Betty highlighted Josh Marshall’s piece pointing out that Trump is relatively popular. I agree with her observations (paraphrasing) that (a) it’s true and (b) Trump’s support is soft. The polls saying people might vote against Trump if he’s convicted, or that they’re unhappy with some Trump statement that the pollsters ask about, are pretty indicative of discomfort even among die-hard Republicans. Our job as Democrats is to highlight the things Trump says that are really bad, and also the bad consequences of that fucker’s politics (especially abortion), in the frankest and simplest manner possible.
Today’s comments by Biden calling Trump’s NATO remarks “un-American” is a great example. That’s a Washington Post gift link, but the Guardian did a better job with their headline “Joe Biden calls Trump’s Nato remarks ‘dumb’, ‘shameful’ and ‘dangerous’”
One of Trump’s perceived strengths is plain talk, and being unafraid to say things that other politicians are shy about. But, when it comes to being beholden to Putin, he dances around the question. When it comes to abortion, his narcissism makes him want to take credit for ending Roe, even though a lot of the smarter Republicans are running away from the issue.
Trump has the support of, pick a number, say, 45% of the population. The key to beating him is to make sure that the fraction of that 45% who aren’t super stoked about him don’t go to the polls, or if they go to the polls, they simply don’t vote for President (like the brave Chris Christie). Calling Trump “un-American”, “Putin’s stooge” or pointing out that 50,000 rape babies in states where women can’t get abortions is an ugly consequence of his proudest moment aren’t things that Democrats are usually comfortable saying, but to get the point across to these folks, we need to start getting used to saying them.
Alison Rose
I think it’s always important to remember that people are not always honest with pollsters. There are undoubtedly some Republican voters who will say they support Trump, but when it comes time to mark their ballot in the general, they might not actually do it. Maybe they can’t get themselves to say it out loud that they won’t vote for him, and telling a pollster they will vote for him isn’t necessarily gospel.
Baud
Good advice.
Mart
I only call him the adjudicated rapist now.
Lapassionara
I am so old, I’m not even a Boomer. One of the highlights of my travel experience was visiting Omaha Beach in Normandy, and seeing the US cemetery there. Row after row of graves, of mostly young men, who sacrificed their lives to help defeat Nazism and Fascism. What a sobering and poignant experience.
Trump basically is saying that their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of their families, was in vain. That the US can elect a leader who could just decide that the treaties the US entered into after WWII can be disregarded at the snap of a finger, even though those treaties are part of US law and even though he, as President, takes an oath to enforce the laws and uphold the Constitution. The fact that one of the US’s major political parties would even welcome a candidate with these views is completely demoralizing. Even allowing him to run for office calls into question whether we, as a nation, can ever be trusted again.
Alison Rose
I do want to say that I don’t think “rape babies” is a term we should use. I realize maybe you’re being glib because it’s BJ, and I absolutely think pointing out how many people become pregnant as a result of rape is very important. Most victims probably want to terminate, but not all. There will be some who, for whatever reasons of their own, choose not to do so. And some of them may choose to raise and be able to love that child. That’s not for us to judge. There are people out there who are the result of a sexual assault, and I can’t begin to imagine how one comes to terms with knowing that about your origins. But that person is not the bad one in this scenario. And tagging them as “rape babies” can seem to imply that they are worthy of ire.
We certainly should highlight the cases, which I’d assume to be the vast majority, where someone got pregnant from an assault and wanted to terminate and couldn’t thanks to the end of Roe and other intrusions. But the derogatory terms should be applied to the rapist and the politicians acting as accessories after the fact.
Ryan
“That’s a Washington Post gift link, but the Guardian did a better job with their headline “Joe Biden calls Trump’s Nato remarks ‘dumb’, ‘shameful’ and ‘dangerous’””
I’d go one step further and state that this was the step of a weak man. Trump is going to do everything he can to make this a weak v. strong election, so actions like this have to be perceived as weakness rather than strength. Sure, it’s easy to seem strong by portraying yourself as the head of a protection racket, but the Biden team I think can find a way to jujitsu that into a strength by standing by our allies.
NotMax
Open thread? FYI.
narya
I think there’s a difference between “liking” TIFG and reflexively voting for anyone w/ an R after their name–perhaps what’s meant by “soft” support.
FelonyGovt
I think this is right. We have to put things plainly, without niceties or pulling punches, to normies who aren’t immersed in this stuff like we are. ETA but I do agree with Alison about “rape babies”, ouch
I now “control” 4 votes- my husband’s, my daughter’s, and my (Alzheimer’s patient) father-in-law’s. My husband and daughter are normie Dems who appreciate my “fact finding” and we mark our ballots together. My FIL just knew he didn’t want Trump to get in again. All have been marked and submitted- Biden, Adam Schiff, and other tasty Dems (my FIL gets to vote for Auntie Maxine!)
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Lapassionara:
You’ve just provide an outline of a political ad by The Lincoln Project.
Not that I’d ever give those untrustworthies a dime of money but ideas? Sure.
JPL
CBS news is covering Biden’s comment.. “No one else has bowed down to a Russian dictator, and I never will”
WaterGirl
Unrelated PSA: Raffle tickets available until 5pm Eastern on Wed 2/14.
Ukraine Quilt Raffle:
Send email to WaterGirl with your nym and your BJ Ukraine thermometer donation confirmation, and which raffle(s) you want tickets for.
If you are one of the 21 people who donated to the Ukraine thermometer AFTER I mentioned the upcoming raffle on Sunday 2/4, you are eligible for the # of raffle tickets that match your donations. Send me email to let me know if you would like raffle tickets for either or both quilts.
More details and quilt images in the Ukraine raffle post from yesterday.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Alison Rose:
Agreed but I didn’t have a better “simple facts” way of saying it.
schrodingers_cat
Any update on the NY special election. What are the chances for D pick up?
dmsilev
@schrodingers_cat: I assume the polls are still open? Probably won’t know much for another couple of hours.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: Polls close at 9, so it will be awhile. Supposedly, immigration, taxes and crime are at the top of the list of concerns. That’s all I know.
RevRick
@Lapassionara: It’s actually worse. He is spitting on their graves, because he’s stating he wants to establish a fascist regime here. They died in the struggle to crush fascism overseas, and he wants to usher it In through the front door.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I think polls close at 9 p.m. Do you get AM radio? WCBS 880AM will have reports through the hour. It will be a big story there. WCBS is clear channel so you can probably pick them up where you are. You could hang out in your car and listen, like a real political junkie.
Or, follow Tom Watson on Twitter. Watson lives across the Sound in Westchester and is a good source for New York political news.
Did you get snow today? Long Island was expected to get 5-8″ and that may be a factor in the election.
Alison Rose
@$8 blue check mistermix: Maybe just “pregnancies from rape”. Then we’re talking about the condition rather than the possible eventual person.
Nukular Biskits
Agreed.
Jackie
Speaking of votes, do we know yet if the impeachment vote on Mayorkas is happening tonight?
Per CNN:
RevRick
@JPL: Crime? When it’s back down to a 50 year low? Taxes? When Biden only nicked the +$400,000 income folks? Immigration? When Trump sabotaged a bipartisan bill to deal with it?
JPL
@Geminid: Washington Post has a live election feed.
Concerns about immigration made even some of Suozzi’s supporters think twice. Margaret Bell said she always leaned toward Suozzi because she has known him in Glen Cove for years, but the campaign messages about immigration swayed her. “So many of them are coming over here — they should be worrying about here before they take care of someone else,” she said of politicians who support more liberal immigration policy. Still, she stuck with Suozzi.
“At the end of the day, I feel he’s trying to do the best he can for us.” Maria Deluca also acknowledged hearing “a lot of negativity toward his stance on immigration” but decided she preferred moderation to Republicans’ hard line. Suozzi, she said, would “protect us but also be fair to those who are seeking asylum.”
wjca
Well, since he thinks that anyone who is wounded in combat, let alone killed**, is “a loser,” it’s hardly surprising.
** Actually, I think he believes that anyone who volunteers to serve, or who didn’t scam his way out of the draft, is a fool.
New Deal democrat
This is one of the rare times I disagree with Josh Marshall.
I do not believe it is accurate to say that Trump is popular. It is more accurate to say that he maintains the support of the same 43%-46% of likely voters that he did in 2016 and 2020. He is no more nor less popular than that.
I would not call someone whom a majority of likely voters have a negative opinion of “popular.”
The real issue is that 43% to 46% may be enough to re-elect him in 2024 depending on the relative popularity of Joe Biden and how it is spread out in swing states. Very small shifts – e.g., the Arab American vote in Michigan – may make all the difference.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Some flurries. The storm moved south of us.
JPL
@RevRick: It’s the republican playbook. Run on hate and fear and hope no one asks about other issues.
Baud
@JPL:
I wouldn’t necessarily trust people the media find to highlight.
It’s a wealthy district. Ripe for being influenced by Republican issues.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I saw pics of a lot of snow in Hartford, over 10″ by 9 a.m.
p.a.
If Candidate Combover is puking up shit like this without pressure, imagine in a debate? I think his handlers will try to avoid debates and use Fox etc to push whatever bullshit reasons they throw out.
They’ll have to contend with his ginormous ego to convince him to avoid debates; we know he really thinks he’s a genius.
ETA: whatever system here wordchecks, my iPad or Safari or the B-J host, had no problem with ginormous. No redline, no alt spellings offered.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: I live northwest of Hartford.
Eolirin
@RevRick: The migrant busing to NYC that Texas is doing is putting legitimate strain on local resources and causing issues, but it’s really just that Nassau county is Republican voter dominated, and those three things, regardless of how connected they are to reality, are what Republicans voters respond to
Especially in a state like NY, and especially Long Island, where being anti-abortion and anti-gay aren’t as powerful motivators.
cmorenc
@Alison Rose: Sorry, but your post is a paradigm example of progressives arguing among ourselves about what language is most politically correct to go against opponents bringing verbal sledgehammers, guns, and knives to the fight. Maybe “impregnated by rape” would be a good hammer to beat our forced-birth opponents with, but frankly this is not a battle ti be won with strained nuance of wording.
Shorter version: to Hell with getting overly hung up in politically perfect wording.
prostratedragon
With classical fascism springing up right here in the ISA, why are voters on (excuse me) Long Fucking Island in a twist about the southern border?
dmsilev
@Jackie: It’s still a “maybe” according to the latest update from the Post a few minutes ago:
Apparently Republicans have trouble with basic counting.
Eolirin
@prostratedragon: Because Texas is shipping so many of them to next door NYC that it’s causing problems.
Robin Goodfellow
@schrodingers_cat: With the snowstorm? Hard to say, Suozzi held a early vote gathering and many of his local supporters showed up after voting. This might make the difference.
wjca
Or deciphering a weather report.
Wag
@cmorenc: Agreed. Call them what they are. Rape pregnancies. No need to inflame by calling the resultant pregnancy a “rape baby”
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: A friend in the Boston suburbs said they just got a dusting.
Eolirin
My hope here isn’t just that Suozzi wins, but that he wins by an unexpectedly large margin. That’d bode extremely well for us picking up the other lost seats during the general.
But Nassau county has turned pretty damn red. I’m not entirely sure that seat is winnable without somewhat rigged maps. I hope it is! We could really use that seat right the fuck now. But we’re gonna have to see.
Jackie
@dmsilev: Thanks 😊 I’m hoping the weather favors a postponement, plus A Dem pick up tonight in NY! OR… another House GQP switches yea to nay!
Lots of heavy wishing, I know 🤞🏻🤞🏻😂
JaySinWA
@Jackie:
topclimber
@prostratedragon: Immigrants can burden schools with a high number of English as a Second Language kids. They won’t be turned away from emergency rooms. They add to the housing crunch.
Of course, they also work and contribute to the tax base, which offsets justifiable concerns about paying for such things. But that’s immaterial because the prime problem is bigotry.
cain
@dmsilev:
They have no sense of timing do they?
Of course, this is the group that keeps on voting and looking like fools. As they become more extreme, they are being more clownish.
Eolirin
@topclimber: When there’s no system in place to process them and get them set up with services and housing because they’re being dumped by the busload by assholes from Texas, there are additional problems.
Right leaning folks are great at victim blaming when faced with any kind of inconvenience.
Scout211
Ginormous is an actual word now listed in all the dictionaries. I like the word and use it when something is bigger than big.
It was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2007.
Jackie
@JaySinWA: Another question! It almost sounds like a very short time for swearing in, the way Johnson is handwringing.🤞🏻
dmsilev
@wjca: I guess Trump’s Magic Sharpie of Storm Redirection was, umm, in the shop getting reinked or something?
MomSense
@RevRick:
According to his former CoS Kelly, he called them losers and suckers.
Trump is a disgusting monster.
dmsilev
Adventures in “well, that escalated quickly”. I need to buy some metal stock for a project at work. Because Reasons, it needs to be high-purity copper. The product page for one supplier says that “It is typically used in conductors, wiring, and particle accelerators.”. No applications anywhere in between “wire” and “Large Hadron Collider”?
Eolirin
For context, between spring and December of last year we had 150k people dumped into the city with no process set up to handle them ahead of time and no financial assistance from the feds. It’s been a mess.
geg6
Rachel Bitecofer (sp?) just wrote a book about this very thing. Start telling the bare truth about Cheetolini and the rest of the GOP and be assertive about it. Stop cringing and being polite.
Baud
@Eolirin:
All I can say is that if blue areas did that to red areas, red area voters would known which party to blame.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
Nassau county is Democratic when voting for president. Obama got 54% of the vote in 2012 and Biden got 54% of the vote in 2020. So the question is how does the county vote in an off year election and how is the congessional seat map drawn.
Mike S. (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
reposting from the last thread because it fits better here.
Next up, refraining from use of rethuglican framing. Follow the lead of Catherine Ramplell in today’s WaPo.
“The surge in immigration is a $7 trillion gift to the economy” (gift link)
p.a.
JaySinWA
214-213 party line vote, Mayorkas impeached.
Baud
@p.a.:
👍
@JaySinWA:
👎
dmsilev
@JaySinWA: I would say that the House GOP was a bunch of clowns, but I don’t want to get sued for slander by Bozo and his associates so I’ll just say that I’m not surprised.
JPL
@JaySinWA: Who will they impeach next? Sec.of Defense has missed a lot of work due to the fact that he has been in and out of the hospital, so he might be a candidate. Another candidate might be Sec. Haaland, because she show’s favoritism towards indigineous people.
there are no good republicans
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
@Jackie:
Right. They wouldn’t be scrambling and dragging a cancer patient in for a vote if they thought they had this special election in the bag.
Action speaks louder than words from diners printed in FTFNYT.
sdhays
@dmsilev: They managed to do it. 214-213.
Ksmiami
The Republican Party is a death cult. Simple and True.
Eolirin
@Baud: For sure, but we live with asymmetric disadvantages on these issues. Media drives a lot of it.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Pretty much.
Ksmiami
@sdhays: idiots. I assume the Senate won’t vote for it
Baud
@Ksmiami:
I think the Senate can dismiss it.
Geminid
@Eolirin: I saw that the are 4 other special elections today, all state House districts. I think one in New York, one in Pennsyvania and two more in stares west. Two are safe Republican districts and two are safe Democratic.
The New York 3rd CD is the only purple district up tonight, with a Cook’s rating of D+2.
Brachiator
It’s still too early to pay attention to polls. Also, there are too many variables at play here to tease out voter intent. “Would you still vote for Trump if he defames Ms Carroll four more times and jacks up the damages to a billion dollars?”
Interesting point. Even though Trump dances around the question, things always end up with him saying how much he loves Putin and other authoritarians.
But also keep in mind that the MAGA dopes believe that Trump is a foreign policy master of the universe, and that all other world leaders naturally defer to him.
Republicans only pretend to run away. None of them support a return to Roe. None. And no matter what they say, it’s more than apparent that they will push for the most restrictive federal ban on abortion possible if they gain enough power to do so.
Has this strategy of discouraging voters ever really worked?
It is foolish to try to manipulate people into staying home. And by the time we get to October, die-hard Trump supporters might be especially energized. We have to get out the vote and convince swing voters and Independents to vote for Biden.
I’m all for things like this, especially because it will get under Trump’s skin and increase the odds that he will say or do something stupid in return.
laura
The time to fling Republican shit in republican faces Is Now.
JPL
@Geminid: Is PA safe for democrats? I thought that was purple also.
Wave Function Collapse
@schrodingers_cat:
So IIRC, you either have three feet of snow or none at all, and no one will know which one until you open the box?
frosty
Open Thread? Valued Commenter sab mentioned a Republicans For Ukraine Scorecard downstairs. I checked mine. Knock me over with a feather! My useless Rep, Lloyd Smucker, isn’t completely useless. His votes are green across the board and he’s labeled “Excellent”. I guess I’d better call and thank him.
My former Rep, Scott Traitor Perry, is completely the opposite.
https://gopforukraine.com/ukraine-report-card/
Jackie
@sdhays: Sad. Even the GQP members who admitted Mayorkas had NOT committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors voted to impeach because they are scared to death of the Orange god. Sickening.
David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch
I always felt Dems should have impeached Bill Barr and the nazis Dump had at DHS. But they wanted to stick to norms. Now that rethuglicans have broken that norm they’ve inadvertently opened the door to impeachment of future Rethug henchmen.
Eolirin
@David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch: 2022 and 2023 were bad elections for us there. Schumer lost that district in 2022. I’m honestly not entirely sure Biden will win it this year.
There’s been a shift and it may be persistent.
Scout211
I’m surprised that my Rep Tom McClintock (R) voted nay again.
Roll call vote
geg6
@JPL:
PA still has a lot of blood red rural counties and two very blue cities (with Erie being third largest and trending blue). But Dems have finally taken over the House, so that’s a good thing. The state has lost population and most of that loss is from those blood red counties/districts, so that makes the very blue cities and their ‘burbs more politically powerful and thus we got two Dem senators, a Dem governor and a Dem controlled statehouse.
Alison Rose
@cmorenc: Forgive me for not wanting to be cruel to people who don’t deserve it. I didn’t realize that was not a progressive value. I was not “arguing”, I was simply offering my opinion.
frosty
[Raises hand]. Lehigh Valley is fairly blue also. I canvassed there for Susan Wild, Fetterman, and Shapiro. They had a really good GOTV organization going; way better than I’ve seen in my own County.
wjca
Perhaps hidden behind ketchup running down the walls and onto the floor?
wjca
Nonsense. How could they impeach someone for not working? Not working is how they roll, after all.
Robin Goodfellow
But Nassau county has turned pretty damn red.
Nassau has always been a Republican Stronghold, so strong in fact Reagan was impressed when he visited, calling it the strongest in the country.
This is the land of real life Archie Bunkers.
Another Scott
Whitehouse.gov:
Cheers,
Scott.
JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: Not quite party line vote, the 3 R no votes from last time stuck with no.
Ken Buck of Colorado
Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin
Tom McClintock of California
Geminid
@Alison Rose: And a well-founded opinion, I would say.
Eolirin
@Robin Goodfellow: It blued quite a bit in between. Trending the other way again.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Since the Senate is in Dem hands, the Mayorkas impeachment will go nowhere, but will it have any effect beyond a few news cycles, if at all?
trnc
Good! I was wondering if the nightly news shows had carried it.
Ken B
@Baud: Why not make the goons run a trial? They’ve got no crimes to go with, and they’ve picked some of their stupidest members to be managers\prosecutors.
Why not make them own it and show how much of a farce this is? And Dem senators can rub their noses in their own malfeasances and general ineptitude.
Ken B
@Baud: Why not make the goons run a trial? They’ve got no crimes to go with, and they’ve picked some of their stupidest members to be managers\prosecutors.
Why not make them own it and show how much of a farce this is? And Dem senators can rub their noses in the Republican’s own malfeasances and general ineptitude.
UncleEbeneezer
This sounds like a much better plan than bashing Biden over Gaza.
Manyakitty
@Ken B: nah. Shut it down. Starve them of the headlines and airwaves.
Baud
@Ken B:
Show it to whom? It’s pretty clear by now that much of the public can’t tell for themselves what’s a farce and what isn’t.
trnc
@New Deal democrat:
Just my own $0.02, but popularity is relevant, so I wouldn’t consider 50% a hard threshold for being popular. Song number 27 in the top forty list is popular. The guy having a major party nomination wrapped up almost before the primaries began is definitely popular, as much as it pains me to think about.
Geminid
@JPL: According to an ABC news story about the Pennylvania special election, House District 140 is in Bucks County and is voting to replace a Democrat. Joe Biden and John Fetterman carried the district by double digits in 2020 and 2022, but Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick carried it by 3 points in 2022 so it’s a little swingy.
The Republican candidate is Candace Cabanas, who has “worked in healthcare and hospitality,” while the Democrat is Jim Prokopiak, “a lawyer and a member of the Pennsberry school board.”
Bill Arnold
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The impeachment articles are buttressing their portrayal as problems at the southern border being an “urgent crisis” which they sadly must vote against solving. They are/will argue that Mayorkas would not follow any new legislation anyway. Which is a blatant lie even if “true” (which it is not; the executive branch has broad authority over the border), evidenced by the CBP Union’s endorsement because it gives them a pile more money.
Constitutional Law Scholars on the Impeachment Proceedings Against Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas (Joshua Matz and Laurence H. Tribe, January 10, 2024)
Worth a skim; it’s short.
Signed by:
Laurence H. Tribe, Joshua Matz, Donald Ayer, Philip C. Bobbitt, Corey Brettschneider, Erwin Chemerinsky, Gabriel J. Chin, Rosalind Dixon, Michael Dorf, Amanda Frost, Michael Gerhardt, Stuart Gerson, Aziz Huq, Kevin R. Johnson, Pamela S. Karlan, Jon D. Michaels, Timothy Naftali, Victoria Nourse, Deborah Pearlstein, Robert Post, Cristina Rodríguez, Jack Rakove, Kermit Roosevelt, Peter Shane, David A. Strauss
Another Scott
@JaySinWA: It was a hail-Mary vote.
Via twitter.com/Fritschner :
One California Democrat was out with COVID.
One south Florida Democrat and 2 south Florida Republicans were out (maybe weather related transportation issues).
They got “lucky”, and came close to losing again.
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Bill Arnold:
Do you think it will work? Can’t the Senate just dismiss the articles of impeachment or something?
NotMax
@Bill Arnold
That threw me for a loop until realized it’s Kermit III.
Jackie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Per the NYT:
So, I guess we wait and see.
Geminid
@Geminid: Reports are that AP has called the Pennsylvania HD 140 election for the Democrat, Jim Prokopiak.
SomeRandomGuy
More importantly, Democrats need to get more comfortable pointing out that Trump looks like a toad with some diseased rodent constantly skull-fucking him. “He thinks you all are so stupid, you believe that massive lard-butt is only 240lbs. Well – maybe JUST the butt….”
While Trump is still massively dangerous, he’s still patently ridiculous, and there should be ten times more mockery of him than there is, a statement that will, miraculously, always be true, until we reach infini-mock, which is a *limit*, not a *number*.
Scout211
Deleted. Wrong thread.
prostratedragon
@topclimber: Yeah, I doubt that the immigrant influx from the south is a huge burden on Nassau County compared to what the House Repubs are trending toward.
Barney
@Mart: Maybe there’s an opportunity to combine things here: Trump the rapist is committed to forcing rape victims to give birth to their rapist’s babies.