Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

Peak wingnut was a lie.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

It could be worse. Vance could have said “post-menopausal sows.” Waiting for that audiotape to surface.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Let’s show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

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

Please don’t feed the bears.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

Democrats are back in array!

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

In after Baud. Damn.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Thursday Afternoon Open Thread

Thursday Afternoon Open Thread

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This post is in: 

Looks like we could use a new thread.  I am working this afternoon so I don’t have a lot, but maybe we can just point and mock?

Open thread.

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140Comments

  8. 8.

    Dangerman

    Does he sit at the kids table at Thanksgiving?

    ETA: Seriously, either he or Haley is going to go Spinal Tap drummer syndrome and spontaneously combust. Nothing but a pile of ashes on the chair. Little pile.

  10. 10.

    WaterGirl

    @Karen S.: President Biden took time out from dealing with foreign policy – Israel-Palestine and Russia trying to take over another sovereign nation, Ukraine – to personally call up some random person and ask them to ask Nikki Haley a question that even a 4th grader could answer.  Just to make her look bad.

    Yeah, that tracks.

  13. 13.

    MattF

    Recall the recent NYT article that ‘explained’ the DeSantis catastrophe as a failure of political organization. Nothing to do with the obvious fact that the candidate looked and sounded like a loser. Just looking at that photograph explains it all.

  18. 18.

    Hungry Joe

    Ms. Joe and I are emerging, slowly, from COVID hell. We’re up and about, but lethargic and foggy. Getting a few things done. No longer miserable. It’s 67 degrees (San Diego, 1:15 pm) so we’re going to sit in the sun for a few minutes, and maybe even feel GOOD.

    I could improve the rhythm of that paragraph … but not today.

  20. 20.

    JoyceH

    Dang! This puppy! She was eating PAPRIKA! I have no idea where she got it, it must have been an old bottle that fell on the floor and rolled under something, but she’d got it open on the floor and was licking it. I’ve googled and seems like I need to keep an eye on her for problems, depending on how much she ingested. But – why would she WANT to eat straight paprika?!

  21. 21.

    trollhattan

    This is going to leave a mark.

    State Farm is expected to increase its average rate for homeowner insurance policies in California by 20% next year, under a proposal approved last week by the Department of Insurance, records shows.

    In 2022, the most recent data available, State Farm held more than one out of every five homeowner policies in the state, according to the department. That was the largest of any company. The newly-approved increase comes at a challenging time for the state’s insurance market. A growing number of residents have been left with fewer insurance options and higher prices as major companies have paused or restricted new business.

    One of those was State Farm, which in May announced that it would stop accepting new applications for property and business policies as a way to improve its financial health. The company cited higher construction costs, a growing risk from catastrophic events, such as wildfires, and challenges related to how it insures its own business when it made the decision.

    https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article283573473.html#storylink=cpy

  22. 22.

    Karen S.

    @JPL: Well, Democrats are devious and all powerful when we’re not busy being wimpy and caving into the woke mob, so it might fly with some.

  24. 24.

    Urza

    Maybe the jacket is just puffy or inexplicably has thick shoulder pads.  Not that any clothing would make that man look or feel comfortable.  That comes from all the self loathing.

  26. 26.

    dmsilev

    @Karen S.: That only makes sense if you think ‘did the Civil War have anything to do with slavery?’ is a gotcha question. Sane and honest people don’t think that.
    Anyway, she probably pissed off the cultists by backing down to the demands of the ‘woke media mob’ or whatever by subsequently’clarifying’ that her answer was ‘yes’.

  27. 27.

    moops

    well, him or Haley are going to be the GOP nomination, even with their terrible campaigns and awful politics.  I can’t see TFIG getting through the primary season without a serious health crisis.  The dude is a jabbering stressed out lunatic.

  28. 28.

    Splitting Image

    @WaterGirl:

    What if she gets a phone call at 3 am and she isn’t prepped for the answer?

    She’ll be cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

    (Well, we can hope.)

  30. 30.

    dmsilev

    @moops: Unless TFG actually dies, he’s the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination. I reckon that he’s even money to win even if he does die; his campaign will just go to an all-Twitter mode and I’m sure they have people trained to mimic his …unique writing style.

    Or maybe a specially trained AI. In which case, we’d deserve to be wiped out by the upcoming robot apocalypse. Cruelty to computers.

  34. 34.

    Brachiator

    @trollhattan:

    One of those was State Farm, which in May announced that it would stop accepting new applications for property and business policies as a way to improve its financial health.

    So much irony here. An insurance company that cannot make money by writing insurance policies.

  35. 35.

    zhena gogolia

    @moops: I hope you’re right. I don’t share my friends’ certainty that Nikki Haley will wipe the floor with Biden. I think it’s the other way around.

  38. 38.

    PaulWartenberg

    Right now, your choices for Republican Presidential candidates for 2024 are:

    Someone who denies the Civil War was over the southern states fearing the abolition of slavery after Lincoln’s election in 1860

    Someone who wants to argue slavery had it benefits “as a vocational program”

    Someone who wants to banish all non-white immigrants from our shores while making himself Dictator On Day One

    Someone who bullied half the state of New Jersey and threatens to bully half the United States if he wins the White House

    Good luck with that shit, Republicans

  41. 41.

    RevRick

    Our local paper, now owned by the Aidan hedge fund, publishes a weekly op-ed by an “economist” from the Heritage Foundation. Every week it’s the same story of rants about reckless, Democrat spending, and OMG, the deficit. Every week, he mixes in a bunch of numbers, which he claims proves his point. But every column is as dishonest as the day is long.
    The dishonesty lies in, not so much what he says, but in what he omits. And the whopping omission is that he never spells out the Heritage Foundation’s agenda. Which basically are 1920s GOP shibboleths, spiffed up with weasely rhetoric.

    When he rants about reckless spending, what he fails to spell out is that in the Heritage Foundation’s view, any spending beyond the military, policing, and maybe roads is reckless spending. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP benefits? Reckless spending. Public education? Reckless spending. The EPA, OHSA, the FDA, and the SEC? Reckless spending.

    The reasons why they conclude this may vary, but it all stems from the belief that anything which limits what businesses can do, anything that lessens the economic vulnerability of workers and consumers, anything that empowers the lower orders is a breech of their hierarchical view of the natural order. Dog eat dog is not only the way things are supposed to be, but is in fact good, because it weeds out the weak. Nevermind that most people consider care for the weal a sign of civilization.

    And didn’t Margaret Mead say that for her the first sign of civilization in humans was not some tool, but a healed broken leg bone, because that meant companions had to rescue him, take him back to safety, reset the bone, and care for him for at least six weeks?

    We Democrats are the care for the broken leg people. Republicans say let the hyenas feast on him.

  42. 42.

    wjca

    @moops: well, him or Haley are going to be the GOP nomination, even with their terrible campaigns and awful politics.

    Hardly unusual for a would-be tyrant to make as sure as possible that there is nobody who is a plausible challenger for power.  Which inevitably leads to a very weak bench when he falls.  In other times and places, someone might suddenly appear from obscurity.  But with our nomination process, it’s very hard to do that without a year or more lead time.

    Kind of a problem for the GOP, if TIFG is (for whatever reason) unavailable.  Because their options then come down to

    1) the losers currently running.  Of whom Haley or Christie have the best prospects for a general election win.  But not exactly good shots at getting the nomination.  Or

    2) whatever nothingburger TIFG lifts from (probably deserved) obscurity to be his VP.

    And that’s on the optimistic assumption that the cultists will still turn out of their god-king isn’t available.  Which isn’t the way *I* would bet.

  43. 43.

    Redshift

    It’s kind of amazing how the GOP manages to produce presidential candidates who don’t know how to act like a human, but in completely different ways. Romney vs. DeSantis, for example.

  44. 44.

    CaseyL

    @Karen S.: ​

    Considering that she’s creeping up ever so slightly against TFG in the polls, if anyone “planted” that question it would have been his team.

  45. 45.

    Redshift

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    What is appalling is that DeathSentence didn’t see how bad that would look when he sat down.

    Perhaps a symptom of conservatives’ general inability to imagine things from sometime else’s point of view? (The same thing that’s part of their lack of empathy.)

  46. 46.

    David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch

    @WaterGirl: If she gets a call at 3 AM it probably from her adulterous affair:

    South Carolina blogger Will Folks released a series of phone records showing lengthy, late-night conversations between him and South Carolina gubernatorial hopeful, Nikki Haley.

    The large batch of phone records amounts to more than 700 calls placed over the past three years — more than 1,000 pages of records, Folks says — many of which came in the form of long exchanges in middle of nights in 2007, the year that Folks worked on Haley’s campaign and the year that he alleges they engaged in an “inappropriate physical relationship.” One such call began at 2:24 AM and ended 146 minutes later.

  47. 47.

    Redshift

    @moops:

    well, him or Haley are going to be the GOP nomination, even with their terrible campaigns and awful politics.

    I wouldn’t be too sure – the primaries haven’t even started yet, and who’s “ahead” at this point doesn’t have much predictive power. If TiFG ends up being out, it’s going to be chaos; everyone who was smart or cowardly enough not to mount a doomed challenge to him will be screaming for primaries to be opened back up.

  50. 50.

    PST

    Nikki Haley should read the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, which is widely available. Nothing could be clearer. In fact, the biggest complaint S. Carolina had wasn’t that the federal government was infringing on states’ rights; it was the opposite. The delegates claimed that certain northern states were failing to vigorously enforce the return of their property by requiring a degree of due process before allowing black people found within their borders to be hauled back across state lines. Under the compact theory of the constitution, the federal government had voided the agreement among the states by not stepping in and forcing the northern states states to treat human beings like straying cattle. In short, states’ rights for me but not for thee, or else we’re outta here.

  54. 54.

    Ohio Mom

    @Hungry Joe: That’s pretty much where Ohio Family is recovery-wise, except for the weather — 39 and cloudy and damp.

    We are down to 2 Covid tests so no testing unless we are absolutely sure we are better. Unless the tests we just ordered arrive early, then I will be testing with abandon, it will be my version of the whine, “Are we there yet?”

  57. 57.

    stacib

    @zhena gogolia: I’m with you on this one.  Nikki Haley doesn’t have a chance of ever being president in that party.

    Also, you, Baud and OO (along with several of the FPers) help keep me sane with your consistent refusal to buy into the “woe is us stuff”.  Thanks to all of you.

  58. 58.

    JustRuss

    @dmsilev:  That only makes sense if you think ‘did the Civil War have anything to do with slavery?’ is a gotcha question. Sane and honest people don’t think that.

    When your base is a bunch of racists, that is a gotcha question.

  59. 59.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Karen S.:

    Nikki Haley says that a “Democrat plant” asked that question about the reason for the Civil War.

    So the fuck what, Nikki? What the fuck difference does it make to your answer, Nikki?

    She is such a fucking snake. No offence to snakes.

  69. 69.

    David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch

    @WaterGirl: ​
      many, many people say she’s a scallywag

    South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley is denying an alleged affair Thursday, the second time she has had to do so in as many weeks.

    South Carolina lobbyist Larry Marchant said Wednesday that he had a one-night stand with Haley during a 2008 trip to Salt Lake City for a conference on school choice.

    COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) – Records show the business owned by the family of South Carolina Republican gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley has been penalized for failing to pay taxes three times since 2003.

    Haley has frequently cited her experience as an accountant for her family’s clothing store, saying the state needs such business knowledge at its helm.

  70. 70.

    JPL

    @PST:
    GA is the same way.   Why would they need states rights when they felt the constitution was clear on the matter.

    Nikki is a student of talk radio.

  73. 73.

    Ohio Mom

    @Nukular Biskits: That is my question too. We’ve had some clunker Republican governors in Ohio during my years here but they either had a patina of manners (thinking here especially of Taft) or (phony baloney) charm (thinking here of Kaisich) or something else that gave a good first impression.

    No one was an anti-charismatic as DeSantis. It goes without saying I abhor Nikki Haley but I can see why someone would be taken with her energy, forcefulness and sense of style.

  74. 74.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JoyceH:

    But – why would she WANT to eat straight paprika?!

    She thought the label said PUPrika, and figured it was special treats for her.

  76. 76.

    Miss Bianca

    @zhena gogolia: Except Kristol, now that he’s become some semblance of “woke”, is more than occasionally making sense now.

    It’s a little perturbing – not “disturbance in the Force” perturbing, more like having an itch you can’t locate.

  77. 77.

    bbleh

    Can we create a couple of Muppets like Statler and Waldorf to do political commentary and name them like Poynte and Mocque?

  79. 79.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    scal·a·wag
    /ˈskaləˌwaɡ/
    noun INFORMAL
    noun: scallywag
    a person who behaves badly but in an amusingly mischievous rather than harmful way; a rascal.
    US
    a white Southerner who collaborated with northern Republicans during Reconstruction, often for personal profit. The term was used derisively by white Southern Democrats who opposed Reconstruction legislation.

    I think she flunks the US definition, does anyone find her amusingly mischievous?

  80. 80.

    RepubAnon

    Another data point for “an armed society is a polite society”:

    Florida shooting: Sister fatally shot over Christmas present row
    27th December 2023, 06:04 PST

    Share
    By Thomas Mackintosh
    BBC News

     

    Two teenage brothers have been arrested after their sister was shot and died during a row over Christmas presents.

    Abrielle Baldwin, 23, was shot in the chest by one brother while she had her 10-month-old son in a carrier, the Florida sheriff’s office said.

    The brother was then shot by their other sibling, who pulled his own gun, Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said.

    It added that the shooting followed an argument over who was getting more presents.

     

  81. 81.

    Phylllis

    @JPL:  Also a high school student at a time when the Civil War was taught in SC (and other southern states) as the lost cause & soldiers presented as ‘Our Glorious Heroes’.

  82. 82.

    Steeplejack

    @Karen S.:

    @Fritschner on Twitter/Nitter:

    At the secret Democrat meeting:

    “What tough question do we ask to trip up Nikki Haley? Remember, we are worried bc she has better than a snowball in hell’s chance of winning the primary.”

    “Let’s ask her ‘What was the cause of the Civil War?’ Impossible to answer, it’s so hard.”

  84. 84.

    danielx

    Electromyogram: where they shock you and stick you with needles. Doc has a hell of future as an interrogator if he ever decides to change fields.

  89. 89.

    mrmoshpotato

    Oh Meatball Ron…  This is just sad now.  Anyone else think he’s wearing his gogo boots in that picture?

  92. 92.

    mrmoshpotato

    @JoyceH: Hope there aren’t any problems.  But to answer your question.

    But – why would she WANT to eat straight paprika?!

    Because  🎶 It’s very nice so full of spice🎶?

  94. 94.

    Another Scott

    So, Nikki says today that “of course, everyone knows” that the Civil War was about slavery. But she says what’s important now is that we remember it in terms of “Freedom” or some such thing.

    I wish someone would ask her something like this (and think of appropriate follow-up questions):

    “Nikki – Do you think the country would be better off if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?”

    If she says “No”, then badger her about her previous “Freedom” comment – whose “Freedom” were they fighting for??

    Make the rest of them answer too.

    If they want to bring the Confederacy and feudalism back to the USA, then make them own it.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  96. 96.

    SenyorDave

    @Brachiator: So much irony here. An insurance company that cannot make money by writing insurance policies.

    They could probably still make money.  However, they can make more money by writing other lines of business.  And there is also the consideration of the risk factor.  If a company only wrote two lines of business, property insurance and physical damage automobile insurance and made an equal profit margin in the long run, they would choose to write the auto physical damage.  It is much more stable, and almost all insurance companies prefer stable profits.  A couple bad years can send even a large company into a downward spiral.

    The bottom line is that property insurance is very unstable, and especially so in Florida and California.  People blame the insurance companies and say limit the rate increases, but their answer is to stop writing new business.  I recently relocated to Florida, but I went in knowing insurance is prohibitively expensive here.  The losses from hurricane Ian were higher than all property insurance premiums in the state for two years.

    What people don’t realize is that ultimately property insurance rate are driven by reinsurance costs.

  97. 97.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Another Scott:

    So, Nikki says today that “of course, everyone knows” that the Civil War was about slavery. But she says what’s important now is that we remember it in terms of “Freedom” or some such thing. 

    Nikki, can you please explain the italicized part to me like I’m a five year old?  Because my adult brain is screaming, “What word salad shit is this?!”

  99. 99.

    Suzanne

    @danielx: I had a similar test on my hand. Later, I told my husband that it was a goddamn violation of the Geneva Conventions. My hand hurt for a few days afterward. Good luck.

  102. 102.

    Suzanne

    @SenyorDave:

    What people don’t realize is that ultimately property insurance rate are driven by reinsurance costs. 

    Most people don’t have any idea of even the basics of business…. the good or service has to cover its own cost plus profit. And in services that are risky, there’s a higher cost for that. It kind of blows my mind that people don’t grasp that insurance costs more because there’s more risk living in Florida or California. Hello.

  104. 104.

    WaterGirl

    @SenyorDave: Yes!  MetLife did something similar a year or two ago.  They wanted to get out of the auto / home market, but they couldn’t cancel people for no reason.

    So they jacked up the premiums by over 50% in one year, so a lot of people like me said fuck this shit and bailed.  This is Illinois, so it’s not like we have floods or earthquakes, or we’re about to flood because of climate change.

    There’s just more money for them elsewhere.

  106. 106.

    Brachiator

    @SenyorDave:

    People blame the insurance companies and say limit the rate increases, but their answer is to stop writing new business.

    I don’t automatically blame insurance companies or specify a solution. But I wonder about the impact of the cost of insurance on the housing market and on efforts to increase the amount of affordable housing in California.

    I also wonder whether the state might have to absorb more responsibility for insuring homes if more insurance companies abandoned the market. I think that there are already circumstances where the state steps in.

    I used to commute with a guy who had worked in the Insurance commissioner’s office. Very interesting conversations.

  107. 107.

    Barbara

    Nikki Haley has been living in an undemanding dreamworld where donors and consultants have persuaded her that she is the perfect kind of candidate even though she hasn’t hasn’t run an actual campaign for an actual elected office in at least 10 years. It was a matter of time before she melted down.  The wonder is that it was over something this stupidly easy to answer.

  108. 108.

    Another Scott

    @mrmoshpotato:

    It’s worse than my attempted summary.

    TheHill.com:

    Later on Thursday morning, Haley sought to clean up the remarks while in a New Hampshire radio interview.

    “Of course the Civil War was about slavery,” Haley said Thursday. “We know that. That’s the easy part of it. What I was saying was what does it mean to us today? What it means to us today is about freedom. That’s what that was all about,” adding later she believes the voter was a “Democrat plant.”

    Funny how Lincoln doesn’t say the word “freedom” once in his Second Inaugural address.

    Maybe “freedom” means something different to her than to anyone who knows anything about the actual history of the Civil War??

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  109. 109.

    Brachiator

    @Barbara:

    Nikki Haley has been living in an undemanding dreamworld where donors and consultants have persuaded her that she is the perfect kind of candidate…

    Were these the same people who previously told DeSantis that he was the perfect candidate?

  110. 110.

    Another Scott

    @Another Scott:

    Later on in TheHIll piece:

    Seeking to address the matter Thursday, Haley said the “lesson” is that “freedom matters and individual rights and liberties matter for all people,” her campaign told The Hill.

    “That’s the blessing of America. That was a stain on America when we had slavery,” she said. “But what we want is never to relive it. Never let anyone take those freedoms away again.”

    It’s not a good sign when one has one’s campaign try to explain what you were trying to say.

    And even then, it’s misdirection.

    The system of chattel slavery in the USA was built into the economic system – the “free enterprise” system she talks so loudly about. It wasn’t big government interfering with their freedom by saying that African Americans couldn’t paint their home purple because their HOA said no. It was being condemned to be property for all their lives.

    “Individual rights and liberties” is yet more attempts at dog-whistling to the Confederates.

    We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

    Grr…,
    Scott.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @Another Scott:

    Seeking to address the matter Thursday, Haley said the “lesson” is that “freedom matters and individual rights and liberties matter for all people,” her campaign told The Hill.

    Except women, especially if they become pregnant.

    And anyone else that conservatives decide to single out for punishment.

    “No freedom for you!”

  112. 112.

    Tony Jay

    Of course asking Haley about the causes of the Civil War is a gotcha question. When Republican politicians talk about the Civil War it’s always behind closed doors for audiences who want to hear about Federal overreach, the trampling of States Rights and the Great Mistake of giving ‘those people’ the idea they could be citizens just like ‘heritage Americans’.

    Journalists are supposed to understand this. They’re not supposed to ask Republican politicians about it because answering it honestly creates as many political difficulties for them as answering it correctly would, and that’s not the job journalists are paid to do!

    Reality is on the Democrats’ side. Journalism is supposed to have a Republican bias.

  113. 113.

    Nukular Biskits

    Blaming a “Democrat plant” for your inability to answer a relatively easy question is a tell.

    And don’t even get me started on the use of the word “Democrat” as an adjective here.

  117. 117.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Redshift: Agreed; if TFG punches out, there will be an “adjustment.” I suspect that there will be a lot of chaos. The money will gravitate to a known “winner” entity and the voters will go the biggest asshole. Haley and DeSantis have loser stink all over them. I predict that the nominee be the Jerk from Jersey.

  118. 118.

    SenyorDave

    @cain: They should lobby govt on gun insurance. They could make a lot of money there.

    You have a basic problem of adverse selection.  The people who would buy it might end up being the dumbasses who leave their guns under their pillows.

  119. 119.

    SenyorDave

    @Chief Oshkosh: I don’t see how Christie gets it unless a bunch of people keel over and buy the farm.  He comes off as semi-reasonable and someone who might actually compromise, and to the Republican base that is a huge negative.  Besides, Christie is probably just as likely as Trump to check out.

  120. 120.

    JaySinWA

    @mrmoshpotato: It’s really weird that a while ago. before Woke broke their brains, they would remind everyone that Lincoln was a Republican.

    It would seem that they should have some go to response to the civil war and slavery, given that recent history. It’s a tough circle to square. But mostly they used it as a gotcha line to deflect charges of racism.

  123. 123.

    wjca

    @mrmoshpotato: Oh Meatball Ron…  This is just sad now.  Anyone else think he’s wearing his gogo boots in that picture?

    Absolutely.  Of course, they don’t reach the floor….

  125. 125.

    David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch

    It will never be Christie.

    The photos of him with a black man are disqualifying (link)

  126. 126.

    JaySinWA

    @Chief Oshkosh: Republican denial of Trump being a problem will likely carry him to nomination, potentially even if he kicks off before the primaries. I don’t see anyone really rising up to stop him, dead or alive.

    Maybe a Q-Anon resurrected JFK junior

    ETA what was that election where the all the candidates were referred to as dwarfs

    ETA2 1988 pundits called the Democratic party contenders the 7 dwarfs.

  127. 127.

    Ohio Mom

    @SenyorDave: Maybe Christie “comes off as semi-reasonable” some of the time but he also often comes off as belligerent, vindictive and easily roiled. Maybe that will be oddly comforting and familiar to MAGA voters?

    Perhaps our best bet against him is that he’s too fat to hide it and we have such prejudice against fat people in this country.

    I am shuddering to think of Christie pulling a George Washington Bridge-closing type move (as a metaphor) on the international stage.

  128. 128.

    Ken

    @Brachiator: Were these the same people who previously told DeSantis that he was the perfect candidate?

    Barbara said “donors and consultants”, so you must remember that to donors, “perfect” means “obedient”, and to consultants it means “the check cleared”.

  129. 129.

    steppy

    @Nukular Biskits: I know I am very late to this party, but the answer is that DeSantis ran against Charlie Crist, who was about the worst retread that the crumbling ruins of the Florida Democratic Party could have chosen. I am sure Ms. Cracker will back me up on that.

  130. 130.

    Matt McIrvin

    @JaySinWA: They still do that. It doesn’t matter whether it makes any sense or not. “Remember, the Democrats were the party of slavery. And also slavery wasn’t that bad.”

  131. 131.

    Quadrillipede

    @stacib: As a lurker here since, ooh, 2016 or so (can’t recall what might’ve motivated that), most of my comments would probably have been agreeing with the commenters that you mentioned. Seemed redundant at the time, but maybe there is space for some additional cautious optimism here in the comments.

    (As a first-time commenter, I am aware that basically no-one will see this comment before it’s approved, but hopefully I can claim my moderation cookie for next time…)

  132. 132.

    JAFD

    @Quadrillipede: Welcome !  Hope to hear from you again.

    To all you folk feelin’ poorly, hope you feelin’ better by the New Year.  Take care of yourselves, keep hydrated, and take things easy.

    Just passed midnight here.  72 hours of 2023 to go.  My hopes and prayers that 2024 will be a great year for all yon jackals !

  138. 138.

    Geminid

    @Paul in KY: Florida Democrats had a choice between Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried and Representative (and former Governor) Charlie Crist. They wanted to win as much as Democrats outside the state did, they knew their state better, and they chose Crist.

    So I won’t fault them or Crist for that decision. And I don’t think Fried could have done much better than Crist, certainly not enough to change the result.

  139. 139.

    kalakal

    @Geminid: I personally thought we should have gone with Fried, Mrs kalakal favoured Crist. Crist actually ran a pretty good campaign and, like you, I don’t think Fried would have done much better. Val Demings I thought had a real chance against Rubio and she crashed and burned just like Crist. A lot of Dems stayed home, there was a very nasty campaign of voter suppression which surely influenced that

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