Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The revolution will be supervised.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

“woke” is the new caravan.

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

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

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

When we show up, we win.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

Books are my comfort food!

Their freedom requires your slavery.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

No Justins, No Peace

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Every Time They Try to Drag Him Down, He Comes Back Stronger Open Thread

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Will these corrupt Republicans in Tennessee ever learn?

It seems to me that Tennessee Republicans are working overtime to forge a very strong leader in Justin Jones.  They are just so hell bent on white superiority that they can’t see what’s right in front of them.

Self-reflection isn’t exactly their strong suit.   I do wonder sometimes if the Republicans – who were hell bent on making sure that that nice Elizabeth Warren lady didn’t get to run the organization that was her brainchild – ever stopped to consider that maybe that didn’t turn out so well for them.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  2. 2.

    Melancholy Jaques

    They are just so hell bent on white superiority that they can’t see what’s right in front of them.

    I don’t expect Republicans to give up on white supremacy in my lifetime, especially in the Treason States where the racists have been running things since they became states, the few interruptions notwithstanding.

  4. 4.

    Anoniminous

    A couple of days in Louisiana or Mississippi or Alabama or Tennessee or Missouri is enough to refute the Theory of White Supremacy.

  7. 7.

    Craig

    Yeah. The Governor Tarkin mistake. The more you tighten your grip, the more slips through your fingers. Justin Jones is real deal inspirational. I met Justin Pearson last year, and talking with him was impressive. Tennessee Republicans are making mistakes by thinking these guys and others are gonna roll over. Dumb white guys doing dumb white guy stuff to infinity and beyond.

  8. 8.

    Jackie

    Are we going to fundraise for Gloria Johnson for TN senator, or is she a very long shot?

    I’m definitely rooting for her to beat Blackburn!

  9. 9.

    Fake Irishman

    @Jackie:

    She is an extremely long shot.  Tennessee isn’t quite Wyoming, but it’s easily bottom 10, maybe bottom five for competitive statewide Democrats.

    She is an impressive candidate for such a hard state, but I would be shocked if she got 40 percent of the vote.

  10. 10.

    piratedan

    @Jackie: I hope that she will win.  It may be a lot to ask for the people of Tennessee to suddenly stop voting for not only cruel people, but stupid people as well.

  11. 11.

    West of the Rockies

    Do these pinheads have no sense of optics whatsoever?  “Let’s keep trying to oust this black fella.  Why would anyone think we’re racist?”

  15. 15.

    Scout211

    Reading about the three hour hearing that ended up in Justin Jones’ favor, I was glad he prevailed but I am curious why he only submitted 26 signatures to get on the ballot when 25 are required.

    Earlier this year, Rep. Justin Jones submitted 26 signatures to Nashville election officials in order to qualify to run as a Democratic candidate. He needed at least 25 signatures from verified voters in his district.

    After one of Jones’ signatures was disqualified, Republican challenger Laura Nelson filed a complaint challenging the validity of 10 others.

    At a late Thursday meeting, Nelson questioned the authenticity of the list of signatures, noting that at least one of the names on it had been misspelled while another name appeared as a signature when it should have been printed.

    . . .

    Jones countered that he had had each person in question sign and submit a notarized affidavit to the Davidson County Election Commission. Some of those who signed the petition testified in front of the commission at Thursday’s meeting.

    . . .

    Commission members ultimately voted 3-1 to approve Jones’ signatures. One member abstained.

    Nelson promised to appeal. Meanwhile, commission chair Jim DeLanis urged Jones to gather more signatures next time he runs for political office.

    With the Republicans using every method to try to suppress the vote, I hope every Democrat gathers far more extra signatures than they think they need.

     

    The RNC is filing lawsuits all over the country to suppress voting, and now the  Trump campaign has filed their first lawsuit targeting mail-in voting in Nevada.

    This lawsuit seeking to invalidate mail-in ballots that are timely cast and received after Election Day is the latest in a slew of anti-voting lawsuits Republicans are filing in the leadup to the 2024 presidential election. Though this is the first anti-voting lawsuit filed this year by Trump’s presidential campaign, the RNC has already filed five other active lawsuits targeting the right to vote across six states.

    The RNC and Trump campaign’s lawsuit — aimed at disenfranchising Nevada voters who cast mail in ballots — argues that the state’s mail-in ballot receipt deadline violates federal law

  16. 16.

    Fake Irishman

     

    @Jackie:

    To be clear: if you like her and you have means, cut her a check, don’t let me be a wet blanket. But if you are being strategic about your giving, she should be a bit lower on your list.

    I think what Balloon juice is doing is staying out of the direct campaign game and trying to reinforce small groups that are effective on the margins with critical voters in close states. The $50,000 we can leverage in one of those can get a couple of organizers on the ground to execute a good plan to turn out a few hundred or thousand extra native folks in a corner of Arizona or Michigan or Wisconsin or Nevada. Considering that the Dems hold a one seat margin in both houses in Michigan and took the AZ AG race by about 300 votes, we might have made a huge difference in 2022.

    watergirl can feel free to jump in here and chide me for mansplaining if I got it wrong.

  17. 17.

    Jackie

    @Fake Irishman: That’s what I figured and was afraid of. I applaud her running, and hope if she loses, it’s a closer than the expected loss.

    It’s crazy to think TN, and other states once reliably Blue, are now solidly MAGA red.

  19. 19.

    Jackie

    @Fake Irishman: I agree. I might send her a few small donations in support, but I don’t expect BJ to support her financially – unless Johnson surges and surprises us all!🤞🏻

  26. 26.

    Jackie

    😂 TIFG is coming unglued:

    Fresh from his criminal trial in New York, Donald Trump delivered a frustrated and often profane roughly 75-minute speech at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Florida on Saturday, attacking one of the prosecutors pursuing him and comparing President Biden’s administration to the Nazis,” the New York Times reports.

    Said Trump: “These people are running a Gestapo administration.”

    “In his speech, he complained repeatedly about the criminal trial in Manhattan, to which he will return on Monday, insisted that Democrats use ‘welfare’ to cheat in elections and said he would need an attorney general with ‘courage’ as he mocked his former attorney general, William P. Barr, who recently endorsed him after speaking critically of Mr. Trump since the administration ended.”

     

  28. 28.

    sdhays

    @Jackie: These people are running a Gestapo administration

    He needs to be careful. Some of his followers may think he’s endorsing Biden or something.

  29. 29.

    Fake Irishman

    @Jackie:

    I mean that’s the breakdown of the uneasy 1970s-1990s (sometimes through 2010) alliance between segregationist-adjacent rural white Democrats and the newer suddenly enfranchised  black Dems for you.  Jimmy Carter won the 1970 Georgia governor’s election with endorsements from both George Wallace and Martin Luther King Sr.  And he then took his biggest loss in the legislature when Georgia’s first black State Senator since reconstruction made a deal with the, er, um “racially conservative”  lieutenant governor to get an important committee chairmanship in exchange for casting the deciding vote keeping the ability to divvy up the senate chairmanships with the Lieutenant governor’s office.

    when Carter was president, James Eastland, the notorious segregationist from Mississippi chaired the Senate judiciary committee. When he realized Carter wasn’t going to push too hard to expand the welfare state, in exchange he quietly allowed dozens of black, Hispanic and women judges to be confirmed; the first major steps to diversify the judiciary.

    And you repeated this stuff in every southern state with technocratic young Democratic governors threading the needle and trying to modernize their states with a hodgepodge party: Bill Clinton in Arkansas reforming education, Jim Hunt in North Carolina and Robert  Riley in South Carolina teaming up with AA legislators l, Henry Waxman and Storm Thurmond of all people to expand Medicaid for kids in the mid 1980s.

    Wacky times. No wonder why people did so many drugs in the 1970s.

  30. 30.

    Soprano2

    @Anoniminous: Boy, that’s the truth. I love where I live for many reasons, but the politics isn’t one of them. When you see the idiots the Republicans send to both the state legislature and Congress it really makes you wonder…..

  31. 31.

    Soprano2

    @Scout211: TFG really believes that nothing should be counted after Election Day. He has no idea how elections actually work.

  33. 33.

    Jackie

    @Soprano2: Deja vu all over again.

    As long as the mail in ballots are postmarked BY MIDNIGHT NOV 5, legally they should be valid.

  34. 34.

    Soprano2

    @Jackie: Yes, they should. It seems to me these days that the Republican side is filled with sore losers who think that if they lost their opponent must have cheated. It didn’t used to be like that.

  35. 35.

    Brachiator

    @Scout211:

    The RNC is filing lawsuits all over the country to suppress voting

    We really need to make Election Day a holiday.

  38. 38.

    West of the Rockies

    @Jackie:

    Will Trump’s babble ever become just plain old boring to the rubes?  It’s just repetitive,  incoherent pissing.  Years and years of it now.

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    @West of the Rockies:

    Will Trump’s babble ever become just plain old boring to the rubes?

    I have read that many of his rallies are not as popular as in the past. But the hard core MAGA crowd love to hear the familiar hits, “Building that wall,” “I make bigly deals,” “Putin’s love letters” and all the rest.

  41. 41.

    Soprano2

    @West of the Rockies: I agree, I don’t know how they can stand to listen to the same whining over and over again.

    Maybe it’s like listening to your favorite band; you want to hear the hits, not new music.

  45. 45.

    Anoniminous

    @Chet Murthy:

    Intersex is the term for people who do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.  So, yeah, she’d fit in there.

    When we stop and consider the fact we’re discovering fundamentally new Biological facts, e.g. viruses (FFS!) communicate and change their behavior based on that communication, every decade “typical” begins to lose its usefulness.

  48. 48.

    Fancycwabs

    I live literally three blocks away from Jones, but can’t sign his petition because of how the district is drawn. When I ran for congress I made damn sure I had plenty of safety signatures on my petition.

  49. 49.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Jackie: has she got any great talking points that are bipartisan enough? Does she have excellent campaign managers to help her w her messaging?
    not trying to be too excessively hopeful. I just want more democrats in house and senate. The spin drs and pr folks have some amazing skills.

    we gave a chunk to Stacy in Georgia, and Raphael. At least Warnock won his election.

  50. 50.

    WereBear

    @Melancholy Jaques: The culture has to be changed. Just because it’s the past doesn’t mean it’s sacred.

    The dangerous MAGA mega-snit is so similar to how the slaveholding states paranoia led to the essentially suicidal attack on Fort Sumter.

  53. 53.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @karen marie: I love my mail in ballot, and voter tracking here. I don’t mail it though. I drive it to a drop box. I love that. We also have in person voting here, and you fill out a paper ballot, which goes into a locked box. We’re not doing voter suppression in my state. It appalls me that other places do. We may, however, have some gerrymandering. I’m not clear.
    When I worked the 2020 election, it was clear in the training how many safeguards there were, and how nearly impossible it was to commit fraud. I feel pride, and relief, and secure, knowing this.

    But considering how different it has become in other states, I’d be fine for it to be a holiday. We used to wait in long lines for hours, and use electronic machines. This feels way better. I don’t trust those electronic machines; I saw my vote had shifted to a republican presidential candidate while I was filling in all the down ballot stuff, proposals, congress, amendments, etc.

    Lucky I caught it when I was proofreading and rechecking my ballot before I pulled the lever.

  57. 57.

    TS

    @Soprano2:

    He has no idea how elections actually work

    He encourages HIS voters to vote on election day – hence he doesn’t want to count any other votes – because he wants to win. He knows how it works – and discouraging postal votes is working well against him – so his solution is to discard them uncounted.

  58. 58.

    wjca

    @Martin: Culture is literally the hardest thing to change.

    Say, rather, the culture is the hardest thing to change deliberately and in a particular direction.

    The fact is, culture changes constantly.  Only look at how tastes in music, and entertainment generally, change constantly.  Folks spend big bucks on advertising to try to get it to change towards their entertainment products.  Most A lot of them fail, of course, but a few of them succeed, and the culture changes.  The same is true in other areas.

    The other aspect of culture change is that, if you are trying to change it, it can take a long time when you seem to be making minimal progress.  And then, apparently suddenly, the world changes.

    Which is really unsettling for those who were invested to the way things used to be.  Some of them are able to mutter “Kids these days…” and move on.  Others get downright hysterical, and try to turn back the clock.  Which can work temporarily, if sufficient force is available.  But almost never succeeds in any real lasting sense.

    This is what we are seeing with abortion.  For those who weren’t around then, before Roe abortion laws were gradually being relaxed across the country.  Roe merely jumped the process forward.  The downside of that was there were a lot more people who hadn’t had the time they needed to adjust to the idea, which made for a higher number in the hysterical group.

    Turning back the clock, i.e. Dobbs, took them an enormous amount of time and effort.  And a lot of building alliances with other groups with entirely unrelated agendas.  But they got it done.  For the moment. And, giddy with success, they are trying to run the table.

    What we’re seeing the predictable reaction to their “success” in turning back the clock.  The places which had already relaxed on abortion pre-Roe have, unsurprisingly, not changed from that view.  And a lot of the places which would have gotten there anyway within a few years of when Roe happened are also calmly changing any local laws that they hadn’t bothered to repeal.  Plus, a lot of other places (Kansas and Arizona come to mind) are discovering that the Don’t Ban Abortion part of the population is a whole lot larger than expected.

    And willing to drastically change their voting habits if necessary to reverse the bans still in place.  The folks who aligned with the anti-abortion movement must be seriously upset at what that looks to be doing to their agendas as a result.

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @karen marie:

    No, thank you. I like my mail-in ballot.

    To be clear, I favor making election day a holiday AND mail in ballots AND early voting.

    I live in California where we have early voting and mail in voting.

  60. 60.

    wjca

    @Gloria DryGarden: When I worked the 2020 election, it was clear in the training how many safeguards there were, and how nearly impossible it was to commit fraud. I feel pride, and relief, and secure, knowing this.

    Every time I hear someone carrying on about massive election fraud, it’s just so, so obvious that they have never worked an election.  They simply have no clue how difficult it would be to do.  At all, let alone without leaving piles of evidence.

  61. 61.

    Martin

    @wjca: Say, rather, the culture is the hardest thing to change deliberately and in a particular direction.

    Yes, this is much more accurate formulation.

  62. 62.

    Martin

    @wjca: You’re confusing cause and effect for these people. They aren’t claiming that the election was stolen in some mechanical way. They’re saying that because the candidate which white Christians threw their support behind in a manner never seen before in US politics didn’t win, given that white christians are and must be dominant in the US population, the only possible explanation for Trumps loss is that the election was stolen.

    It’s akin to seeing a pot of water on the stove, then walking away and returning to see the pot is now empty and concluding that it must have boiled away. You never saw it, you just drew the most logical conclusion and you could then start seeking evidence for it.

    If you live in Iowa the idea that there are enough non-whites/non-Christians in this country to elect Joe Biden is laughable. Just look around. What other conclusion could you draw?

  63. 63.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    They’re saying that because the candidate which white Christians threw their support behind in a manner never seen before in US politics didn’t win, given that white christians are and must be dominant in the US population, the only possible explanation for Trumps loss is that the election was stolen.

    Very early on, Trump said that he would not accept the election results if he didn’t like them. He immediately claimed that the election must have been stolen, while trying to steal the election.

    His idiot followers were eager to believe the lie.

    And still are.

  64. 64.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Martin: we’ll, there’s women, 90% of whom are aware enough to answer the man/ bear question a certain way. And people with uteruses, for 40 some years, we never really stop thinking about that we might end up pregnant in spite of all efforts to prevent it. That affects how one votes, for sure, if abortion rights are on the table. Even in Iowa

  65. 65.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Martin: I get that the water boiled away. But can’t they see, even w all their efforts, someone must have voted the other way?
    just like w all your efforts, as an Olympic athlete, how could you not have won? Someone else had more of what it takes ( training, experience/, or good pr, or genuine talking points).  But it’s a great description of how some people think. Darn it.

    then again, those white Christians, esp evangelicals, are darned sure their pov is the only one, or at least the only right one. They scare me. And I find them intrusive.

    btw, reading your post, blurry eyed, late, in my non prescription readers, I thought it said white Christmas. I saw it twice…

  66. 66.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Brachiator: I agree. Colorado. Early voting, mail in/ drop off ballots mailed to everyone, a big list of Id that is acceptable.
    a holiday as well, would be fine.

  67. 67.

    Chris T.

    @Martin:

    If you live in Iowa the idea that there are enough non-whites/non-Christians in this country to elect Joe Biden is laughable. Just look around. What other conclusion could you draw?

    Aha, that must be why Krugman gets letters that ask him how he’d feel if NYC were full of immigrants…

  68. 68.

    Nelle

    @Chris T.: FYI, I’m in a one way in, one way out neighborhood in a Des Moines suburb, so pretty distinct of approximately 100 houses, one of which is an Airbnb.   I have a list of all registered Dems ( I’m the GOTV -get out the vote- person for the D’s under the Neighbor to Neighbor program).  There are 57 households with at least one registered D, some with 3 (often with an 18 or 19 year old), for a total of 91 registered D’s.  I know because in the next 10 days, I will make contact with as many as possible before the primary.

    I’ll also find out why one new neighbor isn’t showing up, though he said he’s a D.  I suspect he forgot to register because he lost his job right after he moved in.  But he has a new job, so is feeling better.  Saed just got back from the West Bank where he moved his ailing father through multiple checkpoints to a relative in Jordan.  The neighborhood has at least ten Muslim families (mostly from Bosnia).  There are 3 families from Vietnam, one from China, one from India. Iowa has decades of welcoming refugees and there are a determined band of citizens who intend to keep it that way, despite the despicable governor and horrendous legislator.

    Welcoming refugees was initiated by Republican gov Robert Ray in the late 70s.  Look him up.  His grandson just married a descendent of one of the refugees Gov. Ray helped to bring.

  69. 69.

    Nelle

    One group of volunteers to help refugees got started by teachers who were concerned that immigrant students had too many needs not being met.  It is a huge group now, with as many  as 8000 in the Facebook group where needs are posted.  A family arrives in town, their needs of clothing and household goods (kitchenware, beds, sofas) are posted, and donations pour in.

    Also, they started a soccer program for kids and the teams are going to tournaments.  They need uniforms and fees.  They get kids to summer camps (and clothes needed for camp). They get kids to preschool and moms to Dr appts.  So much energy and action.  There is another side to Iowa than angry white farmers clutching their farm subsidies.

  70. 70.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @Nelle: this is beautiful. Thank you. The details make me see it. I needed some uplifting news.

  71. 71.

    Nelle

    One last thing before I try to sleep again.  Easy to hate on Walmart, but they hire refugees.  Stockers may have limited spoken English, but one can almost designate a Walmart by where a big group of employees are from.  The one closest to me has the most Bosnians, though also some Congolese.  Another one has a lot from Sudan and Somalia. I’ve met people from Iraq there, too.

    Des Moines has quite a few from Afghanistan and DRC.  A few years ago, a number of Burmese.  The last months, a number from Haiti are arriving.

    I’m a first generation American on one side – my dad came from Ukraine (then Russia) after the Revolution, Civil War, and the 1921 famine.  I love seeing people from all over: it strengthens this country.

  77. 77.

    Mousebumples

    @Fake Irishman: I’m guessing Taylor Swift will be active against Blackburn too. She was 6 years ago, anyhow.

    In Wisconsin, with new maps for the state legislature, while the work with 4 Directions is great, the Native population/reservations are not spread out enough to take advantage of new districts and opportunities to flip the Assembly (and if I’m dreaming big, the State Senate – only half the seats are up this year).

    I’d also love to see us target WI-03 and WI-07 for the US House. The first one is the seat held by the Jan 6er who likes to yell at kids. The latter is Gallagher’s old seat (open until after the November election), and WisDems recruited a local ob/gyn to run. (she was also involved in the lawsuit against the 1849 abortion ban in the state) GOP is favored in both based on district lean, but I think both could be winnable. Plus, maximizing turnout (even in a loss) could help Biden, Baldwin, and with state leg races.

    /Wisconsin local opinion

  79. 79.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Soprano2: He believes that nothing should be counted that isn’t a vote for him. He knows perfectly well how elections work and is trying to kill them.

  80. 80.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Gloria DryGarden: Super-blue Massachusetts was actually late to the party with many of these reforms. Until quite recently, you had to vote in person on Election Day unless you had some kind of excuse to use an absentee ballot.

    I think we started having early in-person voting and no-excuse mail-in voting for statewide general elections starting in 2016, and it was extended to all state and local elections for 2020 as an emergency pandemic measure. But the mail-in ballots aren’t sent to everyone–you still have to ask for one.

    Oddly, at least at first, the old absentee ballots you requested with an excuse continued to exist alongside the mail-in ballots everyone could request as a separate system; I don’t know if that is still the case.

    I did early voting in 2016 mostly because I was curious how it worked (and in that nasty and enervating cycle I thought I’d derive some small comfort from at least getting my own vote over with). It was basically mail-in voting in person: there was a location at City Hall where they gave you a ballot (which could have different content depending on where you lived) and a manila envelope, you’d seal your completed ballot in the envelope and fill out and sign an affidavit on the envelope, then drop it in a box so it would be distributed to your precinct’s vote-counting location along with the mail ballots.

    I recall some people saying they didn’t like voting early because what if something came up after they voted that would change their minds? The big October Surprise of that election was, of course, the Comey letter, and if anything it was making people less informed than they had been before it appeared.

  81. 81.

    WestworldEmployee7

    @Anoniminous: Don’t forget North Carolina! It’s filled with low-IQ, uneducated woman, child and animal abusers driving $80K trucks!

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Martin: Well, there were theories about the mechanics, which was why Dominion Voting got defamed in ways that they successfully sued over. These were echoes of the left’s theories about Diebold from the 2004 election. But it did seem like in 2020 they didn’t spend a whole lot of mental effort on picking at the mechanics.

  84. 84.

    wjca

    @Nelle:

    This is great.  I suspect that the image of lily-white Iowa owes a lot to overfocusing on some big (geographically) counties, rather that the whole population.  Glad to have that confirmed.

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