Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Come on, man.

The Giant Orange Man Baby is having a bad day.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

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

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

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

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

How stupid are these people?

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

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Expected Event at an Unexpected Time

Expected Event at an Unexpected Time

by | 164 Comments

This post is in: 

DeathSantis is out. I would have expected someone with his impeccable political instincts to go through a couple more humiliating losses, but apparently the private jet money must have run out.  Of course, he endorsed Trump on the way out.

He will not be missed.  I’m sure Betty will step up to dance on his grave soon enough, so I’ll keep this short.

Edited to add:  This is the campaign post-mortem that Pudding Boots deserves (via Atrios), and includes the fact that one of Ron’s Yale buddies spent the last weeks of the Iowa campaign working on a puzzle.

 

Reader Interactions

164Comments

  3. 3.

    Jackie

    Has anyone contacted BettyCracker? She’s gonna be over the moon!

    I suspected something was brewing when he abruptly canceled this morning’s Sunday gigs on MTP and CNN.

  6. 6.

    Tom Levenson

    I feel for poor Florida.

    Now he’ll have nothing to do but fuck over the state, and every nerve ending of humiliation and self loathing to urge him on to do it.

  8. 8.

    HumboldtBlue

    He spent $150 million dollars to show the world that he is a charmless, awkward asshole, and lord knows how much of that was Florida taxpayer money. What a waste.

  11. 11.

    karen marie

    once-promising presidential campaign …

    more disciplined champion of his ideas.

    What planet do these fuckwits live on?

    a glitchy live chat that neatly embodied the way his grand plans were going awry.

    I’m sorry – what? I missed whatever the author is hinting at here with “grand plans.”

    Your “plans” are not “grand” if they can be undone by a lack of planning.

    willing to dig in on polarizing issues

    I may just start bashing myself in the head if I hear one more opinionator complain that Biden is “divisive.”

  17. 17.

    Redshift

    @Tom Levenson: Maybe? I feel like the things he did to Florida got a lot worse once he thought he could be president (like going from dealing with the pandemic to completely pushing the wingnut antivaxxer line), so there’s a thin hope he might at least not put so much effort into it.

    On the other hand, he might still be motivated by the idea he could run in 2028, I dunno.

  19. 19.

    TheOtherHank

    I’ll be curious if the FL legislature does his bidding anymore. They’ll all be kissing Trumps ass now. They probably don’t fear Ron anymore.

  20. 20.

    hrprogressive

    For all the prognosticators who claimed DeFascist was going to be a “more competent, likeable Trump”, Ron really went out of his way to prove those people absurdly wrong.

    Which, hey, given how often the “Fascism is coming/here” people have been right over the last decade, getting this one wrong – at least for 2024 – is a nice surprise.

    I’m sure a guy with his ego will definitely try again – assuming, you know, there’s another election down the road for which to “try again” at – but this one went so awfully bad, that I’m hopeful he’s ruined his chances permanently.

    Now, has Florida woken up enough to kick this guy out next time, or nah?

  24. 24.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jackie:

    Has anyone contacted BettyCracker? She’s gonna be over the moon! 

    I’m sure she’s composing a hilarious post about Puddin’ Boots.

  25. 25.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @TheOtherHank:

    I’ll be curious if the FL legislature does his bidding anymore. They’ll all be kissing Trumps ass now. They probably don’t fear Ron anymore.

    DuhSantis is term limited (has to sit out at least one term) so he’s also a bit of a lame duck, so there’s that.

  26. 26.

    Suzanne

    @Delk: I feel like we’re all losing out of some hilarious Halloween costume fodder. The Tacky O outfits are so inspiring!

  28. 28.

    Redshift

    @Alison Rose:

    Oh God. Better or worse than Cruella DeVos?

    Definitely worse. He’s as bad for trying to undermine public education in favor of funneling public money to wingnut private schools, and even worse for grifting (appointing open grifters at every turn, rather than just tilting the scales in their favor), and as far as I recall she didn’t do anything directly to try to make schools do right-wing indoctrination.

  30. 30.

    Archon

    It’s absolutely astonishing how Republicans bent the knee to an evil man like Donald Trump. We have no choice but to defeat Trump at ALL costs but let’s not fool ourselves, the price is going to be enormous.

  39. 39.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @Urza:

    Florida allows more terms if its non consecutive?  That seems odd.

    Yeah back in ye olden days the southern governors would just run their wife or some lackey for that term.   George Wallace ran Lurleen for a term, but I don’t know if they did that over in Florida.  I’m doubting that Ron is secure enough in his masculinity to run Casey but who knows…

  50. 50.

    scav

    Turns out competence is not one of the things hard-core MAGAs are that into (see also coherency).  And even then Pudding Boots failed to deliver the preferred manner of incompetence.

  52. 52.

    Alison Rose

    Very OT: Anyone have an iPhone running 17.2.1? Mine updated about a week ago, and ever since, my text message icon won’t display the notification badge. I’d always had that turned on, and I checked and it’s still on. I tried turning it off and back on, and it still won’t show it. I changed the banners to persistent so that at least if my phone is unlocked I’ll see that, but it’s annoying as fuck. AFAICT every other app displays the badges like normal.

  58. 58.

    Scout211

    @Urza: Never heard of a governor coming back after 8 years and a timeout in any state during my lifetime.

    Meet Jerry Brown Wiki

    The longest tenure is that of Jerry Brown, who served as governor from 1975 to 1983 and again from 2011 to 2019, the only governor to serve non-consecutive terms

  63. 63.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @matt: Tacky Onassis is in tears, I’m sure, her whatever-they-call-the-rose-garden now after Melanoma destroyed it dreams dashed.

  66. 66.

    Jackie

    I bet the No Labels group says a hard NO! if Pudd’n Boots offers to join them. He has very fresh loser’s stink all over him.

  74. 74.

    hitchhiker

    Gotta question the judgment of all those 1%ers who happily handed over millions and millions and millions of dollars to that putz.

    I guess sometimes our overlords really don’t know how to pour piss from their own boots.

  78. 78.

    Hungry Joe

    If Ron D. hadn’t campaigned or cut any ads he’d be in the lead by now.

    Reminded me of Phil Gramm’s presidential run, way back when. Someone explained why it went nowhere: “Even his friends don’t like him.” Then there was “Big John Connolly,” supposedly unstoppable. And Jeb Bush.

    I wonder who holds the record for most money spent for fewest delegates snared.

  81. 81.

    Leto

    @Hungry Joe: from the ABC article:

    Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg spent more than $1 billion on roughly 100-day presidential run, according to a new Federal Election Commission filing.

    Bloomberg poured more than $1 billion of his own money into his White House bid, which featured a national campaign operation with roughly 2,400 staff.

    By the end of March, the campaign committee reported spending more than $1 billion of that money, including $158 million just in the month of March alone.

    The former New York City mayor won just 55 delegates in the primary, and only one contest, in American Samoa, spending roughly $18 million per delegate.

    How quickly Mike Bloomburg was forgotten.

  83. 83.

    Ohio Mom

    From the start, Josh Marshall insisted DeSantis would go nowhere. He’s a smart one, that Josh.

    I imagine Nikki Haley is thrilled at this news. An old friend once predicted Haley would be our first woman president. It felt like a curse when she said that, my friend is a total Democrat. I don’t like getting this close to that happening.

  86. 86.

    $8 blue check mistermix

    @Urza:

    Never heard of a governor coming back after 8 years and a timeout in any state during my lifetime.

    In addition to Jerry Brown, George Wallace came back after a 4 year timeout twice.

    That said, Pudding Fingers isn’t half the politician those two were/are.

  89. 89.

    Mike in NC

    Lots of comments on the Washington Post home page. I liked this one:

    “Your part-time governor is now available FULL-TIME to further lower the quality of life in Florida.”

  90. 90.

    Nettoyeur

    @HumboldtBlue:  At least there is little chance of him running for POTUS again now that people have gotten to know him. Also too, loser stink. I hope Floridians take revenge for what he has done to their state.

  91. 91.

    TheOtherHank

    @Alison Rose:

    The other day my somewhat aged iPhone decided it didn’t want to be a phone anymore. Everything else worked, but I couldn’t make or receive calls. I turned it off and back on again and it returned to its duty. If you haven’t shut your phone off and turned it back on in while, it can start acting kind of odd.

  92. 92.

    zhena gogolia

    @Ohio Mom: I too insisted DeSantis would go nowhere, but nobody listens to me. I now insist that Nikki Haley will never be president.

  102. 102.

    Elizabelle

    FTF NY Times, but I do love this front page blurb from their lead story.

    Ron DeSantis’s distant loss to Donald J. Trump in Iowa dealt a devastating blow to his campaign. His exit caps a spectacular political failure.

    Have to see that again.

    spectacular political failure

  105. 105.

    wjca

    @hrprogressive: Now, has Florida woken up enough to kick this guy out next time, or nah?

    It seems pretty certain that TIFG will find someone to endorse against him any time he runs for anything.  Being so disloyal as to run against the god-king?  Never to be forgotten!

  110. 110.

    Elizabelle

    @M31:  The NY Times is a meth lab of a political desk, aren’t they?

    They need to fire their political editor, but would probably just come up with another GOP-fellating white male.

  111. 111.

    Scout211

    @Alison Rose: Do you have an Apple watch? I have read that there can be a conflict between the phone and the watch (badges and notifications will show on one and not the other).

    I don’t have the problem you are having so I have no good advice for you but I did read that if you select “share across devices” in focus, this fixed it for some users.

  112. 112.

    TheOtherHank

    @Alison Rose: ​
      Well now we know that didn’t work. To answer another part of your question, I am running 17.2.1 on my iPhone XS Max and the messages app does show its badges on the icon.

  113. 113.

    Citizen Dave

    @Alison Rose: I’ll chip in.  Also for a drone show at night with things like the white boots, and “Woke Wins!”

     

    I hope it is Nikki Haley.  Not worried about her vs. Biden.  Aside from many of her own issues, how does she explain fawning over and working for trump?

  114. 114.

    FelonyGovt

    I kinda hope Haley stays in now, to continue to tweak TIFG and make him sundown even faster.

  118. 118.

    Lyrebird

    @Sister Golden Bear:  I fear for the worst.

    Pretty reasonable response!

    To keep my head up, I’m gonna hope that some of those tea leaves suggesting folks back home are getting sick of Death Santis are real portents and not just blips.

    Rooting for Stacy Ritter (Ft Lauterdale tourism person) over Mr. Death, Mrs. Death, the hypocrisy champions (Zieglers), and all the rest.  And the vile Pushaw is out ofa job, I think!

  119. 119.

    wjca

    @Citizen Dave: I hope it is Nikki Haley.  Not worried about her vs. Biden.  Aside from many of her own issues, how does she explain fawning over and working for trump?

    Just for openers, she’s the wrong gender and had the temerity to run against TIFG.  So, if she is nominated, the MAGAts will stay home and sulk in droves.  That should outweigh the “But he’s so old!” voters.

  122. 122.

    Tony Jay

    What I find sooooo amusing is that Ronny DiSastrous was the Pundit’s choice. They frikking well loved him last year. They were so desperate for someone who’d give them Trump’s ‘positives’ – daily clickbait from horrendous policy and divisive rhetoric, 1% tax-cuts up the wazoo – with none of his ‘negatives’ – rapey, chaotic, moronic, and maybe just a little bit threatening to journalists who didn’t play the access game properly, and they projected this need onto the puffed-up little Napoleon from Florida.

    They wanted someone they could package as a ‘new McCain’ for the modern era of partisan trench warfare. Ex-military, pugnacious, grandstanding, and always up for a fight. But what they got was a creepy little animatronic who couldn’t actually ‘do’ any kind of politics that didn’t resolve around viciously punching down at the weakest available target and laughing about it like a nightmare sex-doll.

    Tiny violins.

  124. 124.

    JWR

    Speaking of endorsements, I see that the thinking man’s Repub, John Chris Sununu, who’s already endorsed Haley, was on MTP this morning, so I listened for a bit, and he made some rare for a Rebup observations about Trump being completely unfit to hold office, before switching gears to compare Biden with Trump, neither of whom, as Sununu tells it, can string together a complete sentence without a Teleprompter or make their way off a stage. At one point he came pretty close to calling Trump a wannabe dictator who’s election will likely lead to something approaching Fascism, adding that he’ll definitely be supporting Trump in the general, because Joe Biden! And that’s one of, if not the last remaining, “reasonable” Repub governor(s).

  127. 127.

    Alison Rose

    @Scout211: I do, but I never use it on my laptop, only my phone. And there’s nothing turned on in focus settings, I also never use that. Like I said, literally everything else is working normally. The only thing not working is badges on the text message icon.

  130. 130.

    Scout211

    @Alison Rose: Okay. I am no expert, but I checked the settings that I do have to see if there is some weird combination that works for me that you could try.

    In focus, I do have it turned on because I use “do not disturb” overnight.  The personal and work are not set up.  I have “share across devices” toggled on

    In the Messages settings, I have focus turned off.

    In Messages, Notifications, if you have your badges “stacked” try changing the to “list” (if you haven’t already).  When my phone updated it defaulted to “stacked” and I missed several text messages.

    And that’s about all I have since I am not an expert.

    I hope you find an answer.

  131. 131.

    karen marie

    NBC covered the jigsaw puzzle as well – including video!

    But this made me burst out laughing:

    “Never [Back Down] PAC has for months coordinated its activities with and made in-kind contributions to DeSantis and his campaign committee, contravening the explicit legal requirement that super PACs must remain ‘independent’ of — i.e., not coordinate with or make contributions to — federal candidates or their campaigns,” read a complaint from the Campaign Legal Center filed with the Federal Election Commission in December.

    A veteran Florida-based Republican operative who did not work for DeSantis said that he had conversations with those who did work for Never Back Down about being careful of the appearance of coordination.

    “Yeah, there were those of us warning people who got involved with them late that it’s a good idea to try and stay away from Never Back Down,” a veteran Florida GOP operative said. “It was clear they were playing with fire, and got much closer to — if not clearly — surpassing the firewall you’re not supposed to go past. It’s a dangerous situation, and I’m not sure if Individual-1 gets elected that his Department of Justice won’t come knocking.”

    Of course, this is yet another situation where IOKIYAR – it’s only political and scandalous if a Democrat does it. If Individual-1 is reelected and sics the DOJ on DeSantis, the media will nod their heads in agreement that everything is just fine.

    DeSantis and his “helpers” should be investigated for the in-your-face collaboration between his “campaign” and the super PAC, but if the Biden DOJ does it, all hell will break loose.

  133. 133.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Urza: Did forget Bloomberg, so has everyone else but his family.

    I can point you to an awful lot of folks who haven’t forgotten Mike Bloomberg: Faculty, staff and alumni of our mutual alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, which he bankrolled most of the way to a nine-figure endowment. I am personally grateful to him for reducing, through his phi;anthropy, the former torrent of fundraising contacts in years past to a trickle.

  135. 135.

    LadySuzy

    @wjca: But Haley has promised to pardon Trump. Trump has a big incentive to help Haley get elected. He knows that President Biden wouldn’t pardon him.

    If Haley beats Trump in the primaries – I don’t think so but let’s play – , Trump will threaten Haley: “you sign something official and promise to pardon me or I will convince my followers to stay home” . Would Trump also ask for the pardoning of the insurrectionists ? I don’t know. He really doesn’t care, except that it would keep his cultists in an “adoration mode”.

  136. 136.

    Splitting Image

    I’m chagrined. Honestly.

    Chagrined is when you have this enormous grin on your face and have the urge to dance, right?

  137. 137.

    LadySuzy

    @JWR: Sununu: another one who is dreaming of a run in 2028. I’m SO TIRED, SO OUTRAGED when I see all those republican politicians whose level of ambition is inversely proportional to their level of honesty and morality.

    Sununu doesn’t believe for a minute that President Biden is worse as president than Trump. He knows Trump is totally UNFIT, suffers from severe psychological pathologies and is a danger to national security; he knows that President Biden, despite his age, is still a very competent president.

    The most generous thing I can say is that Sununu is completely delusional if he believes that Trump can be controlled once in the White House.

    Finally, if Sununu truly believes that the policies of President Biden are so horrible, he should listen to Liz Cheney: “we can survive bad policies; we can’t survive the destruction of our democracy”

  139. 139.

    LadySuzy

    @Jackie: She wouldn’t have a choice. If an important portion of Trump supporters stayed home, she would not have any chance of winning.

  140. 140.

    Jackie

    @LadySuzy: I’m beginning to wonder how many GOP are really going to vote for TIFG?

    The GOP is full of liars and will publicly lie about supporting/voting for him to keep the wrath of TIFG off their back.

  142. 142.

    Jackie

    @LadySuzy: If TIFG’s not on the ballot they aren’t going to vote. A lot of his supporters self-admittedly aren’t even registered to vote.

  143. 143.

    Another Scott

    Interesting comments by Allan Lichtmann on Bloomberg (6:55) from 6 weeks before the Iowa Caucus.

    “Their only hope is that Turnip is convicted for a serious felony…”

    “I’m amazed that Republicans are going down this road again…”

    (Lichtman’s got a 13 factor “keys to the White House” rubrik for predicting the Presidential election winner that indicates Biden is in good shape.)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  144. 144.

    Jinchi

    @LadySuzy: Trump is ideologically incapable of losing to a minority woman. He would trash her all the way to the general election, and Republicans are primed to believe his ‘fraud’ nonsense.

    His actions in court prove he cannot behave rationally even when it’s in his personal best interest.

  146. 146.

    EntroPi

    @Alison Rose: I don’t have that issue, but my next step would probably be to turn off the badges. Reboot the phone, and then turn them back on.

    Probably won’t work, though!

    I know you said you don’t use Messages on your Air, but my guess would be that somehow they’re getting marked as “read” on that device, so there’s no unread messages on the phone. There’s probably some esoteric setting that would prevent that.  Or I’m just entirely mistaken!

  148. 148.

    frosty

    @Uncle Cosmo: Yeah, but he had to put his name on the School of Hygiene and Public Health, dammit! Ms F bought one of the last T-shirts from the school store that didn’t have his name plastered on it.

  149. 149.

    FelonyGovt

    @Tony Jay:

    But what they got was a creepy little animatronic who couldn’t actually ‘do’ any kind of politics that didn’t resolve around viciously punching down at the weakest available target and laughing about it like a nightmare sex-doll. 

    Just wanted to see that again. 😀

  151. 151.

    Another Scott

    @Alison Rose:

    Made me look. Lots and lots of complaints about people not receiving badge notifications.

    Other than the things you’ve tried, I found this:

    the1su
    the1su

    Oct 29, 2023 8:28 AM in response to jonh6969

    I had a similar problem with my iphone. I was not getting alerts, even after doing all the usual troubleshooting. Discovered it was a Siri setting interfering with things. I had to turn off Siri announcements. Settings > Siri & Search > Announce Notifications: Turn this off. Siri never announced anything for me and prevented me from getting my alerts

    It’s another thing to check, anyway.

    There are other possible fixes in that thread – nothing seems universal, unfortunately.

    Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  153. 153.

    Kristine

    @Alison Rose:

    I do have an iPhone running 17.2.1, and so far so good. The only time something like this happened to me, I had accidentally hit the Focus half-moon on the flashlight control panel, which blocked all notifications. When I flip up that screen with my thumb, it’s really easy to hit. I didn’t even realize it—a friend let me know that they had received a do not disturb notice when they IM’d me.

  154. 154.

    Bill Arnold

    @Nukular Biskits:

    In the defense sector, we call that a “Raytheon Reset”.

    Etymology for that? Reminds one of the story about the use of a null garbage collector (for computer memory) on a missile.
    An amusing story about a practical use of the null garbage collector (Raymond Chen, February 28th, 2018)

    Imagine my surprise when the customers chief software engineer said “Of course it leaks”. He went on to point out that they had calculated the amount of memory the application would leak in the total possible flight time for the missile and then doubled that number. They added this much additional memory to the hardware to “support” the leaks. Since the missile will explode when it hits its target or at the end of its flight, the ultimate in garbage collection is performed without programmer intervention.

    The story is a bit garbled; not clear if there was a leak, or no garbage collection at all.

  155. 155.

    RaflW

    Incredibly pathetic that he didn’t endorse Haley. But absolutely true to the internal mush Ron might mistake for a core.

    What a tiny, tiny man.  Buh-bye

  157. 157.

    Miss Bianca

    @Tony Jay:

    laughing about it like a nightmare sex-doll.

    Oh, dear God, that’s even more horrifying-hilarious than your myriad previous images for DeSaster!

  158. 158.

    moonbat

    Yay! The hateful homunculus is out! May he rot in the governor’s mansion while Disney eats his lunch in court and TFG spitefully drags him until he won’t be able to get elected dog catcher after his term is up.

  160. 160.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @frosty: Ach, kwitscherbeliaekin! I majored in physics, aiming for a doctorate in astronomy, so what did The Hop do? Took Mikey’s big buck$$$ to build the Bloomberg Center, to which they relocated the Physics and Astronomy department from Rowland Hall (named for H. A. Rowland, first occupant of the chair of physics at JHU and master of the diffraction grating), then handed the building over to the Math Department and renamed it Krieger Hall after another moneybag$ donor whose name also defaces graces the School of Arts and Sciences.

    Hang on for a few more years and once Mikey coughs up a coupla billion more, brace yourself when it’s renamed Mike Bloomberg University & the sports teams are the BloomJays. What the hell, Johns Hopkins hisownself was a robber baron, why not sell the name out from under his wuthless corpse??

  162. 162.

    hotshoe

    @Nettoyeur: ​ I hope R voters wake up enough to take revenge on every R politician in the state — the corrupt and spineless pols who enable Ron DeSantis to be so bad.

    And while I’m hoping for things, I want the Dems to run a plausible candidate for every office at every level of local and state government.

    But Dems need more money in FL because they can’t afford to support candidates in every district, and right now are concentrating on finding six winnable seats to stop the R legislative supermajority.
    Poor Florida!​

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