Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Bark louder, little dog.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Washington Post Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

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

Everybody saw this coming.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

The revolution will be supervised.

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Republicans in disarray!

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: VIVEK! Pivots!

Cold Grey Pre-Dawn Open Thread: VIVEK! Pivots!

by | 69 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

It’s a crazy idea, but it just might work… Cynics have suspected this was Ramaswamy’s end goal all along, but now it’s official — he’s running, frantically, for TFG’s vice-presidential appointment. Per CNN, “Ramaswamy urges Supreme Court to overturn Colorado ruling removing Trump from ballot” :

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is urging the US Supreme Court to overturn the Colorado Supreme Court ruling barring Donald Trump from the state’s ballot.

Ramaswamy, who has previously denounced the Colorado court ruling, told the justices in a friend-of-the-court brief filed Thursday that he disagreed with the state court’s finding that the Constitution’s so-called insurrectionist ban applies to the presidency.

But he also stressed that if the justices in Washington, DC, leave the Colorado ruling intact, the consequences “will extend far beyond the dispute over President Trump’s eligibility,” potentially incentivizing voters and decisionmakers in states to find ways to kick candidates off the ballot for their own personal and professional benefit…

He’s pulling out Nixon’s 1952 vice-presidential playbook: Attempting to position himself as the second-in-command choice most popular with the GOP’s rabid right wing. (Whether VR, like RMN, is also ratf*cking horsetrading behind the scenes is something we can’t yet know)…

America First! (of dank historical record):


Yelling the quiet parts loudly, in the *right* forums:

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    Betty Cracker

    WaPo reports on a new Iowa poll that shows Trump at 54%, Haley at 20%, DeSantis at 13% and Ramaswamy at 6%. I really want that to be true because maybe the humiliation will chase DeSantis out of national politics forever.

  2. 2.

    Chief Oshkosh

    I’ll bet his wife is very, very sad. Dude’s gonna be hanging around all the time now.

  5. 5.

    eclare

    Bringing Ruby Ridge into this is very scary.  Vivek is toying with things he has no idea about, but whoever suggested it to him understands very well.

    Somehow we have a tornado watch in Memphis .

  6. 6.

    ColoradoGuy

    The GOP are nothing more than different flavors of racism. Ku Klux Klan, the Know-Nothings, Neo-Hitler, Putinism, etc.

  7. 7.

    p.a.

    These machinations for VP pose an interesting problem for tRump & his handlers: can they conceive of any of these people being as big a cipher as Pence was?  The man even looked like a blank white wall.

    It is after all job requisite #1.

  10. 10.

    Geminid

    @p.a.: Someone suggested Katie Britt, Alabama’s new Senator, as a possible Trump VP pick. This made sense to me. I think he’ll go the conventional route and pick a Senator or a Governor.

    I once speculated here that Britt might be better than her former boss Senator Richard Shelby, but an Alabama Jackal who would know set me straight: Britt’s worse, he said.

  11. 11.

    suzanne

    @p.a.: I have had, well, I dunno if I would say fun, imagining who would be a “good” Trump VP. Vivek has the same weird energy as Trump’s kids, IMO.

    He doesn’t need an evangelical, they’re already on board. He doesn’t need to triangulate. I think he wants an undying loyalist. And someone who looks good on TV, who really wants to be on TV, defending him and praising him. I may still think Kari Lake is the “best choice” among all these fucken freaks.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    After an early boomlet, Vivek looks like he’s bombing in the primary. Trump doesn’t like losers.

  14. 14.

    p.a.

    @Baud: I think a bit of loser stench is beginning to attach to tRump for the average R voter.  Too late for his competitors, but could hold down turnout a bit in the general.  Or it’s just the result of being in a primary, and will disappear for the general.

    • Fingers crossed it’s A.
  15. 15.

    Geminid

    @Baud: On Tuesday, that 54% per cent should translate to a much more decisive margin in delegates won. Still, Trump is weaker among Republicans than he ought to be. A strong opponent would make this a horse race, but there is none.

  16. 16.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Even in the GQP, there’s lots of people who want someone other than TIFG.  The press pumps him up above his actual popularity.  Of course, converging to someone else is seemingly impossible for the voters over there though…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  17. 17.

    Ben Cisco

    @Geminid: Another Alabama Jackal here and can confirm – she is MUCH worse.

     

    Is it going to be the brown face of white supremacy?”

    Saying the obvious part out loud is a bad look, rookie.

  19. 19.

    Splitting Image

    @Geminid:

    On Tuesday, that 54% per cent should translate to a much more decisive margin in delegates won. Still, Drumpf is weaker among Republicans than he ought to be. A strong opponent would make this a horse race, but there is none.

    If I were to bet money on the race, it would be for Trump to romp his way to victory, maybe getting upset in New Hampshire. But their voter base makes it so hard to handicap. There is a non-zero chance that 50+% of the Iowa caucusers will show up ready to annoint Trump the winner and that they will all vote for someone else as long as they can agree on who that someone else will be.

    There may not even be any backlash to one of the others winning because some of the hardest-core Trumpers promising violence if Trump doesn’t return to the White House will be the ones switching their votes. Big talkers are hard to predict.

    One possible result of this year’s antics is that primary debates may be about to become a thing of the past. If Trump skates to victory after blowing off the entire process, what reason will the next bunch of guys have to participate?

  20. 20.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I agree that’s a weak number for a cult leader who is effectively an incumbent. Doesn’t bode well for the general, I hope.

     

    @Geminid: I heard that speculation about Britt from a Never-Trump political operative on a podcast. Her argument was Britt is a convert, not an original MAGA diehard, and she owes her elevation to the senate to Trump, both qualities he allegedly likes.

    Also, this person said Britt and her ex-footballer husband are what Trump would call “Central Casting.” Someday when our long national nightmare is over, someone should write a book on how many people Trump hired based on “Central Casting.” It was a lot and so emblematic of his shallowness.

  21. 21.

    Geminid

    @Splitting Image: The incentives in 2028 will be the free exposure, and fear that rivals will take advantage of their absence. No candidate will start out with the base of support Trump had. They’ll have to compete for it in every way possible.

  23. 23.

    NotMax

    @suzanne

    Lake
    1) is infused with Eau de Loser
    2) if chosen awards a Senate seat to the Ds in a gift box tied with a giant red bow.
    .
    If it is a woman (it won’t be, IMHO), Stefanik.

    At this early date see Pompeo as the dark horse VP choice. Although would not be at all surprised if first offered to Hannity, who turns it down flat.

  24. 24.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Princess: ​
     

    One can only hope there’ll be a decent contingent of Repubs who stay home in November rather than vote for Trump.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @Princess:

    Agree.  But I also think their marginal voters historically are less distracted than ours. Coupled with the structural disadvantages, that’s the risk right there.

  26. 26.

    NotMax

    Iowa R caucusing begins at 7 p.m. local time. The pool is now open for wagers on when Dolt 45 will declare yuuge victory.

    I’m a-gonna go with 7:03.

  27. 27.

    Nelle

    Iowa is having a blizzard today.  Much of Iowa had 10 inches of snow early in the week and now is getting another 10  or so.  But now the winds are picking up to sustained winds of 20 to 30 with gusts of 45+ mph and the temps are dropping.  The high on Sunday is -5 with windchill down to -40 and -40.

    Millions spent on ads and campaigning and Nature says, Not so fast.  Who wants to go out to vote for these goofs?

  28. 28.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: When the voting roll data  came out a couple months after Youngkin’s win, analysts thought it showed that a small but significant group of Republican voters who came out for Youngkin had stayed home in 2020.

  29. 29.

    Splitting Image

    @Geminid:

    The incentives in 2028 will be the free exposure, and fear that rivals will take advantage of their absence. No candidate will start out with the base of support Drumpf had. They’ll have to compete for it in every way possible.

    That depends on whether another Trump-like outsider enters the race. The conventional wisdom was that you had to be a Governor or a Senator to have a shot, and Trump completely upended that at least for the G.O.P.

    DeSantis and Haley are probably handicapped by having had political careers, and they’re the ones who needed these debates for media exposure. If Elon Musk were born in the U.S., I would say that the next primary was his to lose.

  32. 32.

    Kay

    County prosecutor in Brittany Watts case has released a statement. (pdf)

    Blames city prosecutor and municipal court judge.

    It could be excuses and buck-passing but the sequence of events described could happen in Ohio – “abuse of a corpse” can be either a felony or a misdemeanor OH so the case could have been brought by the CITY prosecutor with the municipal court judge binding it over to common pleas, where county prosecutor would get it and have to bring it to a grand jury.

    It’s very unusual for a county prosecutor to blame a city prosecutor and muni judge though. That never happens.

  35. 35.

    Geminid

    @Nelle: I looked up Des Moines weather and it looks really rough today. Tuesday will be sunny, but the high is predicted to be 1°.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    I’ll shut down the FBI & ATF and here’s one more reason why.

    I don’t have much sympathy for federal law enforcement when the Right turns on them. So many of them seem to be huge Trump supporters – to the detriment of their work and doing their job. I also think the NY FBI office interfered in the 2016 election to harm Clinton and support Trump and a lot of them should have been fired for it. Too bad so sad that every Right winger now runs on bashing them.

  41. 41.

    p.a.

    @NotMax: RI has a town with alphabetical listing.  The town council president at the time of the change legally changed his last name by adding “a” as the first letter.  A competitor legally changed his last name to begin “aa…”.  He still lost.

  42. 42.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: I couldn’t open your link, but it’s probably an issue on my end. Regardless, I hope the ass-covering nature of the move signals that the authorities realized they crossed every line of decency on this case. I’m glad Watts was exonerated, but it’s utterly horrifying that she was charged in the first place. I hope she gets a smart lawyer and sues the crap out of the people responsible.

     

    @eclare: Yikes, stay safe!

  43. 43.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: ​It’s very unusual for a county prosecutor to blame a city prosecutor and muni judge though. That never happens.

    Me thinks somebody is feeling a little vulnerable with all that loser stink on him.​
     
    etaL Bad linky Kay.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    @NotMax: Weather will the worse Monday. The forecast for Des Moines is cloudy with a high of -4°. Caucus turnout could be very low.

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty Cracker: I hope she gets a smart lawyer and sues the crap out of the people responsible.

    Especially the nurse who violated the law by revealing personal medical info to an unauthorized individual.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    No, it’s a bad link. Here’s a better one. 

    He ends with his office being “attacked” or whatever by people who didn’t understand that he had no discretion on whether to bring it but that part is bullshit. His office was attacked partly for the behavior of his prosecutor – she was the person who sneeringly said that Watts “went on with her day” after the miscarriage – the “selfish” trope people always use with women.

  51. 51.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Splitting Image: Trump is passing on debates this year, but he’s far from an outsider now- he’s a former President. He was an outsider in 2016, and he built his brand in the debates.

    Now if Trump wins this fall, I can only guess what the dynamics of the 2028 nomination contest will be like. But if he loses, I think there will extra scepticism towards an outsider candidate that will make it harder for one to succeed by avoiding the debates.

  52. 52.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I think he’s correct that if the case originates in a municipal court and then is bound over to “felony court” (Common Pleas- his court) then he has to bring it to grand jury. The city prosecutor would have had discretion.

  56. 56.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    Interesting.  Couldn’t he have made it clear earlier that he was being forced to do it? Saying it after they lose is kind of late.

  57. 57.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    They get to Common Pleas court three ways – a GJ, a bill issued by the prosecutor, or bound over from a municipal court.

  58. 58.

    Scott

    That Australian ad just made me laugh so hard.  I, will, of course, share it with my adult children and wait for the eye roll.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    I’m shocked he blamed the judge. He could have just recited the process. Must be bad blood or some history. Muni court judges are elected as are county prosecutors. City prosecutors can be but mostly are not- they’re appointed.

  60. 60.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Kay: Yes, there is some broadness to the law enforcement aspect of HIPAA, but it’s not ipso facto. I do not know that it is true that the nurse didn’t break the law. That should be investigated by the hospital admins and by the DA, but it likely won’t be.

  61. 61.

    Jinchi

    @p.a.: ​
      can they conceive of any of these people being as big a cipher as Pence was?

    I think Trump wants someone who will grovel on demand and simultaneously disappear into the background when not needed. Vivek certainly doesn’t meet the second half of that equation. Then someone mentioned Elise Stefanik as a contender for the VP slot and I realized I’d forgotten she existed.

    Which makes her a pretty strong contender.

  62. 62.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Thanks. Ever since I read Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri’s “she went on with her day” comment, I’ve been hoping that clod falls through an open sewer grate.

    Over the past couple of days, I’ve seen signs that pundits in mainstream outlets are finally starting to understand the implications of Dobbs for women’s healthcare. Examples in New York Mag (“Death Panels for Women” by Sarah Jones) and WaPo (“Conservative jurists and the health risks they expect women to endure” by Ruth Marcus).

  63. 63.

    suzanne

    @NotMax: There was a report of a poll yesterday that had Lake only one point behind Gallego. Eeeeeeesh. Far too close for comfort.

    I would have thought it might be Marjorie Taylor Greene, but she’s…. uh…. not heteronormatively great-looking.

  66. 66.

    Another Scott

    @suzanne: @Beatrice Blacklow:

    I kinda agree with suzanne that he’s probably not going to pick a crazy preacher type this time because the Evangelicals are already on board.  And he supposedly tried to weasel (with apologies to weasels) out of picking Pence as soon as he made the announcement.

    We know he values “loyalty” above almost anything else.  We know he wants to make VVP happy.  And we know he wants someone who will not steal the attention from him, so no big names unless they swear total fealty to him.  He won’t care about anything like geographical balance or trying to win a purple state.

    Maybe Scalia’s kid that ran for school board and lost bigly??:

    Bryce, Scalia’s daughter, has four children, all of whom attend private schools. She took them out of the public schools because she opposed steps the district took during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Some voters expressed concern during the campaign that Bryce would impose far-right policies, such as banning books and quashing LGBTQ+ content, and would seek to divert funding to private schools and homeschooling.

    […]

    Bryce denied that she would try to ban books and was focused on raising academic achievement in the public schools. She said she was being discriminated against because of her family connections.

    Gotta drive the white grievance vote!!11

    [ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]

    Seriously, dunno. With any luck, it won’t matter either way.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  67. 67.

    Citizen Alan

    @Geminid: I don’t know anything about her. Except her gender, but I believe it. Conservatives are the worst, but conservative women are the worst of the worst. This is because, by definition, all conservatives hate women, and so conservative women are driven first and foremost by a seething self hatred.

  68. 68.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: I called his office and asked the person who answered the phone when Republicans were going to legislate the jailing of all pregnant women so their behavior could be monitored 24/7. She hung up on me.

  69. 69.

    Geminid

     

     

    @Citizen Alan: I don’t hear much about Senator Britt either, but that may make her a good choice in Trump’s eyes because she has no national brand of her own. Britt was Richard Shelby’s Chief of Staff, so she ought to know how to subordinate herself to a powerful man.

    Also, Britt is 41 and could be called “attractive,” which checks off another box. Trump has the radical base nailed down tight already, and Britt might be reassuring to the Chamber of Commerce component of the party that doubts Trump.

Comments are closed.