Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Tex.) and his wife allegedly accepted $600,000 in bribes from an oil company controlled by the Azerbaijan government and a bank headquartered in Mexico, according to a federal indictment unsealed in Texas on Friday.
You know what you call an anti-abortion Democrat like Cuellar? A fucking Republican. Unfortunately in 2022 this happened:
The recount wrapped up Tuesday, and Cuellar picked up eight votes, defeating progressive challenger Jessica Cisneros by 289 votes overall, the party said.
Cuellar didn’t have a primary opponent this year, since Cisneros gave up after pushing that rock up the hill in 2020 and 2022, all the while being fought by the DCCC as they supported this anti-abortion sack of shit to the tune of $4.3 million in 2022. It’s a D+3 district, so it’s not like Cuellar has some special sauce that has him winning in, say, a R+3 district. If the DCCC had stayed out, we wouldn’t be here today.
Cuellar can withdraw, but it sounds like he’s going to go even lower than whale shit (i.e., Bob Menendez) and stay in the race.
His wife Imelda (irony just died) was also indicted. The indictment alleges a 7-year pattern of corruption, which means not only can he be bought, but he can be bought cheap.
trollhattan
Whee, grift Friday!
Today’s Letters of Note email begins with this gem.
Ihop
Does anyone else remember the federal investigation into money laundering by the iranian revolutionary guard related to trump tower baku?
I do. I hope this is related.
Betty Cracker
Interesting how the most corrupt and disloyal pieces of shit in the caucus tend to be dinosaurs like Cuellar. Conventional wisdom casts lefties as potential villains, but they tend to be team players when the chips are down and don’t drag down the brand by denying women’s status as fully adult humans.
KrackenJack
I have a forlorn hope that these corruption prosecutions against Dems who richly deserve it are setting the stage for bi-partisan prosecutions. I’ve mentioned before being old enough to remember ABSCAM in 1980. No need for an FBI sting in this case, just follow the money.
Baud
D+3 doesn’t seem like a lot for 2022. It should be sufficient for 2024, but it looks like we’ll have to hope that the voters hold their noses.
Nukular Biskits
Is it too late for Jessica Cisneros to mount an independent or write-in campaign?
John S.
And who was chair of the DCCC in 2022? Noted sack of shit Sean Patrick Maloney (who has a real knack for fucking over progressives while simultaneously fucking over the Democratic Party).
kindness
I wonder if a write in campaign would be worth it?
Geminid
I hope Cuellar stays in, because no write-in candidate will beat the Republican. He’s voted with his party on every issue but abortion, but even there the National Right to Life political committee rated Cuellar at 7 out of 100, and the Susan B. Anthony List gave him a zero.
This was in 2022, when NARAL’s political committee gave him a 70 rating. That was behind almost all Democrats, but ahead of almost all Republicans. And as far as I know, he doesn’t trash other Democrats.
smith
@kindness: Seems to me that in a D+3 district, that would probably just hand the seat to the R. If Cuellar could be forced to resign, or could be expelled, what is the procedure for filling his seat?
sab
@John S.: I see that Biden gave him a job overseas.
Geminid
@John S.: That press release is dated November 9, 2022. If the money was spent after the primary, I have no problem with it. We needed that seat.
BR
Given how bad the Gaza / protests / youth voting etc. news cycle has been, I’ve been thinking about a best case scenario for Biden (and the country, really):
1. Protests on campus slow down as the news cycle moves on and colleges wrap up for the school year.
2. One way or another, the fighting ends in Gaza, either by Netanyahu running out of things to attack or a ceasefire.
3. By mid/late summer, World Central Kitchen, with overt assistance from Biden and the US government are visibly all over Gaza feeding people.
4. The GOP starts complaining about all the food that Biden is giving to people in Gaza.
5. By the fall the debate about Gaza is a question of “should we feed them?” and Biden is very publicly saying “yes, and here’s my BFF Chef Andres who is hard at work with my help”. That settles into a classic GOP vs. Dem debate that aligns students once again with Dems.
6. Biden through backchannels makes clear that he will not tolerate an October surprise from the Israeli government.
dr. bloor
He’s probably beyond shame or principle or anything else, but I for one wouldn’t want to be on Hakeem Jeffries’s shit list.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Careful now….. I’m sure there’s some way to blame this on Bernie Sanders and Elisabeth Warren and random people on Twitter!
eclare
@BR:
I like that scenario. Here’s hoping.
Cheryl from Maryland
Great post title which leads me to the rest of the lyrics – I’m a young cowboy, and I know I’ve done wrong. Eat shit and die, Cuellar. We don’t need you.
$8 blue check mistermix
A bit more context: Cuellar won the general by 57-43 in 2022 – he didn’t need $4.3 million of DCCC money to win the general. It was all about the primary. And, remember, they spent in 2020 to defeat Cisneros also.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
@Suzanne:
Never understood this thing where it’s a defense to criticism to point out other people in other cohorts are awful.
Baud
@$8 blue check mistermix:
DCCC always defends incumbents. If you have an example of them not doing that against a primary challenger, that would be good info.
sab
@BR: Gazans may well have mostly starved to death by midsummer. That is why the kids are so upset. Nothing they can do about it, but the young don’t know that yet.
Geminid
@Nukular Biskits: I’m not sure Jessica Cisneros is still in politics. The district has other liberal Democrats who can run though, if and when the seat comes open.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Baud:
Yes, I have one. They spent zero dollars and zero cents to help AOC when she had a primary challenger in 2020.
They should stay the fuck out of primaries and save their money for the general.
Baud
@$8 blue check mistermix:
She wasn’t at risk. Not a valid example.
It’s fair to believe that they should stay out of all primaries. Not fair to believe they discrimate against certain incumbents without evidence.
Suzanne
@Baud: There’s shitty people in every group, but the discussion isn’t symmetrical around them. Some people get to just be shitty on their own, whereas others’ shittiness is used to discredit the non-shitty others. It’s tiresome and it’s indicative of a weak-ass mind.
$8 blue check mistermix
@Baud:
So the only valid example, as you shift the goalposts, is someone who is in danger, which by definition means that the Democrats in their district feel that a change is needed? That should be someone who we really shouldn’t spend a penny to defend. Instead, millions were spent on a corrupt anti-abortion candidate because he was in danger.
Geminid
@$8 blue check mistermix: You haven’t shown me that the DCCC spent any money on Cuellar’s 2022 primary campaign. Maybe you can, but I’m not taking these complaints seriously until you do.
Baud
@$8 blue check mistermix:
No goalposts shifting. I asked you for an example of the DCCC not backing incumbent and you come up with none. The fact that the DCCC didn’t waste money is not a good example. If you want to hold on to your resentment with no proof, that’s your problem.
Do we even know that the DCCC spent money in the Cuellar primary? As someone said above, the money appears to be for the general.
Also too, not the DCCC directly, but an example of incumbent backing.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I haven’t surveyed the universe of discussion to ascertain symmetry. I still think that particular defense is weak.
sab
@$8 blue check mistermix: AOC is pretty damn good at fundraising herself. She is also generous to other campaigns. Why would they give money to a candidate that doesn’t need it?
Yutsano
I suppose the best case here is that Cuellar stays in the race, wins, then quits after conviction*, run new race, get another D in, and thus balance is restored.
*Fuck quitting at indictment. As any prosecutor will tell you, one can indict a ham sandwich if truly motivated.
piratedan
@Yutsano: as evidenced by the Mayorkas indictment and those evil bastards in Texas providing that one lady with incorrect information then convicting her of voter fraud.
Another Scott
I’m not sure why people expect the DCCC not to support incumbent Democrats in the House. It’s their principal job.
DCCC.org/about:
Yes, it sucks when monsters and crooks get elected. Yes, it’s important for elected Democrats to have ways of funding re-election campaigns.
I’m not sure what we could reasonably have expected the DCCC to do differently about Cuellar.
Investigate every incumbent to see if their opponent(s) are better? Who does the investigation? Who vets the critics? Who pays for it? Do we really expect donors to pay for (probably eventually) weaponized investigations of people on our side who were elected?
Stay out of primary campaigns all together? What good is a political support organization that refuses to provide support? What good is a party if it cannot help elected party member win again?
Dunno.
I don’t think the problem is with the DCCC in this case. It sounds like a problem with the House Ethics system, the IRS, the FEC, and all the usual oversight bodies that have been strangled by the GQP for decades.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
—
Who has monthly donations going to the DCCC, DSCC, DNC, and elsewhere.
VFX Lurker
You jest, but boy did I have a bad time with abusive Sanders supporters in 2016. I had to block/unfollow a lot of men I knew in real life on Facebook because they revealed what they really thought about women.
In 2020, a young Warren supporter at work had her eyes opened to misogyny on the left, again via abusive Sanders supporters.
Any time I see a Bernie bumper sticker now, I think “red flag.”
sab
@VFX Lurker: I did door to door canvassing in the primary and the general and the Bernie Bros were all kind of sweet. Misguided but sweet.
ETA : I am so old that I was politically active in the late 1960s, so I am am well aware of the misogyny of the political far left. I just don’t automatically blame the candidate for the assholes who like him for the wrong reasons. Others followed him for the right reasons.
smith
@sab: I am convinced that young women activists’ experience with the misogyny of the far left led directly to second wave feminism.
Baud
@smith:
Seems like it’s time for a third wave.
sab
@smith: At the time we thought it was okay because they got drafted and we didn’t. We were very young and naive, and a lot of those lefty draft dodgers went on to be stockbrokers.
mapaghimagsik
Say what you want, but Imeldas sloe collection must rock
Betty Cracker
@Baud: We are pattern-seeking animals, and I guess our bespoke bubbles yield highly debatable perceptions. I’m okay with that.
Geminid
Democrats: “The much anticipated Red Wave of 2022 never materialized, and we held our losses to a net 5 seats, and those races were all close.”
Also Democrats: “Joe Biden should have kicked DCCC head Sean Patrick Maloney to the curb instead of making him an Ambassador.”
Count me in the first group.
sab
@mapaghimagsik: I have weird shaped feet, extremely high arches and small but very wide.
I don’t much like anything about Imelda Marcos but I sympathise with her shoe fetish. If you find it and it fits and you like it buy it.
The internet has fixed that but not my brain.
piratedan
I kind of get the sense that we are all stressed the fuck out right now. Picking fights with allies and friends when that is really not our intent. With all of the fuckery afoot, it’s easy to be frustrated and easy to vent when in safe confines but hoping we can limit the friendly fire we’ve been seeing as of late.
Its easy to lose sight on how we unfuck things (electing more and better Democrats) when there are battles internally and externally and many of them incredibly serious in lives lost and your place in the world at risk. Remember to be kind to each other, cut people that are on the same side some slack.
UncleEbeneezer
@sab: BernieBros doesn’t mean any/all Bernie supporters. “BernieBro” was a term created for a certain faction of extremely obnoxious Bernie supporter (usually, but not always men) that displayed casual misogyny (and racism too). The kind who hated when Dems focussed on silly things like abortion and the Supreme Court, instead of economic policies.
sab
OT : my dad died last month. My oldest sister was obsessed with him being buried next to our mom.
Cemetary called today and mom’s gravestone was placed in the wrong spot in the family plot.
(Who nowadays has a family funeral plot? I could write novels about the family contentions.)
So I had to make a third trip out to sign the paperwork to move the little flag we posted last week.
I am learning a lot about end of life stuff that our family attorney never told me. He is hoping to cash in on it but I am 70 with a lifetime in the world so I am wary.
mapaghimagsik
@mapaghimagsik: shoe. Jesus.
Kay
The NY Times (incredibly) has a big story on the counterprotesters who attacked the protestors at UCLA “for hours unchecked”.
Tony Jay said he was shocked it wasn’t covered nationally – now it is.
db11
@piratedan: Well observed and well said.
Suzanne
@VFX Lurker: My ex-husband is a Bernie stan and I still don’t think they’re all assholes. Some of them are assholes (my ex-husband is a low-grade asshole but absolutely votes the right way…. don’t fuck Republicans).
What I really, genuinely think is that the Democratic coalition needs much of the left wing if it ever wants to win anything. I also think that much of what the left supports is good policy (push for ceasefire in Gaza, end arms to Israel (or at least condition the aid), student loan forgiveness, higher taxes on the rich, and more. On the whole, they push us to use our power for good and we’re stronger with them.
mrmoshpotato
@Ihop:
Ah yes – the Azerbaijan fraud/scam/money laundering/shady shit.
Kay
“Counterprotestors provoked violence”
Im amazed they had the spine to print it
There’s video, but still
EarthWindFire
@Cheryl from Maryland: There’s also the sound the death march as they lower him down version – wouldn’t cry over that fate for Cuellar at this point. Leave the corruption to Republicans.
narya
@sab: come sit next to me–or my mother, really. She is extremely organized, and they had a TON of stuff sorted out, but there’s still so much to do. Luckily, she’s shown me where her paperwork is, etc., so I’ll have a little leg up when she goes, but damn. And I can’t help but realize just how lost my dad would have been if she had died before him–she always handled every single bit of their finances (with input from him on any big decisions). They even had burial stuff dealt with. The one thing I still need to do for her is find out what would be involved in moving my sister from her current burial spot to be buried with them. (I offered to do that, because I know how hard those conversations would be for her.)
Urza
If this could be a code among all liberal women at the least then progress could be made as the men would have to shape up to compete.
gwangung
@Suzanne: Um, yes.
I was flabbergasted when I saw a conversation where some black Southern Dems were explaining why their peers, who were Black business leaders, didn’t vote for Sanders. Some Sanders assholes just blatantly called those leaders stupid and knew less than they thought they did. THOSE kind of folks we don’t need–Sanders supporters fine, assholes, no.
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: Me too.
Baud
@Urza:
Young liberal men need to step up and offer up their bodies for the cause.
eclare
@sab:
Raises hand! I have a space in a family plot, and I don’t want it. My grandparents bought multiple plots together in the 1950’s in a hideous cemetery.
Condolences on all that you are going through.
Geminid
@Baud: I can be backup!
Sister Golden Bear
@VFX Lurker:
Yep. I’ll choose the bear.*
*Social media has been abuzz the last couple days about a hypothetical question: If you were alone in the woods, would rather run into an unknown man or a bear. The vast majority of women chose the bear, and in turn there’s a screeching chorus of “not all men” and man-explaining, proving why women chose the bear. It’s also resulted in lots of wonderful memes, that are worth a thread just to share them.
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear:
Of course, you would choose the bear.
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud: FWIW, we’re actually on Fourth Wave Feminism these days.
Suzanne
@gwangung: Sure, you’ll get no argument from me.
But, like, there’s plenty of “centrist” and “moderate” assholes. People voted for Sinema (including me) and Cuellar and Menendez and Maloney and plenty of other shitty Dems, and yet those voters don’t get talked about like they’re potentially harming the party.
Sister Golden Bear
@sab: Come sit by me. I’ve got extremely high arches, wide ball of foot, narrow heel, and wear a size 13. If I find a shoe that comfortable, I rejoice. If find a shoe that’s cute and comfortable, I stockpile it.
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear:
What was the third wave?
Sister Golden Bear
@Baud:
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: No Doubt. Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, and bands like that.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I can’t speak for others, but I wouldn’t criticize anyone for voting for any Dem in the general election. It’s people who walk away that irritate me.
I would love it if lefties followed the lead of black people in committing to leading the coalition long term. But a lot seem to value the leverage they feel they get by threatening to bolt. And a few just hate us. Those are the ones I have issues with.
gwangung
@Suzanne: I think we SHOULD focus on those assholes and tell them to get out.
And fewer assholes means an inherently better party.
Baud
@Sister Golden Bear:
Third wave sounds lame.
smith
@Sister Golden Bear: Until the full humanity of all those who are not heterosexual males is recognized, we’re going to have to keep on with continuous wave feminism. It’s hard to be hopeful when the governments of about half the states seem to be ok with sentencing a woman to death for having a failed pregnancy.
Jeffro
@Omnes Omnibus: 🤣🤣🤣
Kay
I’m giving away bunk beds on FB marketplace. They’re good beds, sturdy, but I can’t find the ladder.
I always think about my father when buying/selling/bartering. He bought and sold cars as a kind of hobby. This is when you had to list in a classified ad. Once a kid called him and asked about a car and my father said “I’m sorry – it’s sold” and the kid said “fuck you”
He was just bewildered. “Fuck you? What kind of a thing is that to say?”
Suzanne
@gwangung: If it was up to me, I’d tell everyone who isn’t pro-choice to get out. And everyone who didn’t support “Medicare for all”. And everyone who wasn’t on board with gay marriage or trans rights.
But one doesn’t build a winning coalition that way, and this is why I have negative zero desire to run for office.
Omnes Omnibus
New name dropped for Hope Hicks. Barbie Goebbels.
Jeffro
completely OT but I’d just like to note that at this moment, on the Fox News homepage, story #5 is that “IRS plans to target certain Americans with more tax audits”
When you actually click on it and read the story, guess who those certain Americans are? The extremely wealthy.
NOW THEN…can we guess why Fox might put ‘certain Americans’ in the headline, and then (for the few who bother to click) explains that it’s the wealthy in the actual piece? Hmmm….
Even shit that’s good for Biden and the Dems is bad, if you know how to
headlinespin it correctly! – Roger AilesSiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
Since yesterday morning, I’ve collected 18 wonderful Man v. Bear cartoon memes, all of which I’d be thrilled to send to a front-pager to share with all y’all. WG, BC, AL? Just let me know if you want them.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I can’t think of a national Dem that isn’t. State level is another matter.
Sure Lurkalot
@Suzanne: My 2 Dem senators (Hickenlooper and Bennet) are too conservative for my liking, but yep, I voted for them. I truly hope Hick doesn’t run in 2026 or Bennet in 2028, but the Colorado Republicans are bug fuck nuts so I’d vote for them again. I’m a pragmatic idealist.
Urza
@Baud: Why does it have to be young men
Baud
@Urza:
It doesn’t. The original comment was Suzanne talking about her male ex, so that was the background context for my comment. But this needs to be a collective action.
CaseyL
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes, please! I don’t use Twitter, and I haven’t seen any/many on Mastadon or BlueSky.
Suzanne
@Sure Lurkalot: I just object to the framing that there is a kind of mainstream Democrat, and that person is fine. And then there’s lefty Dems, like AOC, but the people she’s speaking to are slightly deviant and maybe present a bit of a problem. Certainly a bit noisy. Maybe not as reliable.
Fuck that framing. The mainstream should shift left.
SiubhanDuinne
@CaseyL:
Okay. If one of the FPs puts their hand up, I’ll send them. Then it’s up to the FP to put up a dedicated thread.
Suzanne
And, as a totally unrelated note, I am wondering why one of my four hydrangea bushes is smaller than the others. Last year, it grew more flat, while the others grew into nice dome shapes. I pruned them back — that one more than the others — and it is now growing into a dome shape, but it is smaller.
My roses look fantastic.
wjca
Sometimes, the way you kick someone to the curb is precisely by offering them a position with a fancy title, but minimal scope to do damage. Which is what this looks like.
I mean, Ambassador to the OECD? Not really a big deal, for all the impressive title. And it got him, smoothly and quietly, out.
Suzanne
@Baud: Liberals need to get it on ***for the country***.
THINK OF THE TROOPS.
Sister Golden Bear
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ve also collected a bunch “women choose the bear” memes if a FPer is interested.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I think you missed about 6000 Manchin and Sinema posts.
Maloney is not a shitty Democrat.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
Wondering idly whether there’s a lot of overlap between your collection and mine. (Because that’s the kind of meaningless question I allow into my brain.)
Martin
@Sister Golden Bear: I’ve read arguments that it started a little earlier with the #MeToo movement.
But I think gamergate was the inflection point for Gen Z. That happened in their social media spaces and couldn’t be excused as some bad actors given how coordinated and sustained and plainly deliberate it was. And it actually formed the foundation for modern conservative politics. All of the alt-right shit that Trump elevated came out of Gamergate. Bannon was central to it. That’s how influential it was.
Sister Golden Bear
@SiubhanDuinne: I suspect there’s probably overlap. Although I created one meme myself.
Suzanne
@zhena gogolia: Oh, we’ll acknowledge that Manchin sucks, for sure. But we spend much less time talking about how his voters suck and how trying to keep them “in the tent” probably alienates the progressive side of the party. Because we want that seat and we’re pragmatic about it.
Kay
Ha! SOLD, for zero dollars. Not even 15 minutes.
sab
@eclare: We bought to plots for us in a different cemetary. It’s lovely, except now the gangstas are having shoot outs there at funerals. At least we won’t be buried in suburbia near shopping malls.
sab
@Suzanne: Woodchucks underground? They did in one of my rhododendrons.
eclare
@sab:
The cemetery where my plot is does not allow headstones, just little plaques flush with the grass, plastic flowers optional. So there are no quotes, no designs to browse. There is a very old cemetery here where I wish to be, very interesting, headstones back to the 1800’s.
Sister Golden Bear
@Martin: As with all social movements, there’s rarely hard and fast boundary between different waves. I attended UC Berkeley in the ’80s and definitely there aspects of Third Wave feminism happening at the time.
Especially when you consider feminism from a worldwide perspective, e.g. in Spain its roots are related to the 1997 murder of a woman was burned to death by her husband in her house. As William Gibson said, “The future is already here – it’s just not evenly distributed.”
That said, Gamergate was definitely one of significant triggers, along with things like #MeToo, the Isla Vista mass murder, Wendy Davis’ filibuster attempt to prevent a Texas anti-abortion bill from passing, and an enabling factor was the rise of social media including Twitter. (FWIW, it’s not coincidental that we also saw trans people coming together publicly during the aughts due to social media enabling connection, visibility and organization.)
Suzanne
@sab: Maybe? It was so weird, how it, like, flattened out last year. We have a bird feeder hanging over it, and it got nailed by bird poo and shells of the seed, so I was wondering if that changed its growth pattern.
I WANT ALL FOUR OF THEM TO BE BIG AND FLOOFY!
Geminid
@wjca: Maliney was already out as in, he lost his reelection. The OECD is an important institution and it’s based in Paris, so Joe Biden did Maloney a solid favor and as far as I’m concerned he deserved it. Maloney is every bit as good a Democrat as the people here who are tearing him down.
sab
@Kay: Kent State says it is revoking permission for overnight emcampments because the kids let non-students camp there. Moving them out sometime. Tomorrow is May 4. 50+ years and the town v gown hasn’t healed from 1970.
Thankfully I have a funeral to attend instead.
davek319
@John S.: oh, yeah, Maloney (D-Fucking Asshole) who single handedly snatched defeat from the jaws of victory when he bigfooted Mondaire Jones out of Jones’s OWN DISTRICT after party chair Jacobs and Cuomo Dems screwed the total pooch over the redistricting debacle and by so doing thereby handing Congress to the Untermenschen. That Maloney, pissed on be his name.
sab
@Kay: Tiny rope ladders might work.
Sister Golden Bear
@SiubhanDuinne: BTW, if you’re on the Book of Faces, there’s now an entire group devoted to bear-related memes: Shit like this is why we pick the bear.
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: I recently joined “Exploding Fish Shitposting & Senseless Drivel Cult by Chad Mojito”.
Geminid
@davek319: That was not Mondaire Jones’ “own district.” After the districts were redrawn and renumbered, Maloney’s home was in the district he ran in, and Jones’ home was in the 16th district next door. This was well-reported at the time.
catclub
@mapaghimagsik: sloe gin might make a better collection.
Kay
@sab:
They have to disassemble them – they’re in a tiny 1900’s bedroom. I’m throwing in the bedspreads because I’ll never again need a twin bedspread :)
sab
@Kay: I am thinking of hauling my tiny childhood four poster bed out of storage because the pitbull won’t fit in bed with me there.
Kay
@sab:
Oh, that’s funny. Next I have “acorn” beds to sell. Two. They’re really nice – from my mother in law – so I won’t give them away. I have to go from a big house to a little house in the next 12 months.
Sister Golden Bear
Another reason to choose the bear (cub). They adorably sound like a flooded engine when they “purr.”
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear:
Cute little murder machines! But with those claws, I’m not sure I would hold one.
Betty
@Baud: For what it is worth, he was publicly under investigation by 2022.
SiubhanDuinne
@Sister Golden Bear:
Thanks, some good stuff in there.
Steve in the ATL
@Omnes Omnibus: I was going to make a crack about alien encounters, but yours was much better.
Wow that was painful to type!
Betty
@Betty: The FBI raided Cuellar’s house in January, 2022.
Steve in the ATL
In re burial:
1. My wife and I have plots in her family cemetery on St. Simon’s, so they will probably be underwater by the time we need them; and
2. I could not care less about what is done with my corpse after I die. Whatevs!
brantl
@Geminid: He doesn’t trash other Democrats? He just did, he really, really did.
Geminid
@brantl: I was talking about publically attacking other Democrats and that was clear from the context.
Glidwrith
And crap like this is why I don’t donate to the DCCC
Melancholy Jaques
@Geminid:
I lean toward the first group, but feel like we lost by a field goal in a very winnable game.
Tony Jay
@Kay:
Took their sweet time about it.
Of course, now I’m cynically assuming that their reporters spent the last few days gagged while the senior editorial staff waited for confirmation that everything had been ‘cleaned’ and no one of importance would be harmed by a perfunctory investigation.
Also, too, I was about to say that ‘provoked’ would absolutely definitely be somewhere in the article before I saw your second comment.
I’ve just woken up, you see. And where the FTFNYT is concerned I wake up expecting gaslighting.
Jay
@Kay:
And it’s behind a FTFNYT paywall.
Geminid
@Melancholy Jaques: Oh yeah, we likely could have squeesed out a narrow majority and that would have made a real difference. We came close, with two seats lost by less than a thousand votes and a few other races almost as close.
So it’s possible there was another Democrat available with skills and/or energy Maloney lacked, who could have pulled out a majority. If there was, then Democratic leaders have some responsibility here because they passed that person over.
I’m not saying Maloney did a great job, just that he did not do as bad a job as some people are saying. I think he’s being scapegoated by people with a familiar ideological axe to grind. If Maloney fit the label “Progressive” and not “Moderate,” these critics would be pointing their fingers at someone else.
I understand that New York is Maloney’s home state, and it was a bad year for Democrats there statewide. Maloney deserved his share of the blame for this, as did Hochul and Jacobs, the state chairman. They certainly got that, and more.
I read a number of post-election articles in various New York local and state media sites, in part because intra-party conflict interests me and New York Democrats have plenty of it. There are grudges going back years and feuds going back decades, and they all got aired out and amplified. It was kind of funny because the year before in Virginia, we got our asses kicked as badly and Democrats were like, “Let us not speak of this again.”
Aside from differences in party culture, I thought the 2021 Virginia and 2022 New York elections had some notable similarities. For one, hese were the states’ first important elections with Trump out of the White House, and he’d been a potent GOTV force for Democrats that they couldn’t neccesarily replace.
Also, Republicans managed to put together stronger-than-usual statewide campaigns that effectively energized their voters. I don’t know about New York Democrats, but I think a lot of Democratic voters here did not realize they had a formidable opponent until the returns started coming in on Election Night.
So 2021 was a low-turnout year for Virginia Democrats, like 2022 was one for New York Democrats. To me, that’s a collective failure, and it’s not just on the political leaders, it’s on rank-and-file Democrats as well. Not a “they” problem; a “we” problem.