Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

The lights are all blinking red.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

Let’s finish the job.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

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

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Let me file that under fuck it.

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Late Night Open Thread: Be of Good Faith (& Work to GOTV)

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  2. 2.

    Martin

    Good news! Despite Amazon’s settlement with California, you can still buy donkey meat in the other 49 states. Last minute holiday gift!

  4. 4.

    Martin

    It seems to me that the fundamental underlying narrative to almost every issue in the US is that Americans are stubborn ignorant motherfuckers incapable of reasoning or adapting to change.

    I find it constantly insulting.

  5. 5.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    My mantra for 2024 is that over the last couple of years, as the saying goes, Dems have been doing better at the polls than in the polls.

  6. 6.

    Martin

    @Baud: That was smart. Aged donkey meat is the perfect holiday gift. Better even than a Mercedes with a bow in the driveway.

  8. 8.

    Kathleen

    I maintain this whole “I just don’t know why but I don’t have a Biden vibe” along with the vague assertions about “how he’s failed” all goes back to him having the nerve to choose a Black woman for VP.

  10. 10.

    Jay

    As a Proud Canadian, (yes, we have had some issues, White House, 1814) President Joe Biden is the best you have had in decades.

  12. 12.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @Baud: “I’m September.”

    Hi, September! Now is it Baud September or September Baud? We MUST be kept up to date on everything Baud!

    My wife (and I!) celebrated another orbit around the sun today and I’ll do the same thing next week. We’re soulmates in the December birthday/screwed for Christmas gift lottery.

    So we spoil the shit outta each other. :)

  14. 14.

    Jay

    As a Proud Canadian, (yes, we have had some issues, White House, 1814) President Joe Biden is the best you have had in decades.

    BTW, commenting has kinda gone “glitchy”,

    9th try with the same comment.

  18. 18.

    opiejeanne

    @Kathleen: The mewling on Twitter by the earn-my-vote idiots has been really bad this evening, and my mute/block finger got really tired. And a lot of it is from trolls pretending to be cute manga girls, including a sleeper account that joined in 2013 and today was their first tweet.

    Facebook had its “I don’t really understand politics, explain to me why women’s issues are so important right now” moment.

    My patience is threadbare.

  20. 20.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Jay: Yes, speaking as an Australian. He is the best US President in decades. Of course he is too old. And I’m not being ironic here. It’s simply ineffable the age of legislators in the US.  Our PM is 60 yrs old, with forty plus years of political experience of various kinds under his belt.
    I just don’t get how the Democratic Party has allowed itself to be such a gerontocracy. I get the Republicans. But really!

    I believe he and Harris are the best candidates to win in 2024, and I think they will. Nevertheless, the old boomer cohort of the Dems needs to go.
    Now.

    I write as a politically active Boomer. Our time has passed. I work to support young candidates and activists . It is ludicrous that people well past retirement age should be in legislative positions. There is something wrong with the escalator of political activists that this situation exists. Even the UK has a better and more representative chronological spread.

    What gives?

  23. 23.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    me *a stupid history phd student*: maybe us history is just one social crisis after another…

    One would think for a historian proper abbreviations like “U.S.” for the United States of America so the reader would understand what is being discussed would be more important than being cool.

  27. 27.

    Aussie Sheila

    @NotMax: No, he’s even older. Which makes it worse.
    I get the ineffable stupidity of much of what passes for the ‘left’ in the US. Nevertheless, there’s something in the irritation of young people being required to vote for an  80 + year old person because the alternative is an existential threat.

    I understand the threat . People on this blog understand the threat. But why should people under 30 understand it? WW2 and the Cold War which informed much of the politics of our lifetimes is nearly 80 years away and now 33 years away in its aftermath. Like  the 1890s when I was in my twenties in the 1970s.

    Let’s face it, people’s politics and views are shaped by the times they grow up in. Not by historical memory transmitted by texts, TV shows or favourite movies.

    Cultural artefacts are useful to the extent they are recognised and understood. If they aren’t, they aren’t .

    New cultural tropes and understandings have to be invented, this time without the assistance of a ‘Cold War’ which was able to mobilise sufficient social consensus to largely prevent  US social and political violence in the wake of the compromises it forced it to make. Namely, Civil and Voting rights legislation passed in all our lifetimes. That, in my view, is the source of the ludicrous and frankly quasi fascist tilt of US politics.

    The time for lecturing the rest of the world about ‘democracy’ is long past.

  28. 28.

    Balconesfault

    @Kathleen: nope.   For too many, it’s that Biden hasn’t eliminated college debt, made abortion and gay burlesque legal everywhere, banned fracking, ended all wars, and instituted single payer Healthcare.

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: My mantra for 2024 is that over the last couple of years, as the saying goes, Dems have been doing better at the polls than in the polls.

    As it’s been mentioned before polling these days is meaningless since only an idiot would answer a phone call from a stranger. Is it the American public wants stupid things like the press claims or are the polls answers stupid because the pollsters are only polling the most clueless segment of our society?

  32. 32.

    Jay

    @Aussie Sheila:

    Sadly the choices are limited, President Joe Biden or Dumph,

    Here sadly, I vote ABC.

    Anybody but the Conservative.

    40 fucking years.

    Whom ever is most favored to win against the Conservative, get’s my vote. Luckily, by a margin of 121 votes, it’s a Dipper.

  36. 36.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Dane county is Madison.  This would be like going to Berkeley.   Of course you’re gonna find people in that specific demo whigning about whoever is in charge.

    In the movie Oppenheimer, you see how he was surrounded by all these people in Berkeley who didn’t think The New Deal was liberal enough and therefore were attracted to the commies.  It’s always been like this.

  40. 40.

    satby

    And since this blog skews old, a lot of the good, effective outreach that Biden’s really great media team does is invisible to a lot of us. TikTok influencers, YouTube influencers, Instagram influencers are all actively countering the doom narrative in old folks media.

    @Balconesfault: Biden has eliminated a great deal of college debt and continues to do so, and those stories are shared. The young people know who has their back on reproductive freedoms, and those stories get shared. They’re clear on who supports LGBTQ+ rights and actions on the climate crisis  I think we’re in pretty good shape with younger voters… who pay no attention at all to mainstream media because they have their own.

  42. 42.

    Suburban Mom

    Part of the issue with young people (based on my experience with family and coworkers in the 20 – 30 range) is that they feel like boomers and older people grew up on a different planet.  The next generation of my family is mostly middle class, educated, and not overloaded with debt.  But they still have a dim view of the future, economy and climate.  About half say that they will never have children.  They all vote, partly because we raised them that way and partly because they recognize that Republicans will make things worse.  But the sense that they will be as well off as their parents simply doesn’t exist.  They lack faith in the future.   Sadly, many of my younger coworkers do not vote.

  43. 43.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Jay:

    You and me both. Nevertheless I hope to hand on to young people something better than ‘that’s all there is’. There’s always something better, and people who have experienced and practiced politics at various levels in their lifetimes have lessons to pass on. But what they shouldn’t do is tell young people what they should care about.
    Experience can assist in teaching how to handle stuff, not what stuff is the most important to people 30 years younger .
    As to wipeout elections-we’ve had a few in my lifetime. But each time we be bounced back. With a younger and hungrier cohort.

    Sorry, I don’t accept a ‘bad election cycle’ as the reason for the gerontocracy of what passes for a social Democratic Party in the US. There are plenty of young wannabes in Congress it seems, but there appears to be a big gap in the important 45-55 year age group among likely Dem National contenders. And, no, I don’t mean Harris. Of course she is the next wannabe contender and rightly so.
    It’s just that after her, I can’t discern anyone who has the reach and name that would come anywhere near being a VP. and hence Presidential candidate. There is something wrong here.

  44. 44.

    Geminid

    @Jay: If as you say Joe Biden is the best President we’ve had in decades, what is so sad about having to choose between him and Trump?

  45. 45.

    Suburban Mom

    @Aussie Sheila: Off the top of my head, Secretary Pete Buttigieg is in his 40’s.  John Fetterman has health issues but he’s in his 50’s.  But I think you are right that there isn’t a big cohort there.

  46. 46.

    ColoradoGuy

    I think a lot of the commentariat and the political class are still shell-shocked by the Electoral College perverting the course of the 2000 and 2016 elections. That hadn’t happened once in the 20th Century, and everyone assumed it had become a dead letter. Not only that, but one political party, but not the other, benefited from that. And then built on it by seizing another undemocratic institution, the Supreme Court.

    People mock the One Weird Trick, but the Electoral College, the unaccountable Supreme Court, and the pre-Civil War Senate customs … which don’t even have the force of law … are nothing but a collection of One Weird Tricks used by the GOP.

    Is the US Constitution overdue for an overhaul? Very much so. We all know it. All the antidemocratic Slave State compromises built into it have become very dangerous, yet calling for another Constitutional Convention is seen as even more dangerous.

  50. 50.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Geminid:

    Speaking strictly for myself, it’s not that it should take a nano second  to determine who is the better person and leader between Biden and that criminal arse wipe allowed to become President despite losing the popular vote in 2016.

    The issue for me is that the US centre left couldn’t come up with someone younger than Biden with the requisite political experience.

    Biden is very good, (apart from his incorrigible support for whatever Israel does). However he is simply too old to be a truly representative figurehead. Don’t get me wrong. I would crawl over broken glass to vote Biden/Harris if I was in that position. But I’m not, and you are. And there is something wrong with centre left US politics and its organisational structures that the next candidate for Leader is over 80 years old. No matter how much better he is than any alternative. That is the problem, imo.

  51. 51.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    @Geminid:  That 4th termer is probably chairperson of a committee that controls legislation, hearings, calendar, subpoenas, earmarks, mark-ups, etc.

    In the 50s LBJ and some rookie didn’t have equal voting power.

  54. 54.

    ColoradoGuy

    Biden is where he is because the most rock-solid part of the Democratic base, which are Black voters, coalesced around him. Without that base, the Orange Monster would have won, and the world would be a very different place. The USA would have been well on its way to becoming a full-blown fascist ethnostate … like Russia.

    It’s unfortunate, but a narrow majority of White voters are comfortable with fascism. Looking at the history of the US South, perhaps not so surprisingly, since it was de facto fascist for most of its history. Nixon’s and Reagan’s true legacy was Southernizing national politics, using the Culture War as the proxy, and that still carries a lot of weight.

    As demography moves on, that White Fascist majority gets whittled away, a few percentage points every year, but there’s an endless well of re-packaged Jim Crow tricks to depress turnout. The most obvious counter to this would be to make Voting Day a national holiday, like the Fourth of July, with mandatory time off from work.

    As for the Senate, short of a Constitutional Convention, not much can be done to trim its wings, or the power of low-population states like Wyoming or Montana.

  55. 55.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Baud:

    I’m not ignoring them, it’s the US Democratic Party that seemingly can’t look beyond Senators. Whatever his many accomplishments, Obama wasn’t overburdened by political experience, and Biden’s political experience has been invaluable in the terrible circumstances of the last seven years but his age and the inevitable outlook of someone that age is also a problem. It’s not something that is replicated in other Anglo democracies, all of which have had and have, younger and more vigorous leaders, on both or all sides of politics.

    This is a problem, particularly for a Party that eschews social democratic politics in favour of being for ‘the future’ and the ‘real America’.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    @Aussie Sheila:

    it’s the US Democratic Party that seemingly can’t look beyond Senators.

    I have no idea what this is based on.

    ETA: We’re where we are because mainstream Dems coalesced around Biden in 2016 and lefties coalesced around the even older Bernie.  There were plenty of good younger candidates in 2016.

  57. 57.

    Geminid

    @Suburban Mom: Let’s see. There are Governors Whitmer, Pritzger, Beshear, Shapiro and Grisham. Haleem Jeffries is Presidential material and he’s 53. These people might be in their 50s but so was Obama.  Do we need to have 40-something Presidential candidates so as to balance out Joe Biden?

    This “gerontocracy” thing is so much bullshit. The real gerontocracy problem is people fixating on the oldest politicians and ignoring the younger ones. My Representative was elected to Congress at age 38. In 2025, if she beats the 42 year old Mayor of Richmond in the primary, Abigail Spanberger will become Virginia’s first female Governor at age 45.

    When she finishes the one term allowed, she’ll likely win Tim Kaine’s Senate seat at age 51. And when she does, I’m not going to hang my head and moan, “But she’s not 40.”

    People can say, “Well, I never hear about Sharice Davids or Gabe Vasquez or Gabe Amo” but that’s their problem for being passive consumers of news from national sites.

  59. 59.

    Jay

    @Geminid:

    US Voters have the choice between a gentleman, and I mean that in the kindest, most respectful way, and an utter asshole full on Nazi.

  60. 60.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Baud:

    Until he is re-elected, he is the candidate for President once the voters start to vote. He is also the President until 20/1/25, at which point he is either not the President, or he is sworn in as such.

    There is no such position in a democracy as ‘the incumbent’. There are candidates for election or holders of an elected Office. Your Presidential system allows a person to be both the holder of the Office of President and a candidate for same. Nothing wrong with that in your system. But it doesn’t creat the office of ‘the incumbent’.

  63. 63.

    Geminid

    @David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: I know there are differences. What I’m saying is that the differences are being exaggerated.

    I’ve heard more about the advantages of Senate seniority in the last 6 months than I did in the 6 years before that. It started when Katie Porter announced for the Senate. She has a very vocal set of fans, and since there is very little that seperates her from Adam Schiff in terms of policy they latched onto the age differential, and prospective seniority became this big fucking deal.

  64. 64.

    ColoradoGuy

    The USA is nearly the opposite of Australian voting. Instead a national holiday with mandatory voting, many of the Southern and rural states carry a burden of Jim Crow 2.0 laws intentionally designed to make voting as difficult as possible.

    Texas is the alpha example. If Texans voted in the same proportion as Colorado, where I live, Democrats would control the state, and it would be nearly impossible for the GOP to ever win the Presidency. That’s the effect of voter suppression in just one state.

  65. 65.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    Eh, it’s a valid argument even if exaggerated.  Although it’s kind of funny given that they’re replacing an incumbent who was accused of hanging on too long.

  66. 66.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Baud:

    With respect, it’s not wrong. There are either candidates or Office holders.  Our PM will be a candidate for the ALP for his parliamentary seat when the next election is officially called. Which will be some time in late 2025, baring an early election being called.
    Until then he holds his seat and is also the Prime Minister.

    He is not, for the purposes of any official position, the ‘incumbent’. And neither is Biden. Biden is the President. Until he isn’t.

    There is no such constitutional position as the ‘incumbent’ in either the US or Australian Constitution.

  67. 67.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Suburban Mom: ​
     

    Part of the issue with young people (based on my experience with family and coworkers in the 20 – 30 range) is that they feel like boomers and older people grew up on a different planet.

    Quite honestly, we did. The America of the 1960s was a whole different world.

  68. 68.

    Baud

    @Aussie Sheila:

    There is no such constitutional position as the ‘incumbent’ in either the US or Australian Constitution.

     
    No one claimed otherwise. But incumbency is a fact that exists, and it influences how parties operate. Especially for an office that is term limited. Biden is the incumbent, which is why Dems don’t have an open primary featuring a slew of top tier talents.

  69. 69.

    satby

    @Geminid: This “gerontocracy” thing is so much bullshit.

    @Baud: Eh, it’s a valid argument even if exaggerated.

    Well, people have had the option to replace the older elected representatives with younger ones and have failed to do so over and over. There are lots of reasons why including gerrymandering and a population that routinely doesn’t vote at all, but as another extremely effective old geezer said, the object is to “just win, baby”. And they do.

  70. 70.

    Aussie Sheila

    @ColoradoGuy:

    I understand that. I get the unbelievable local nature of voting laws and rights in the US.

    That should be the civil rights campaign of the 21st century in the US. Until that is fixed the working poor and the simply poor have neither the wherewithal or the political power on their own, to remedy the democratic travesty that exists in states like Texas.

    And that means every election is a nail biter because it all depends on who can turn out otherwise time poor and reluctant voters. Simply terrible.

  72. 72.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Baud:

    Of course he will be the candidate for the Democratic Party in 2024. But the reasons for that are many and well known on this blog. Presidents from both parties have been challenged before. Carter in 1979 and Bush1 in 1990. Challenges aren’t usually successful and this isn’t the election to make one. But my point stands.

    There is nothing other than exigent circumstances that prevents an office holder from being challenged, and ‘incumbency’ is an argument, not a position or Office.

  74. 74.

    Gvg

    @Baud: As I recall, they also got their asses handed to them in the 1980’s (Regan). Clinton’s triangulation was a comeback strategy that worked too, and others imitated it. I think the prior democrats were getting ahead of society and/or getting silly trying to be more something than their primary opponents. There was a backlash when democrats lost a lot of races then. Hillary was accused of always being in a defensive crouch before attacked when running against Obama and I found some of the analysis of why to ring true for that whole generation of politicians. Not just women, all democrats. But we did get past that point and elect more democrats, then we had another wave of republicans.
    I think if you look at the republicans, they probably have some really old ones and a bunch of younger ones too, from the different cycles. They aren’t getting along though which is good for us.

    we have young ones, plenty of them, just not in the most visible to the world very tip top positions. That will change soon I think. Maybe it will surprise people, but it shouldn’t.

    Another factor is we feel like we are in a seriously dangerous situation and are making the safest choices we have available. Sometimes that is resulting in old experienced guy.

  75. 75.

    satby

    @Baud: I don’t. And a great many I know are riden with Biden.

    That may make Aussie critics unhappy, but the kids are mostly all right. I’m looking forward to when Sec. Pete, Hakim Jeffries, and the others step into larger roles.

    Though, awk, they’ll be in their 50s and 60s then 🙄

  76. 76.

    Baud

    @Aussie Sheila:

    Nothing prevents a challenge, but it’s not the type of primary you see when the position is open.  And challenging an incumbent president usually leads to disaster.

  77. 77.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Baud:

    Being a ‘majority’ doesn’t confer political power, particularly in the US. There are many counties and cities in the US where Black Americans are, and have been majorities. Your system doesn’t confer power on majorities. It confers power precisely and  until the next veto point is met and overcome in a system designed to thwart majoritarian democracy.

  79. 79.

    satby

    @Baud: of course a blog that continually highlights “Favorite shows of the 70s” and “Christmases of the 50s and 60s” isn’t where we’ll get a lot of input from younger folks.

    Hell, I’m nearly 70 and I scroll on past, as instructed.

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    @raven: The Sandpiper has some interesting scenes of early California counterculture. That stupid “Shadow of Your Smile” song is hard to take, but seeing Charles Bronson punching out Richard Burton is worth it.

  84. 84.

    satby

    @Baud: 😂😂😂

    and for the Twitter haters, just wanted to note AL is pulling a lot from BlueSky now. That site gets better every day. Adam and Tom are pretty active on it too, as well as other great follows.

  85. 85.

    Aussie Sheila

    @satby:

    Why would that make Aussie critics unhappy? I don’t understand your point. I will be very relieved if Biden/Harris wins in 2024. So will the rest of the civilised world. However while most polls are bunkum, it is intensely unnerving that the general view overseas that Biden has been a very accomplished President is not shared by a particularly big majority at home, and it is also unnerving for those that follow US politics, just how easy it is to prevent people being able to vote. Particularly people who are time poor and/or who don’t have the requisite ‘identity’ papers.

  87. 87.

    Kathleen

    @Baud: Warnock. Neguse. Underwood, Sykes, Landsman, Whitmer, Brown (Shontel) just off the top of my head. The Dems have a deep bench of talent we don’t hear about because they’re evil corporatist Democrats who focus on benefitting constituents and don’t insult their colleagues. Media don’t consider them “starsy” enough. ETA Also many of them are Black.

  92. 92.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Baud:

    Really? So the gerrymandering of electorates undertaken by the Republicans since the 2010 congressional election has been simply window dressing, with no discernible effects on political outcomes in Red states? The majoritarian weight of ‘blue cities’ has been able to overcome the weight of rural and regional,districts with less people but more representatives in States where governments rule with barely 45% of the vote?

  94. 94.

    Shalimar

    @Aussie Sheila: The Democratic party is a gerontocracy how?  Harris is 59.  Jeffries is 53.  Who other than Biden is left from all the old leaders people complained about 3 years ago?  Schumer and Murray are 73, which is a normal age for senate leaders nearing retirement.

    As Baud notes, the next generation of leaders who would be in their 60s now got wiped out in 2010 and 2014.  Democratic leadership is transitioning from unusually old to unusually young.  It happens.

  95. 95.

    Baud

    @Aussie Sheila:

    There are young people in rural areas too. Gerrymandering is designed to hurt Dems, not young people per se. And it doesn’t affect statewide offices directly.

  96. 96.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I think most California Democrats will vote on the basis of what they want to see their Senator do in the next 6 years, not what they’ll do in the next decade.

    Although with their jungle primary system, it won’t be just Democrats choosing between Porter and Schiff next November. The outcome may turn on which way Independents and Republicans break. An interesting dynamic.

  99. 99.

    Geminid

    @Baud: There also a lot of Black people in rural areas from Delaware to Louisiana. Further west, it’s Hispanics and Natives.

  101. 101.

    Betty Cracker

    Bill and I usually agree to buy a coveted household item as our Christmas present to each other, and this year it was a wood-fired pizza oven. No need to wait for Christmas since the element of surprise is gone!

    We tried it last night after watching tons of videos and reading lots of guidance on how to get the oven to the right temp, launch and retrieve the pizza, blah blah blah.

    We each made a small pizza and tested our separate theories on how to achieve wood-fired pizza perfection. He incinerated his, and mine came out close to perfect. I generously offered to share mine, but he ate all but the blackest parts of his burned pizza because he’s a stubborn sumbitch. Hahahaha!

  102. 102.

    Aussie Sheila

    @Kathleen:

    They are all talented I am sure. But blaming the media for their relative obscurity or lack of national attention is lame. It is their Party that has the responsibility for pushing forward their talent. Not the ‘media’ whatever that means nowadays.

  105. 105.

    Soprano2

    @satby: I sometimes wonder if the mainstream press is doing these kind of stories on purpose to depress Dems and thus depress their turnout. It’s probably not that hard to find college students or recent grads who are mad because they thought they were going to get $10,000 student loan relief but didn’t get it.

  109. 109.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: When I have to go to the dreaded Villages for some obscure ingredient or item that isn’t available in my town, I drive for miles through rural countryside dotted by tiny farming communities. In the run up to the 2020 election, I could immediately tell if the farming families were white or black by the political signage. I figure there must be some liberal white farming families, but I don’t know any!

  111. 111.

    satby

    @Soprano2: My nephew and his wife were really hoping for that, but they’re very clear on who killed that proposal. Both of them were Bernie supporters in 2016, though by the end of 2020 had come to their senses and are reliable blue voters now. Too late for SCOTUS.

    Fucking Bernie has a lot to answer for.

  112. 112.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Aussie Sheila: ​
     

    Your Presidential system allows a person to be both the holder of the Office of President and a candidate for same.

    And we have a word we use to describe someone who both holds an office and is a candidate to occupy the office in the following term. It’s ‘incumbent.’ It’s not an office, it’s a word. (It applies to other offices as well; it just gets used more wrt the Presidency.) And it’s used because, all other things being equal, the incumbent is more likely to win than a challenger is.

    Since WWII, the following incumbents have won:
    Truman 1948
    Ike 1956
    LBJ 1964
    Nixon 1972
    Reagan 1984
    Clinton 1996
    Bush Jr. 2004
    Obama 2012

    The following incumbents have lost:
    Ford 1976
    Carter 1980
    Bush Sr. 1992
    TFG 2020

    Incumbency is no guarantee of success, but it is an advantage.

  115. 115.

    jimmiraybob

    One advantage to age is perspective.  Although Biden and team have yet to deliver my very special magic Sparkle Pony that poops gold, a second term increases the odds in my favor.  The other guy? Ain’t a chance in hell.

  116. 116.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: To connect two discussions going on here, the environment that fostered Bernie Sanders’ political career is a really unusual one: a bastion of white rural liberalism in the United States. It’s basically Vermont plus some spillover areas in adjoining states (e.g. the Berkshires).

    It might be the ONLY bastion of white rural liberalism in the United States. And it’s not a lot of people, total.

    I don’t blame him for 2016. But I do think that the image of white rural liberals electing Sanders drove a lot of people toward this idea that his form of leftism was a way for Democrats to recapture the white rural masses, when in fact it only works that way in this one very atypical region.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @raven: Never saw Petuliah or Big Brother. I saw the Dead 3 times though.

    I guess my most distinctive concert was watching Asleep at the Wheel play on the Ellipse, in front of the Washigton Monument. That was when they lived in Paw Paw, West Virginia and were scratching out a living around the Mid-Atlantic. Then they moved to Texas.

  120. 120.

    Betty Cracker

    @Matt McIrvin: That’s a really great point. Folks who are familiar with Vermont and Western Mass might understand how unique that area is, but most people aren’t.

  123. 123.

    Kay

    They can’t find a single former Trump voter who is off Trump to interview? Not one Republican woman in the whole country who switched to voting for Democrats on the womens agency issue that they could  interview?  Has there been even ONE story where they interviewed women voters after we won one of the abortion referendums?

    Bullshit. We know that’s not true, not based on polls but on actual votes- real numbers. We know our people are out there, we know there are voters who once supported Trump and no longer do, we know there are women who are voting for Democrats based on womens rights. They simply don’t do those interviews.

    I still think Biden is going to win. The silent majority.

  127. 127.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    No middle class working person has as much money or security at 25 as they do at 55. No one ever has, not in 1950, not in 1990. It took their parents decades to get there. That’s why the 25 year old doesn’t have what their parents have. The whole formula for middle class security is steady income over time. That’s the whole thing.

  128. 128.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Kay: Thank you, Kay.

    Nothing increases turnout as much as self-interest, and Dobbs isn’t a nebulous abstract; it’s a punitive law that was constructed to specifically target women. There’s nothing ambiguous about it. For women, voting for Biden is an act of self-defense.

  129. 129.

    raven

    @Geminid: Petulia was a movie with George C Scott and Julie Christie. The Dead and Big Brother did cameos.  Ray Benson and I could be bothers. They were playing a little joint in Champaign in the 70’s. I had broken my back and was in a full plaster body cast and I went up to him at the break and he was stunned how much alike we look! They actually moved to East Oakland in 1970 and shared a place with Commander Cody.  They move to Austin in 74.

  130. 130.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    What clowns. They had an entire state of Trump voters in Ohio who just passed an abortion rights referendum and not one national outlet came here to interview women.

    Instead they travel to Madison to find people who aren’t “excited” about Biden. No wonder they have to survive on recipes and puzzles and product reviews. They’ll need more of those gimmicks to turn a profit every year.

  132. 132.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Remember, a jackal gave witness to the fact that the NYT wanted her reporter daughter to report on the women’s march and look for disappointed-in-Biden marchers. Proof that they know what they’re doing.

  133. 133.

    Another Scott

    Someone, Fallows maybe, pointed us to this Bulwark piece:

    Look at this passage:

    To be sure, Mr. Trump’s wild rhetoric, indifference to protocol, and willingness to challenge expertise have been profoundly unsettling to people of both political parties. His term in office was frequently chaotic, and the chaos seemed to culminate in the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021.

    This might be the most misleading passage ever published in the paper of record.

    It was not Trump’s “indifference to protocol” which was “unsettling” to people. And the “chaos” of Trump’s term did not “seem” to culminate in a “riot” at the U.S. Capitol.

    Here is an accurate description of what happened in the waning days of the Trump administration:

    Donald Trump falsely proclaimed that the presidential election was illegitimate. He attempted, through both legal and extralegal means, to overturn the result of the election. Trump’s maneuverings in both the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense were so dangerous that ten former secretaries of defense penned an op-ed warning that it was not lawful to use the military in an election dispute. Trump then called thousands of people to Washington, assembled them into a crowd which he knew was armed, and personally directed them to march to the Capitol and “take back” the country “with strength.”

    If you came down from Mars and simply read today’s NYT op-ed, you would have absolutely no idea that any of this happened. Instead, you’d think that Trump was some kind of a ne’er-do-well or scamp.

    In short: You would have an inaccurate understanding of reality because of a piece you read in the New York Times.

    But you gotta have both sides? I guess?

    The Times does this a lot—running cover for authoritarians by publishing outrageously misleading “opinion” pieces in the name of airing “both sides” of the debate.

    Exactly right.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  135. 135.

    Kay

    They charged Brittany Watts yesterday:

    Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, the nonpartisan group behind the state’s newly passed reproductive rights amendment, is urging Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins to drop the charge against Watts.
    The group said the charge conflicts “with the spirit and letter” of Issue 1, which passed last month, guaranteeing an individual’s “right to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions” and making Ohio the seventh state to protect reproductive rights since the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
    “It was wrong for the nurse who was caring for Ms. Watts and hospital administrators to call the police, wrong for the police to invade Ms. Watts’ home while she was fighting for her life in the hospital, wrong for Warren assistant prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri to move that she be bound over to the Trumbull County grand jury, and wrong for Judge (Terry) Ivanchak to grant his motion,” the group’s executive director, Lauren Beene, wrote to Watkins. “Prosecutor Watkins has the opportunity to be the first law enforcement official to do the right thing since this incident began.”

    Just to give you an idea of how ridiculous this case is, they charged her with a 5th degree felony, the lowest level felony. They charged her with that because despite tearing up her house and a 3 month “investigation” they couldn’t charge her with manslaughter (what they were hoping to find).
    There’s a misdemeanor level charge for this same offense. All the prosecutor would have to do was bump it down one level – done routinely in Ohio- and she’d be in a muni court and this would be over in a week. They refused because they are on a religious mission to use this woman to establish more of their religious dogma into US law- “fetal personhood”. She’ll be sacrificed for their religion.
    The judge is the most shameful in my book. We all know Right wing religious crusader prosecutors – they’re all over the place. The judge was supposed to be the adult in the room but he’s a coward.

  136. 136.

    JML

    @Betty Cracker: Big Gretch is a superstar, and she’ll be a leading candidate for president in 2028 if she wants it. She’ll have finished up 2 terms as governor, she’s done big things in turning Michigan blue again, and she’s also done a lot as a vice-chair of the DNC. She’s been a very popular speaker at party fundraising dinners all over the country, which has helped her get better known to the party faithful all over the country, and she’s got a strong ability to read a room and identify with the people she’s talking to.

    She’s a really strong candidate, with only one major problem: the incredibly sexist media. Fortunately for her, she doesn’t have a long history with the national political media, and she’s pretty media savvy and comfortable dealing with them, so she’ll probably only be treated somewhat unfairly, instead of in the most biased and unfair ways possible.

  137. 137.

    BruceFromOhio

    So fucking tired of this shit already. A year of this crap is not on my dance card. Have already winnowed media consumption down to minimalist, may have to go under rocks completely.

    Biden/Harris 2024, because anything else is very bad. Endless fucking chit-chat and navel-gazing about whether people “get it” or are “enthused” about it is irrelevant. Vote blue or live in a world unimaginably worse than the one we live in now.

    This is not a complicated topic.

    //wishing the TeensFromOhio could spend ten minutes at that kids table with the young folks setting them on a better path

  138. 138.

    Baud

    @JML:

    The best thing about Biden running is that we can put off having to choose among a deep bench, all of whom deserve a shot.

  139. 139.

    Betty Cracker

    @Another Scott: I read that NYT guest essay earlier this week and started a post on it but got distracted by other things and trashed it. My angle was that the author’s thesis is 100% bullshit but he might be describing a real phenomenon among Republicans who aren’t Trump enthusiasts. There’s an adjective for them: delusional.

  141. 141.

    Scout211

    Gun control laws continue to be blocked in court here in California.

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a California law that would have banned carrying firearms in most public places, ruling that it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and deprives people of their ability to defend themselves and their loved ones.

    The law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September was set to take effect Jan. 1. It would have banned people from carrying concealed guns in 26 places including public parks and playgrounds, churches, banks and zoos. It would apply whether the person has a permit to carry a concealed weapon or not. One exception would be for privately owned businesses that put up signs saying people are allowed to carry guns on their premises.

    U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney granted a preliminary injunction blocking the law, which he wrote was “sweeping, repugnant to the Second Amendment, and openly defiant of the Supreme Court.”

    . . .

    Michel said under the law, gun permit holders “wouldn’t be able to drive across town without passing through a prohibited area and breaking the law.” He said the judge’s decision makes Californians safer because criminals are deterred when law-abiding citizens can defend themselves.

    Carney is a former Orange County Superior Court judge who was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2003.

  142. 142.

    sab

    @Kay: Terry Ivanchak, municipal judge. Muni judges are nonpartisan in Ohio. Maybe next election voters will remember his record.

  143. 143.

    artem1s

    @Aussie Sheila:

     Our PM is 60 yrs old, with forty plus years of political experience

    this is how we let it happen. you cannot have 40 years of experience unless you are 60+. today’s -25 inexperienced whingers will be in the exact same place in 40+ years. and the -25 forty years from now who don’t have any experience at all will be whinging about why don’t they give us a pony and put us in charge for not understanding (or worse, not caring to understand) that there is no magic bullet. the GOP is not in the same place today because they convinced their voters to enact term limits just so they wouldn’t have to compete against incumbents who have experience. Instead they nominated and elected fly-by-night “real businessmen”  candidates whose only agenda was to NOT govern or get any experience and worse destroy democracy. they put the emotional and intellectual equivalent of toddlers in charge of crafting legislation for the last 40 years. And they did nothing but whinge about the Dems not letting them tear up everything in sight. Thank the FSM that these old farts in the Democratic party that the -25 are whinging about succumbing to the laws of physics and growing old didn’t just hand over the reins to people like RFK Jr and Jill Stein and Ralph Nadar 40 years ago. Thank Jeebus that Nancy Smash didn’t retire off to the Bahamas 12-16 years ago when the GOP decided to make her the target of all their vitriolic crap. Thank your lucky stars that Joe Biden didn’t give up the 10 or 12 million times he had a personal set back or failed to pull a rainbow and pot of gold or trillion dollar coin out of his butt.

  144. 144.

    Scout211

    @Kay: When is Brittany Watts’ case scheduled for the grand jury? Your linked article says it is still pending before the grand jury.

  146. 146.

    catclub

    @Matt McIrvin: But I do think that the image of white rural liberals electing Sanders …

     

    Yes there are liberal hippies in rural Vermont. They are a minority in rural Vermont. Burlington VT elects Sanders. A liberal university town that happens to dominate the state population.

     

    To the extent that you can claim Burlington VT is rural, it is rural white liberals. I would say it is suburban.

  147. 147.

    RevRick

    @Balconesfault: The problem is that the average person thinks that the President has quasi kinglike powers, even though the Constitution goes out of its way to vest most power in the Congress. And I think this is partly (a lot?) due to the elevation of the President on the world stage and in the press. After all, a significant chunk of the population can’t even name their own Senators and Representatives, but Presidents have instant rock star status. So, many think that Presidents can simply impose their will on Congress, and it happens.

    Now, GOP Presidents have an advantage here, because their wish list is so short. It’s cut taxes, deregulate businesses, stop all downward redistribution of income, and beyond that, don’t!

  148. 148.

    jonas

    @opiejeanne:  The mewling on Twitter by the earn-my-vote idiots has been really bad this evening

    “Earn my vote” = “Make a bunch of pie-in-the-sky promises that probably aren’t politically feasible but that allow me to act all cynical and jaded about politics when you don’t deliver all of it”

    How about you vote for the person who you think has the best values and best judgment to get the best deal *possible* on things that matter to you, as opposed to just the person who panders to you the most?

    Sorry, I’m a little salty this morning. Need coffee.

  149. 149.

    Kay

    @sab:

    Ugh. The police too- although they’re so routinely bad no one even bothers to complain anymore. How did the police in that juridisction manage to turn a miscarriage into the crime of the century?

    No one can back down now, of course. They would look like the idiots they are, nationally. They’d much prefer she be convicted of a felony than they admit they went insanely overboard (again) and screwed this case up. Watts has no prior record. Her one and only offense at 33 is having a miscarriage and this ridiculous county law enforcement machine when after her.

  151. 151.

    coozledad

    @jonas;: And some of these interviewees will turn out to be young Republicans. That’s how that unreconstructed Tim Russert shit rolls. It would have been hard to put together another group of “youngs” with that much white privilege shit between their ears without screening for juvenile horse ownership.

  153. 153.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    I don’t know when she’ll be indicted. She was formally charged yesterday. Our GJ meets once a month.

    The GJ will mosy likely indict because they’ll have the elements of abuse of a corpse.

    Any miscarriage would meet the elements of abuse of a corpse if you define the fetus as a person. They are charging her with “mishandling” the reamins of a fetus. To be consistent and rational, they’d have to charge every single hospital with this same offense. They’re not burying miscarriages in Ohio.

  156. 156.

    Subsole

    @Kay:

    All very good points. I can point them to a couple people who soured on Trump after the coup. And another who soured after the Bronzed Scumbag tried to throw his kids under the bus during his NY business trial.

    The media are not terrified. They are not dupes. They aren’t just chasing ratings, or money. They know what they are doing.

  157. 157.

    Kay

    Watts’ lawyer shoud bring in someone from St Joseph’s (the hospital which turned Watts in) and ask what they do with miscarriage remains. They treat it as medical waste.

    Under the new standard Right wingers in Ohio just pulled out of their ass they should all be charged with felony abuse of corpse(s). What is the standard here? If she had buried the waste in the garden would she be a hero to anti abortion extremists? If they’re going to invent a new crime on the fly they should do the whole job – give women consistent legal instructions for how to have a miscarriage.

  158. 158.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: But Kay, they aren’t white men so they don’t count. *rolleyes* I swear, there are all kinds of “disaffected TFG voter” stories they could write if they wanted to, but it’s easier to find a few people in their early 20’s who are angry they didn’t get their $10,000 student loan forgiveness or think Biden controls the Israeli government they can interview. I wonder, do those college students think about what they’d get from TFG?

  159. 159.

    Soprano2

    @satby: You mean like not understanding what the word “incumbent” means even though anyone can search for the definition?

  160. 160.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Have they ever articulated what they think she should have done after she miscarried? What they’re doing is insane, and I think it will backfire with the public. Most people will be horrified at this charge and prosecution.

  162. 162.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    The prosecutor uses the language of people who dislike women and think women are bad and careless people who must be controlled.

    Watts (allegedly) “went on with her day” (whatever that means) – that was her big crime. The state keeps using that as some kind of character attack. She didn’t have the proper female emotional response to a miscarriage. My sense of Watts is she is a private person. This must be excruciating for her. Juries punish women who don’t behave like women are “supposed” to behave.

  164. 164.

    Bupalos

    @lowtechcyclist: another way to read that list: it’s been a half century since presidential incumbency was an advantage.

    Personally I think it’s a disadvantage now and will remain so, especially for the left, until the citizenry’s attitude towards the future changes.

  165. 165.

    Hoodie

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Seems like our lefty Aussie friend doesn’t understand several things about US politics.   Historically, governors are a reliable source for future presidential candidates and we have several  quality Dem governors in that age cohort, e.g.,  Whitmer, Newsom, Pritzker, Polis, Shapiro, Cooper, etc.

  166. 166.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Wow, that’s nuts. But you’re right, people punish women when they don’t have the correct emotional response or show the proper amount of emotion. I would love to buttonhole that prosecutor and ask him what he thought she should have done. You know, it’s probably because they feel horror that she flushed her miscarriage down the toilet. People are really weird about stuff like that.

  167. 167.

    Hoodie

    @Kay: They need man bites dog stories. The actual results you cite are strictly dog bites man.   You can’t underestimate how much the press in the US is driven by profit and career interests.  It’s an entertainment business, not a public service.

  168. 168.

    Eyeroller

    Late to the thread and I just skimmed through the clip since I was sure it was full of idiocy, but it’s interesting to me that the “young voters” interviewed were mostly male and mostly white, and the white guys looked like 1960-ish beatniks.  There are plenty of hardworking, focused humanities majors and PhD candidates, but at my university they have had a reputation of being “professional students” for as long as possible (they could get teaching gigs to support themselves in genteel poverty), which forced crackdowns on years allowed to be spent getting a PhD in any field.

  169. 169.

    sab

    @Kay: She went “on with her day” by going to the hospital to be treated for continuing bleeding. Not exactly a normal day.

  170. 170.

    Ben Cisco

    @Soprano2:

    I sometimes wonder if the mainstream press is doing these kind of stories on purpose to depress Dems and thus depress their turnout.

    Well late to the thread but this is EXACTLY what is going on. I’m glad to see others noticing it.

  171. 171.

    opiejeanne

    @Hoodie:

    Seems like our lefty Aussie friend doesn’t understand several things about US politics.

    And yet she feels qualified to comment on them.

  172. 172.

    schrodingers_cat

    @NotMax: It is the favorite past time on social media platforms. Bashing America and Americans and pontificating on our politics without any understanding of how it works. It is the quickest way to get social media (and blog engagement).

  174. 174.

    Eyeroller

    @opiejeanne: ​
     She seems unwilling to concede the degree to which racial politics affects us. Australia is hardly exempt from that; I’ve only been there once and it was a long time ago, but we were at a small restaurant having lunch and they had on a radio program that seemed to be the Rush Limbaugh of Queensland and some caller was ranting about the “Abos” and how they got all these special favors etc. etc. One difference is that the aboriginal population is only about 4% of the total there. I do not know the fraction of nonwhites in general but I do recall some unpleasantries related to “boat people” refugees, and that’s very recent.

  175. 175.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Matt McIrvin: BS did not win the primary in MA in either 2020 or 2016. Biden and HRC won here. I will have to run the numbers for Western MA separately to see if he prevailed here. Oh and blog favorite EW won fewer than 20 towns (it was 8 or 12 or something, I need to check again) in all of MA in 2020.

  176. 176.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Eyeroller: I remember a controversy when some Australian cricketers were making monkey sounds to rattle the Indian team when they were playing in India. This was in the late 80s.

    So Australia is not as englightened as she would have us believe. Neither are the sainted Scandinavian countries, if you look at their draconian immigration laws which would pass the muster with Stephen Miller.

  177. 177.

    kindness

    Some Boomers never grow up.  I saw that blurb about Donkey meat (from Amazon) not being legal in CA any more, and I immediately went to: So, you plan on offering up a fine holiday meal to you and your family.  You get a dish that is hard to come by and want to extol it with your family.  Would your announcement say ‘Come over and eat some ass with us for the holidays!’

  179. 179.

    Ruckus

    @Martin:

    You live in a state that makes decent education available to everyone, where there are jobs for most, where people actually want to live. Likely the vast majority of people around you understand that life isn’t always easy or comfortable for everyone. But if you lived in Bumfuck, Nowhere, where if there weren’t a few modern cars in sight, you could easily mistake the year for somewhere between 1955-1970. Where progress is having a doctor within 100 miles, where a grocery store doesn’t look like a liquor store for the first 3/4 of it as you walk in the door. Of course not everywhere that might be described as country looks like this, but many parts do. High paying jobs – what are those? Low paying jobs – what are those? Is it better now than 50 yrs ago? Sure, some places have changed for the better. There will likely be areas of this country that are 25-50 yrs behind the times. There is not much or nothing to make people move there, few jobs, few amenities, little amazing scenery, any top rated schools…. Even rather crowded CA looks far better. Which of course is one reason it’s crowded. I’ve traveled and sometimes lived in several areas of this country and many are decades behind the times. And likely getting farther every day.

  180. 180.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    Well the world has had 7 yrs to see what SFB is really like, what kind of mammal he is or isn’t and 3 yrs to savor not having him in any way involved with his total lack of governing, and not having to listen to him whatsoever. That time of course has made him even worse than before, I’m amazed that his extremely oversized ego hasn’t blown up, like the worse than useless cartoon that is his life/personality/intelligence/has shown him to be.

  182. 182.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @schrodingers_cat: Oh and blog favorite EW won fewer than 20 towns (it was 8 or 12 or something, I need to check again) in all of MA in 2020.

    In an election she already had virtually no path forward in.  Yet still you harp.

    I imagine you at home all day squeezing a stress ball muttering to yourself about “the left.”

  185. 185.

    Sally

    I guess no one will read this comment. I hear the argument all the time in my family – Biden is too old.  I don’t think there is a Democrat alive who doesn’t wish he were fifteen years younger. But which fifteen years would you take from his life’s experiences? Eight years as VP with Obama, that have clearly altered his understanding of Republicans?  His years as a law student, family man, lawyer?  His earlier years in the Senate, riding the train surrounded by other commuters, every day, committed to both his work and his sons?  His years in committees, meeting US and world leaders, learning the ropes of relationships, negotiations, systems?  His years of being there, seeing things with his own eyes?  I wish he were fifteen years younger, but I surely can’t think which fifteen years I would erase from his mind.  In this time, in this maelstrom of crises, in this confluence of events.  He knows things.  He knows people.  He knows how stuff works.  I watched him as a candidate for the Dems in 2008, and I thought then, wow, that’s the guy for me. He dropped out quite early of course, and I moved my attention elsewhere, but he has always been impressive, in my opinion.  Dems have a number of people who would make excellent presidents, but not right now, in this whirlwind of history.  I want Joe there, not just for the US, the entire world needs Joe right now.

  189. 189.

    Paul in KY

    @Sally: It just comes down to: Either you vote for TFG, or you vote for the only non-TFG candidate that will beat him: The Democratic Party nominee, whoever the Hell that is. It sure looks like it will be Pres. Biden and I will crawl across 100 yards of broken glass to vote for him (or anyone else who is the Democratic Party nominee).

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