted for Sinema as barely a Democrat and then they follow that with voting for a more liberal Democrat they will no longer be GOP voters – like the Trumpists who used to be Democrats are no longer Democrats – they’re not coming back.

  61. 61.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: It’s a sliding scale, though. Today’s cultural center is in many ways wild-eyed ultra-liberalism by the standards of when I was a teenager. Legal pot, gay couples getting married? You’d have been laughed out of mainstream politics for advocating any of that. It was crazy hippie nonsense, if that. Not to mention the phenomenon of big strikes ending in the workers actually winning instead of being flattened like bugs by presidential edict.

  62. 62.

    Mustang Bobby

    @sab: I was pleasantly surprised to see Issue 1 win in Wood County, the one just south of Lucas County, which is Toledo and environs.  I grew up in Wood County, which is woefully red, but I credit the win to a lot of the blue folk who work in Toledo and Bowling Green State University.

  63. 63.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yes, I agree.  And I think it’s political malpractice for liberals to be bleak all the time about everything given the progress we’ve made. But we do exchange the desire for continued progress for increased popularity IMHO.  It’s hard to balance being in the cutting edge and being mainstream.

  64. 64.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    What they’re excited about in Ohio is the margins. So we get 75/25 margins in cities but we used to get 45/55 or 40/60 margins in rural areas. Trump changed that, so rural areas were 25/75

    the last two specials in Ohio it changed back

  65. 65.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The pattern used to be that Republicans could turn out their voters more reliably than we could, so in the lower-turnout elections they had an advantage. And a lot of it was the cultural stuff– abortion and gay people. Actually succeeding at overturning Roe, when public sentiment is if anything more pro-abortion-rights than it was then, flipped the script. But also, to stoke the sex/gender fear they have to pick on smaller and smaller groups and the supposed menace is less plausible.

  66. 66.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    I wish the were a way to crack the rural vote. Not to win them, but just to reduce their margins. They don’t seem to respond to tangible benefits though.

  67. 67.

    Geminid

    @MomSense: I don’t think that many Republicans find the five debaters very appealing. A popular and dynamic politician could break out of the pack and give Trump a run for his money but there wasn’t one on the stage.

    And it’s not certain that anyone who beat Trump could rally the hard-core Trumpers behind them. That dynamic may have kept better candidates out of the race. Republicans have not figured out how to separate Trump from Trump’s voters, and they do not have a path to victory without them.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Jeffro:

    It took about 100 minutes (out of 120) to get to the abortion question.  Great job, moderators/NBC!

    There was not a single question about guns.
    There was not a single question about climate change.
    This is inexcusable.

  70. 70.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I think it’s a little too soon to say WHY we’re doing it – because Dobbs, yeah, but they’re also turning out to beat Moms for Liberty.

    It might mean our voters are getting more issue based, which is good. Democrats think their ideas are popular and they will win if it’s about that.

  71. 71.

    Yarrow

    @Kay: I haven’t seen anything about this election but in recent elections young people have been voting at higher rates than they have in awhile. Young people do not like Republicans, from what I understand, so they may provide a bit of a margin as well.

  73. 73.

    p.a.

    If Vivek, Tim, and Nikki wandered into a rally of their own supporters who had heard their words but never seen a photo, they’d be lucky to leave with only bumps & bruises.

  74. 74.

    Ken

    @Baud: If they’re wrong and Biden wins, no one will ever hold them accountable.

    Come the revolution….

    “We’re not assigning you to menial labor because of your pre-revolution political analysis. It’s because you were factually wrong over 80% of the time. You are just not good at punditry, so we are finding you work that better fits your skills.”

  75. 75.

    p.a.

    @Baud: I wish the were a way to crack the rural vote. Not to win them, but just to reduce their margins. They don’t seem to respond to tangible benefits though.

     

    The best we can hope is for them to get discouraged and just stay home.

    Would like an analysis of how much the Christofascist churches crossing the line into politics are a driving force, before, and above-beyond tRump/tRumpism.  Remember, Ronnie Rayguns & Shrub were thought to be god’s regents too.🤢

  76. 76.

    oldgold

    I thought the moderators were horrible. The questions the moderators asked, for the most part, assumed  the Maga view of the United States. That the economy and domestic social fabric of the country is unraveling.

    The moderators, to some degree, should have challenged this Maga world view. Or, after listening to their litany of complaints, asked what is your party doing in the part of the government they control, the House of Representatives, to address these problems. And, given the chaos there, why should Americans entrust your party with any more power?

  77. 77.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: The progressive instinct is to always move the goalposts, and that’s how it should be, that’s how progress works. But I also think there are a lot of temperamental conservatives whose attitude is “the progressivism of when I was a kid made sense, but then we reached the finish line and everything was fixed. And you’re still complaining? What will satisfy you? This stuff you’re advocating now is just crazy!”

  78. 78.

    sab

    @Kay: I think early voting is huge. For working people, especially those with young children, finding the time and opportunity to vote on election day can be a real problem. If anything hangs you up tjen the polls close before you can get there. Especially the way they are changing poll locations in the cities every election.

    There were a lot of people on Tuesday who turned up at the wrong site and had to be redirected to the correct one. With early voting there is only one site, and voters can make arrangements for transportation and the kids.

  79. 79.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I credit the win to a lot of the blue folk who work in Toledo and Bowling Green State University.

    I’m glad enough of them survived the Bowling Green Massacre to make a difference. ;-)

  80. 80.

    Yarrow

    @Kay:

    But voters perceptions of themselves change – if they voted for Sinema as barely a Democrat and then they follow that with voting for a more liberal Democrat they will no longer be GOP voters – like the Trumpists who used to be Democrats are no longer Democrats – they’re not coming back.

    So like there were Reagan Democrats, are these Biden Republicans?

  81. 81.

    artem1s

    @Jeffro: ​ 

    Adams is merely the latest candidate to show his party how successful it can be when it doesn’t marginalize itself with such things as election denialism

    Yea, but he’s in KY, not on the national stage. Currently a sane candidate can’t poll high enough to get on that debate stage last night. The Party of Chaos demands you show your Krazy Klown Kred in order to get in the club and keep up Krazy to stay with the rest of the pack and stay on the stage. Vivik gets it and is even saying it out loud. Until they dump TIFG they are stuck with this model. They haven’t won the WH with the popular vote in 4 decades. And they’ve only won state elections and the EC by enacting severe voter suppression laws and gerrymandering the hell out of key districts. And besides, Adams is the SoS in a tiny state who will continue the practice of voter suppression and gerrymandering so the GOP can keep control of the KY state house. He didn’t have a sweeping win because he didn’t play Super MAGAt. He won because the KY GOP set the stage for him decades ago.

  82. 82.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Matt McIrvin: Yes, that’s definitely right about a range of “cultural” issues, and they are important. (LGBT rights, reproductive health care, most obviously, are crucial.) But on questions relating to the distribution of wealth and income (sexy topics such as marginal tax rates) it seems if anything to have gone the other way. So a lot of people are worse off, at least relatively, and some of them are then more easily angered by the cultural issues. Biden’s support of the labor movement helps a little, and he could have done a lot more if he’d had a reliable majority in the Senate in his first two years. But it’s going to take a very long time to get back to the (somewhat) more equitable distribution of wealth and income that prevailed when I was a teenager (but I’m probably older than you; everyone seems so young nowadays).

  83. 83.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: It is sure not the pattern where our base turns out once every four years and just votes for President.

  84. 84.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Baud: As the Pitchbot says, if Biden wins in 2024,…

    @DougJBalloon If Biden wins in 2024, that will only highlight just how bad his approval rating is relative to his actual electoral performance and show, in effect, that he is much less popular than himself.

  86. 86.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brit in Chicago: I think the whole political spectrum went very neolib/corporatist on economics up through the 1990s and early 2000s but the Democrats have reversed direction since then. The 2004 cycle was rock bottom. The Great Recession was a turning point.

  87. 87.

    gvg

    @bbleh: No, because they don’t seem to have changed that much where I am. I am just not seeing the dramatic swings some of you are.

  88. 88.

    Kay

    @sab:

    I agree. NJ has turned their sporadic voters into regular voters simply by mailing them an absentee ballot every year. My daughter is in NY and she says NY voting regs are archaic and restrictive compared to Ohio. I like using “convenient” as language for voting administration – there’s no reason to be stuck in the 1950s on this. Modernize. Make it convenient.

  89. 89.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @gene108: I don’t think Vivek’s beef with Nikki is about some Hindu-Sikh rivalry

    India is a successor state to the British Empire, just like the US. So the same attitudes about there are Others who need to be put in their place.

  90. 90.

    lowtechcyclist

    @bbleh:

    also, has anyone besides me (and eclare a few threads back) noticed that gas prices have come WAY DOWN?  Like 40-50 cents here in cheap-gas-because-poor-people land, and in some places a whole dollar?  Anyone else noticed all the screaming headlines about that?  No?

    I’ve noticed the drop in gas prices.  Gas was around $3.80/gallon here just a few months ago, but now it’s in the low $3.20s.  So ~55¢ cheaper lately.  (‘Here’ being Calvert County, MD.)

    But apparently it’s not newsworthy.  Can’t have people thinking the economy is good.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    Well, I don’t think we’re sticking around in and around Corpus Christie. My husband is horrified that Texans drive onto the beach and down to the water. Says if he wanted to walk and swim in a parking lot he would do that. He’s also horrified that no one walks or rides bikes in the barrier islands. It IS kind of odd to see a beach community where no one is on a bike. I sort of knew he wouldn’t like it but he was coming for business anyway so I said we could tac on a vaca too.

  92. 92.

    Suzanne

    @Kay:

    But voters perceptions of themselves change – if they voted for Sinema as barely a Democrat and then they follow that with voting for a more liberal Democrat they will no longer be GOP voters – like the Trumpists who used to be Democrats are no longer Democrats – they’re not coming back. 

    That’s true, but the people that would actually identify as a Democrat — even a weak one — are not as numerous as we would hope. The most popular party registration in Arizona is Independent. Then Republican is #2. Democratic is #3. And the parties are themselves less entrenched and less visible than in older parts of the country. Shit, I couldn’t throw a rock here in PA without seeing a local party organization, which is cool. I see the Dem table at the farmer’s market, at local street fairs, etc. But in AZ, you have to dig a bit. There’s a lot of people who don’t really have political alignment at all and just vote for whomever seems more likeable or whomever they’re less mad at. The GOP can get a lot of these people if they aren’t batty.

  93. 93.

    gvg

    @artem1s: Bush won reelection in 2004 with the popular vote, unfortunately. Sometimes we are stupid.  A few more months of casualties and I don’t think he would have.

  94. 94.

    gene108

    @Matt McIrvin:

    The progressive instinct is to always move the goalposts, and that’s how it should be, that’s how progress works. But I also think there are a lot of temperamental conservatives whose attitude is “the progressivism of when I was a kid made sense, but then we reached the finish line and everything was fixed. And you’re still complaining? What will satisfy you? This stuff you’re advocating now is just crazy!”

    Most people understand live and let live as a philosophy to adhere to. Gay couple gets married, average looks around, sees life is the same and decides gay marriage isn’t a problem.

    When liberal activists start pushing for normies to make changes is when a backlash builds, whether it’s over something like what qualifies as work place harassment or coming up with non-binary pronouns people are supposed to use.

    It’s making non-liberal activists work, even in minimal ways, to move things forward that gets blowback.

  97. 97.

    gene108

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    India is a successor state to the British Empire, just like the US. So the same attitudes about there are Others who need to be put in their place.

    1. For fucks sake, who the hell is post-colonial India trying to colonize? What territorial expansion goals does India have or demonstrated in the past 76 years? India just wants to keep its current borders intact despite Chinese and Pakistani claims.

    2. I’m a Tamil Brahmin raised in the U.S., like Vivek, but older. I have never met someone from my community raised in the U.S. who gives a shit about caste differences or religious differences. It’s absolutely irrelevant to life in the U.S. to bother caring.

  98. 98.

    RevRick

    @Soprano2: The reason why Biden’s polling is so meh is because a huge chunk of the electorate believes that the President is in charge of everything, and if they’re grumpy about the way things are going, it must be the President’s fault.

  99. 99.

    Soprano2

    @Marmot: On 1A yesterday, they did a decent job, but they talked about the Mississippi governor’s race without ever mentioning how they ran out of ballots in Jackson!

  100. 100.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: I’m not sure the distinction between “live and let live” and “I have to make a change” is that clear-cut. Of course conservatives always find ways to frame living and letting live as an imposition: “defending marriage”, claiming that creeps are going to invade your bathroom or trans people are sports cheaters, etc.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    We’re going to the botanical garden and then heading to the national seashore park. He’ll like the gardeners and campers. It is odd to see a line of pickup trucks right at the waters edge. What do they do when it’s crowded? There wouldn’t be any room for people.

  102. 102.

    Soprano2

    @Matt McIrvin: That’s true, when I was young the only place gay people could be open was in big cities, and even there it could be risky. Now I think a gay couple could live in the town where I grew up and as long as they weren’t too flamboyant they’d probably be OK. Black people still couldn’t live there safely, though. I remember in one class we had to come up with a sentence of some kind, I forget why, and one of my friends said something like “Our town is so racist that even Bill Cosby couldn’t live here”. It was true, too.

  104. 104.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: The same thing happened in Missouri. Clare McCaskill said that if she could get 35% in the rural counties she could win Missouri statewide. Plus, the population in St. Louis and Kansas City has been declining, that hurt Democrats a lot here. It wasn’t that long ago that we had a Democratic governor, Secretary of State, and auditor. Now they’re all Republicans.

  105. 105.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: We’ve been making this kind of progress in my city. It’s slow, but it’s real. Eight years ago there was only one Democrat in the state legislature from Springfield – this year, there are three, all women. In the last school board election all the Moms-type candidates lost in favor of “normie” candidates. I’m hoping that next April if the Moms-type candidate runs for re-election he loses. He was a stealth candidate; he ran as just a normal dad kind of person, then after he was elected he started going on local right wing radio programs spouting all that crap. He certainly didn’t campaign on it.

  106. 106.

    Soprano2

    @lowtechcyclist: It’s dropped over $1.00/gal here in the past month. I bought gas at $2.68/gal yesterday. Of course, the press never talks about that, but if it starts going up again I’m sure it’ll be on the news.

  108. 108.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Did you go out to the Padre Islands National Seashore? It’s nice out there. I don’t know if they can drive on the beach, but I know it’s not developed right up to the water.

  109. 109.

    Ramalama

    @Soprano2:

    when I was young the only place gay people could be open was in big cities, and even there it could be risky

    Yes and Vermont, the entire state, which seemed to be an early adopter of live and let … meh about teh gays.

    Signed, former Masshole lesbo who went to Vermont an awful lot in the early times

  110. 110.

    cain

    @eclare: I can understand their confusion since the character is not real and unlikely that there are books about him characterizing him as nice. Other htan of course the books like “Silence of the Lambs” :D

  111. 111.

    Eunicecycle

    @sab: also Canton! Well Stark County anyway; I didn’t look at Canton in particular. My rural township was overwhelming against Issue 1, which didn’t surprise me.

  112. 112.

    Yarrow

    @Kay:  It’s up to local jurisdictions to determine whether or not to allow driving on the beach in Texas. Some do, some don’t.

  113. 113.

    StringOnAStick

    @Soprano2: I had the exact same experience as you.  Lost my “professional” job when the first Bush was president , couldn’t find another (hydrogeologist) and worked at odd jobs like landscaping laborer, house painter and in a sewing factory for two years at less than half my former salary, while fancy George told me there were plenty of jobs. I still remember how angry that made me.

  114. 114.

    West of the Rockies

    One throw-away comment on Scott because, well, he did attend the debate, said things, and was, in fact, respirating.

  116. 116.

    Citizen Alan

    @Soprano2:

    Pretty sure the President can do that, can’t he? I thought Nixon was the last President to enact price controls. The Republican President since then would never do so, because they think its communism, and the dems don’t because, well, they also think it’s communism.  But the power exists, unless SCOTUS got it at some point.

  117. 117.

    Citizen Alan

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    To be fair, that was a debate for the Republican primary. And there is not a single Republican voter in the country who cares about guncontrol or climate action enough for it to matter in the primary. They only got a question about abortion because they need to find a way to blunt anger over Dobbs and soft pedal their position until they have control of the government and can enact a total ban.

  118. 118.

    evodevo

    @sab: ​
      Yes…there was a lot of intraRepub controversy here in our county when the Repub county clerk eliminated two voting sites in our neighborhood, requiring folks to drive down the highway several miles to another site. The Repub state senator took her to task for it lol…

  119. 119.

    wjca

    @Baud: I wish the were a way to crack the rural vote. Not to win them, but just to reduce their margins. They don’t seem to respond to tangible benefits though.

    There may not be a way for Democrats to crack the rural vote.  But the Republicans may crack it for you.  At the rate the Agriculture spending bill is not moving thru the House, there are going to be some seriously pissed rural voters out there.

    Not quite up there with if Johnson succeeds in his hope for a bill to cut Social Security and Medicare.  But still, a serious vote loser.It

  120. 120.

    wjca

    @Soprano2: but they talked about the Mississippi governor’s race without ever mentioning how they ran out of ballots in Jackson!

    I’ll bet they also failed to mention that the Democrat in that race was anti-abortion.  Nothing like abandoning a major issue that is helping your party nationwide.

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