This is KamalaHQ on Instagram. In case you can’t read the reply, it says:
No, @realdonaldtrump, we posted a video of your empty rally taken *while* you were speaking.
Americans are tired of your lies and slur-filled delusions. It’s getting… old
In the last post on this topic, I mentioned the apparently low-effort Colin Allred Senate campaign in Texas, and those of you familiar with it said that you’re disappointed that he’s running a pretty standard campaign that’s probably going to lose. (Though, to be fair, almost any statewide campaign in Texas is probably going to lose — Beto ran good campaigns and lost, too.)
Anyway, this kind of stuff was going around on Bluesky and it’s a dman good question:
Tim Ryan raised around $50 million in his open-seat campaign against Vance in 2022. Most of the cat lady, post-menopausal female bullshit that we’re hearing today was stuff JD said while he was running for Senate, yet we heard none of it then (that I know about).
I started blogging back in the Paleolithic age, around 2006, starting up a blog that covered New York’s 29th Congressional District. Eric Massa was the candidate challenging mediocre Republican Randy Kuhl, and Massa’s campaign was a shoestring operation, especially in 2006. (He won in 2008 and then resigned after a sex scandal.). Massa’s media operation, run by one of his few staffers, had the goal of getting in the paper every day. And they dogged Kuhl, dredging up everything he said in town halls and press releases and hitting back.
One would expect that a $50 million political campaign would have one smart media person listening to all of Vance’s appearances, picking on the ones that looked terrible, and issuing a press release as well as a social media post about it. But apparently that was beyond the pale for Ryan. Maybe some Ohio commenters could tell me if I’m wrong, but sometimes it’s hard to tell a Democratic campaign from an Elizabeth Bishop poem:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Jeffg166
Watching a video of the rally he was speaking to an empty house. It is killing him Harris gets better ratings/crowds than he does. If he only had something new to offer instead of the same old whining. Sad.
Steve LaBonne
I have exactly the same question about Ryan’s campaign. He was busy running against the Democratic Party instead of against his opponent. And that’s with Sherrod Brown as an example, right in front of his nose, of how to tailor a campaign to local issues and sensibilities while standing foursquare for Democratic values (and fighting for them, not just standing). I will always believe that Ryan could and should have won that race. And yes, apart from Sherrod the Ohio Democratic Party has long since mastered the art of losing.
Feckless
Hillary spent half a billion dollars to lose the presidency and both houses of Congress.
Where did all that fail money go?
Was there any accountability for the grifters?
Steve LaBonne
@Feckless: Hillary Clinton didn’t invent the Electoral College.
RaflW
This is a great commentary on why the Harris + Walz campaign keeping their policy details broad and simple makes good electoral sense. And it’s got some snappy writing. Democrats Are Saying No to Leslie Knope Politics:
Betty Cracker
I love how the Harris-Walz team smacked Trump’s lies about the tumbleweed-choked rally down immediately. FFS, you could hear him droning on while people were leaving!
Also, Elizabeth Bishop FTW! She’s my favorite American poet. “The Fish” is a marvelous poem that will put you directly into Bishop’s beat-up rental boat, a scene of triumph!
Mousebumples
Crowd size and polls are 2 of the most important things to Trump. He’s behind Harris in both!
In other news, my MIL had some homemade “My Body, My Choice” signs stolen from her yard a few weeks ago. I dropped off a bright pink “I stand with Planned Parenthood” sign ($7 at my local farmers market on Saturday), and she made a few more. She’s got a corner lot, and wants to put out more!
I suggested (and she’s made) –
Any other ideas? I also suggested she stop by the local WisDems office. Mine has signs for $5 suggested donation, but other than Harris/Walz + Baldwin, we don’t have overlapping candidates.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Steve LaBonne: Thanks, glad I’m not alone.
I’m writing these posts not to re-litigate history, but to cement in all our heads (including mine) that the Harris campaign should not be an anomaly or novelty. It is the way that Democratic campaigns should be run in the Trump era of Republican politics.
Falling Diphthong
Trump’s Tuesday rally is in Howell, Michigan, a burgeoning metropolis of 10,000 people. (My town is bigger, and nobody is campaigning here. Albeit we don’t have a quaint diner.) Notable because last month they had white supremacists marching in the street chanting “I love Hitler; I love Trump.”
I suspect this is one of those things where locals–particularly those who might be targeted by Nazis–immediately realized why Howell was chosen, while NY and DC press registered “rural Michigan, I bet they have quaint diners.” Any reasonable person would expect these folk to show up again.
Steve LaBonne
@@mistermix.bsky.social: And what we should remember is that Trump was something totally new in 2016. I myself couldn’t believe that this bizarre ignorant weirdo and abuser could possibly win. We know a lot now that we didn’t understand back then.
Lily
“A confused Trump thinks he’s in Russia, calls others ‘comrade’ “
Peke Daddy
@RaflW: Positively. You don’t go into excruciating detail about what’s in the box of brownie mix or how to make them. You bake them (cakey and fudgy), set them out to cool and let people smell them before serving.
BR
I enjoy this display of the fecklessness of the NYT — searching for Trump this month or last month and all the stories are about Dems in disarray or things Dems “need to do” of various sorts:
https://bsky.app/profile/numb.comfortab.ly/post/3l23aq4qst32y
trollhattan
In actuality “actuality” is not part of Donald Trump’s vocabulary. Proxy posts: SAD!
Baud
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
God and swing states willing, that era will be over in a few months.
Scout211
RIP Phil Donahue. He was 88.
matt
Seems to me the Harris campaign’s online operation owes a lot to the online presence of AOC, who has been very successful at it for some time now. I like it when people imitate and replicate the successes of others.
Another Scott
@Scout211: He was a good guy.
I’ll always remember the story of him doing an interview with someone and drawing a blank on a question and then someone in the audience raised their hand and he went out to her and had her ask a question, and it was a good question, and he had a 💡 moment.
RIP.
Cheers,
Scott.
Scout211
I suspect that Trump hasn’t posted on his social account himself for many months. When reporters ask him directly about what he wrote on his social, he appears not to know what they are talking about. It makes him look clueless and like he is having memory problems.
Or, he is clueless and is having memory problems. 😉
RaflW
Also, too, a couple days ago when some juicy oppo dropped on Vance, I asked here what was the deal with Ryan, like how did they miss all this? Learning that he had $50M in contributions and either didn’t pay to have an oppo file built, or didn’t deploy any of the very easy targets makes me mad. What a twerp.
Citizen Alan
@Scout211: I am old enough to remember when the liberal MSNBC canceled his highly rated show solely because he was insufficiently patriotic about the Iraq war in the aftermath of 911.
different-church-lady
How were they supposed to talk about J.D. Vance’s weirdness in 2022 when they were using all their oxygen predicting a red wave?
RaflW
@Scout211: I’ve seen tell that the posts in the middle of the night, still. And there’s often a difference between the obviously staff-generated crap that has his ‘style’ but at least a nod to grammar, and his totally weird blorts of weirdness.
Another Scott
Texas is huge and weird and diverse. Allred, and the DSCC and the rest of the party, may know what he’s/they’re doing.
(repost) TexasTribune.org (from June 4).
Also, too, Jackie, yesterday:
Time will tell.
Forward!!
Cheers,
Scott.
JML
I do think it’s often hard for candidates to take the next step, so to speak, going from running a Congressional race to Senate, and you see some of the same struggles that inexperienced candidates make. Plus, people like Ryan and Allred are already plugged into the DC Consultant Apparatus, and a lot of those folks aren’t actually that good. They’re grifters per se, they’re more like the people who get high on their own supply and start falling for their own hype that they’re tactical geniuses and responsible for their wins and in their losses there was nothing they could do.
Having worked a lot of challenger races, I would have killed for the resources these folks have…but would I have used it better? Maybe, maybe not…
twbrandt
@Falling Diphthong: Howell has been the center of KKK and militia activity in Michigan for many years. The late Robert Miles, Grand Dragon of the Klan, had a farm just outside Howell that hosted many Klan gatherings when he was around. As you point out, there has been a lot of far-right extremist activity in recent years.
It is no accident Trump is going to Howell.
hrprogressive
Can’t speak to Allred, but Tim Ryan spent most of his campaign shitting on liberal policies and desperately trying to win over right of center voters who were never going to vote for him.
He had a few soundbite-worthy moments but he was a Blue Dog Democrat in an age when most of those had been retired out.
It’s one thing to discuss on a policy level whether stuff proposed by, say, a Bernie or an AOC has enough merit among “normies”. That’s fine.
But when it comes to reaching/motivating “normies” to support you on a base level, we’re a Meme Driven Society now, and have been for a long time.
References to Idiocracy aside, the campaigns that understand Memes, TikTok, IG, ETC, and the language of Now, are gonna do better.
I am legitimately thrilled that Harris’ team Gets It.
Yes, Policy Matters. For *Governing*.
For Campaigning?
Not so much.
Kay
I don’t really buy it. There’s no formula. Harris is succeeding because of a number of factors – her talent, the cycle, the fact that she’s running against an old nasty bore who has been blathering for ten years, the fact that the public simply didn’t want the two choices they had and Democrats weren’t listening to them.
Obama was an amazing pol with a ground breaking operation – he won big in 2008 and Democrats got killed two years later, in 2010
Winning campaigns are always genius and losing campaigns are always bad :)
MuSquared
Musical accompaniment: The Dollyrots regender “Holding Out for a Hero.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqHaBXMmBTo
This was released earlier in the summer and must have been recorded no later than the spring, so the timing doesn’t work. But every time I listen to this, I feel like it was recorded for Harris.
RaflW
love the ‘escape velocity from the bucket of crabs’
Chief Oshkosh
@Mousebumples
Don’t forget ratings! Ratings have been Trumps Holy Grail for much longer than crowds and polls. I suspect the DNC TV ratings will beat those of the RNC handily — then Harris will have a hat trick and Trump will go further ’round the bend.
206inKY
mistermix—I agree 100%. One of the most hopeful things about Harris is that she’s teaching Democrats how to fight.
For the record I consider Beto’s 2018 campaign to be just about perfect; very different from money pits like Ryan and McGrath.
Highly recommend Jessica Wilkerson’s To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice (2019).
JML
Truer words never spoken.
Betty
@RaflW: Not to mention the ginormous defense budget. Has the Pentagon ever been fully audited?
Scout211
Here’s a local Texas news station that calls the Allred-Cruz race “tight.”
tobie
One Trump scandal that didn’t come to dominate the headlines was the revelation that Trump received $10 million from an Egyptian intelligence operative. Bill Barr quashed the investigation into this. Do we just expect these shenanigans from Republicans so turn a blind eye toward it?
From This Week:
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Feckless: I try to remember that HRC got more votes
jonas
Did Trump (or whoever posts for him) really think there were no other videos out there of his half-empty rally and they could just make shit up? Turned away 11,000? That’s like a quarter of the adult population of that whole region. What are these people smoking?
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
She also made Kamala possible.
@jonas:
No offense, but that’s a strange thing to wonder about after the last nine years.
Sorry if that comment was intended to be rhetorical.
jonas
@tobie: This has been out there for a while now and we still have no good explanation for why the investigation was killed (other than “there just wasn’t enough evidence” — ok, Jan) or any calls (afaik) for a Congressional investigation. Can you imagine Comer’s head exploding if this were alleged about Biden?
Kay
@JML:
After Obama we said “this is the way” – data driven, vibes driven, youth vote
They did all that again in 2010 including huge rallies and we lost everywhere. 2010 was nearly catastrophic – just 2 years after a historic, large win.
Betty
@Lily: Possibly Stephen Miller having a little fun. I have read he does some of the posts.
UncleEbeneezer
Paging SchrodingersCat:
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Kay:
Yes, and some races aren’t winnable no matter how good the campaign.
In 2006 Massa (NY-29) lost. He won in 2008. Same campaign strategy, just a different set of voters. I think the strategy he used (aggressive comms, loud-and-proud about key “populist” issues like medicare for all, didn’t run as a Republican, etc.) are the way for Dems to win reddish districts (NY-29 was R+7 at the time). I don’t think it’s a silver bullet but it’s better than trying to “run to the middle.”
Hoodie
@Kay: By way of analogy, good teams try to use game plans that are tailored to the opponent, but there are constraints on that, including your own teams’ strengths and weaknesses. Some constraints are not as predictable, such as weather or the condition of the field.
Somewhat related, someone should take Walz’ speech at the Aliquippa HS football field and bottle it. I wonder if having Jerome Bettis along for the ride might help in western PA.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty: I don’t think Stephen Miller is capable of having fun. Maybe if he gets to round up “undesirables” someday, but not until then.
Scout211
@jonas: I’m not sure truth even matters at this point in his wretched campaign. Like Trump accepting the endorsement of Taylor Swift fans that was from an AI generated photo. I think they are just throwing everything against the wall to see if anything works right now. They don’t really care if it’s factual.
Obviously they are playing to his base, who only watch right wing media and social sites. But the question is, are they unsure of their base right now? Is that why they keep posting these obvious lies and fakes?
BR
@UncleEbeneezer:
Pretty big Indian American population in Georgia these days, and always have been in Michigan, and somewhat in Arizona as well.
oldgold
@Kay: “Winning campaigns are always genius and losing campaigns are always bad.”
Similarly, victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is born an orphan.
Hoodie
@BR: Also NC. The west side of Raleigh has a huge Indian American community.
Kay
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
I just remember 2006. Wave year for Democrats, huge corruption scandals in the GOP, Iraq war collapsing.
People said “it was Howard Dean and the 50 state strategy!” I STILL hear it.
I saw the 50 state strategy up close. We didn’t sweep in 2006 because Howard Dean hired 500 people to show us PowerPoints.
Baud
@@mistermix.bsky.social:
There are Dems who run to the center in hard districts and win. Looking at one side of the ledger isn’t very informative.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Maybe there is some truth to the “all politics is local” bromide.
UncleEbeneezer
We never want fecklessness in our politicians, but just a reminder that a Feckless pie would be a tasty way for us all to enjoy this convention week.
Kay
I would say if the pol is unpopular, for fair reasons or unfair reasons or no reason at all, try not to run that person because we can’t scold them into voting for someone. It just doesn’t work.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Right. If Allred does end up beating Cruz, is that because he ran as a centrist, because Dem voters were excited about voting for Kamala, or because everyone hates Ted Cruz?
Centrist advocates would say it’s because he ran as a centrist.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Kay:
Yeah, what a revolution it was — you can still see its effects in South Dakota, for example, where the state party doesn’t even have enough money to have a headquarters office.
There’s a difference between having a 50-state strategy and investing a little bit in promising mid-shot (not long-shot) campaigns. Walz’ win in Minnesota is a good example along with Eric Massa in NY. Zero interest or money from the DCCC. These are campaigns where $100K at the right time to the right person can make a huge difference.
Baud
@Kay:
You can’t scold anyone into anything, but we still fight for what we think is right rather than follow the polls entirely.
Obama was underwater in 2012 BTW.
Kay
@Hoodie:
Walz is having a ball and it shows. That’s not a strategy – it’s choosing a joyful person who likes people.
Harris did that. It was bold too – the conventional wisdom choice was clearly Shapiro. I backed Shapiro. I thought there was less risk with him.
It’s a lot of good decisions and things like timing and a public that no one can really predict. I wish there were “a way” – I don’t think there is.
Hoodie
@@mistermix.bsky.social: That sort of thing takes continuous scouting. Al Franken gave an interview where he recounted first telling Rahm about Walz. Rahm initially dismissed, but then came back a while later with some cash after it looked like Walz had a chance. He did mispronounce Mankato, however.
Geminid
@Kay: The Iraq War really cut into Republican support in 2006. It was pretty much the reason Jim Webb beat George Allen in Virginia. The slippage had already started in 2004.
I think that war also had longer term effects on the Republican Party because of how it discredited the Republican establishment. It definitely left Karl Rove’s program for a permanent Republican majority in tatters.
Soprano2
@@mistermix.bsky.social: Oh God, just this morning I heard them read a comment on 1A about how it was “unseemly” that the Harris/Walz campaign was taking advantage of the JD couch thing, and saying “Whatever happened to when they go low we go high?”. I wish Michelle had never said that!
Steve LaBonne
@Baud: And if he loses he should have been even more centrist. That’s how they roll. Centrism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
Betty Cracker
From the Tampa Bay Times:
We’re about to find out just how seriously women take their bodily autonomy in Florida. It will be on the ballot, and so will lots of Republicans who took the right away.
Kay
@Geminid:
I agree although I think anti war activists exaggerated the effect. I think corruption also played a big role. Remember Pelosi had the whole “culture of corruption” theme? That stuck. It was a good theme. True, of course, so that helped :)
Baud
@Soprano2:
tobie
@jonas: If Dems had done this, both the crime and the coverup would be front page news, the subject of innumerable Congressional hearings, and the talk on cable and social media. The public simply has different expectations of Democrats and Republicans and the media both plays off this prejudice and feeds it. Smart campaigns probably have a sense of the media’s disposition and what they can and cannot change in a short span of time.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
Not just centrism.
Hoodie
@Kay: It’s all of that, but it’s also choosing a person who has a vision. That was a big part of Obama’s gift, the whole “no red states, no blue states” thing. The right themes can carry you a long way. That may be why Harris chose Walz, he auditioned for the part by giving the campaign some effective themes. The most I heard about Shapiro is “he’s popular in Pennsylvania.” That may be true, but I’m not sure that translates in support to other candidates.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
We did a ton of voter outreach in OH, including with paid canvassers for GOTV (not persuasion – we had volunteers for persuasion)
The paid canvassers we used were serious and hard working. I was impressed. I’ve never seen that be effective before. They say they’re paid at the door, so no one is tricking anyone.
Kay
SatanicPanic
@Soprano2: how long are we going to be held accountable for something said like 12 years ago by someone who has never held elected office? Do Democratic voters even care about this?
Weftage
@UncleEbeneezer: Indeed; Speaking for myself, I have no Fecks left to give.
jonas
@Soprano2: Ikr? Even “liberal” corners of the media grade on this infuriating curve where Democrats have to be adults all the time, but Republicans are allowed to be batshit insane fabulists and it’s still covered as legitimate political discourse. (“Trump’s lies seem to appeal to his base. We ask these four guys in an Ohio diner why”)
tam1MI
But how can we know someone is unpopular before they run?
Jackie
@Another Scott: I well remember the show when he had Marlo Thomas on and we watched live as they became smitten with each other 🥰 The beginning of a long, happy marriage!
https://youtu.be/CQJd4U-uH7M?si=5-3W7G4pzUcxnU_U
Shakti
@RaflW:
Yes, there’s no point in playing the game like people (the media, wev) care about policy and details when they treat your opponent like a god emperor for stringing a complete sentence together.
No point in playing a game where people endlessly just want you to react on their terms to their questions. That’s why these stupid Republicans are mad about being called “weird.” Why dignify shitlordism with… policy details? Or some kind of adulting? You don’t respond to a swatting Tiktok with a white paper.
I’ve observed that the only people who seem to care about the lack of “policy” details on the website are arch shitheads* who didn’t care that Trump just posted a 2016 platform in 2020.
Another Scott
@Kay: In 2010 the economy was still recovering too slowly, as a result of intentional GQP obstruction and too many in Congress being afraid that $1,000,000,000,000.00 was some never-to-be-crossed amount (independent of the size of the economy and the actual need). Obama and the Democrats could have run the perfect campaigns then and still would have gotten killed in the elections under those circumstances. I’m of the opinion that what saved Biden and the Democrats in 2022 was that the economy bounced back quickly, as a result of them learning the right 2010 lessons – Go Big!! You won’t get a second chance!!.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffg166
@Omnes Omnibus:
Someone labeled Miller Pee-Wee German.
Hoodie
@Baud: Going high is great, but you have to show you can throw an elbow or two. Remember Obama’s somewhat dismissive “likeable enough” comment in the debate with Hillary. It showed he had a killer instinct. Walz doing the couch thing in the middle of his Minnesota dad act resembles that.
jonas
@tobie: You’re absolutely right — balls-to-the-wall corruption is just part of the Republican brand now. It’s a dog-bites-man story as far as the MSM is concerned.
MisterForkbeard
If I can complain for just one moment about the Harris campaign – I love the campaign and their political instincts have been impeccable. Harris and her staff have been nailing it and this thread is full of examples.
I got my first truly annoying fundraising mail today, entitled “Pummeled”. That was it. Everything else was really positive and joyful in the mail itself. But this “DOOOOOOOOOOM” fundraising approach was something that Dems have been doing for 8 years and I’ve always hated it. It’s working from a defensive crouch. Stop it, especially because it clashes so much with the rest of the message.
I assume a lot of these people are holdovers from the previous campaign and fundraising operation, but yeesh. Cut it out.
Baud
@SatanicPanic:
Yes, savvy people get off on trolling Democrats and a lot of Democrats cannot emotionally handle it.
It’s even the basis for the NYT business model.
FDRLincoln
Walz is a natural and a tremendous asset.
Harris bucked conventional wisdom to pick him. That decision, and the incredibly smooth rollout of her campaign under unusual and stressful circumstances, gives me great confidence in her political judgment.
Harris/Walz. What a ticket!
FastEdD
Age is just a number, but …
The DNC starts today, and I’m remembering when I was there in 1968. President Biden speaks tonight and I am grateful for all the work he has done to bring us back from the abyss of the previous administration. He is 81 and I can’t imagine the toll it takes.
MVP Harris is 59 and Tim Walz is 60. This seems young, but I think about some of the ages of previous presidents. Harris and Walz aren’t young.
Abraham Lincoln became President at age 52 and died at age 56. Our memories of him make him seem like an old man with a beard, but he was not. When he was assassinated he was 3 years younger than Harris is today.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was first elected President at age 50, and after being elected 4 times he died at age 63. FDR wasn’t just in a wheelchair, he was quite ill in his last couple of years, and he really wasn’t that old.
Ronald Reagan became President at age 70 and served until age 78. His last year in office he was getting senile and others made decisions in his name. He died in 2004 at age 93. Jimmy Carter (bless his heart) is 99 and just barely hanging on. He says he hopes to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris. His grandson will speak at the convention this week. Barrack Obama was 47 when he became president and served to age 55, 4 years younger than Harris is now. JFK died at age 46.
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
Won’t stop. I believe the experts say that fear based messaging works with some donors.
Jackie
@Citizen Alan:
I was furious! 😡
Ken
Unless it was all PLANNED, and Cheating Joe Biden was always going to STEP ASIDE for Lying Kamala Harris after Fairest One of All DONALD TRUMP spent over a hundred million dollars of his own MONEY running against CORRUPT Joe Biden, for which GREATEST Human BEING of All Time Donald Trump should get a full refund even after OLD Joe Biden stands up at the Democrat Convention in the RUINS of ANTIFA CHICAGO and takes back the nomination.
This message has been brought to you by the mush that lives under Donald Trump’s combover.
Ruckus
@Scout211:
Or, he is clueless and is having memory problems.
Always go with the simplest and most likely scenario. Which in this case you got spot on.
When someone is a pompous, arrogant ass, they will get in over their head very easily, especially as they age. He’s a pompous, arrogant ass and most everything has actually been over his head for decades.
Another Scott
@FastEdD: Google tells me Nixon was 56 when he became president in 1969. He always seemed older to me.
Truman, Ike, LBJ, Nixon, all those guys seemed old even when they weren’t. We’re better at taking care of ourselves, and know more about how to do so, now.
Cheers,
Scott.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: Yep. Campaigns that win get credit and look like they know what they’re doing, even when they don’t. Trump’s 2016 run is kind of like this – he benefitted from an enormous amount of black swan events (some arranged by outside parties) but he got a ton of credit for winning.
That said, I liked (and still like) the 50 state strategy as an idea. Like you’ve said earlier, there’s a lot to be said for campaigning in red areas if just to keep margins down. That’s how you win statewide office – keep the red areas to 38% rather than 30% dem votes. Some of the same applies nationally, and you get dividends over time from not abandoning Dems in red districts.
TBone
Tiedrich covers the Great Republican Nervous Breakdown 😆
https://www.jefftiedrich.com/p/jd-vance-jizz-cups-and-other-scenes
FDRLincoln
Harris has “it,” the comfort factor, the comfort in her own being, that Obama had. Hillary didn’t have that. John Kerry didn’t have that. Gore didn’t have that. Clinton did. Carter didn’t. FDR did.
But unlike Obama, Harris isn’t naive about what the GOP is. She’s not expecting the fever to break if she can just sit down and reason with the GOP. She knows they won’t listen to reason.
She has it in her to be a truly amazing, ground-breaking, and transformational figure.
MisterForkbeard
@Soprano2: I really hope Michelle makes a couch joke when she speaks at the DNC
@Baud: It absolutely works with some people, which is why they use it. I just hate it with every fiber of my being. It’s whining. Especially when you open the mail and the contents are either upbeat or the subject is “DISASTER” but the text reads “We’re 1% behind where we want to be at this point in the cycle!” If you’re going to freak out, freak out over something important sounding or you look like a wimp.
Jackie
@Chief Oshkosh:
FAKE NEWS!!!
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
I hope she goes full Richard Pryor on the GOP.
Jeffro
@FDRLincoln: Harris/Walz. What a ticket!
right??!? I’m SO psyched!
(more importantly: Fro Jr and Froette are too, and they say all of their friends are now fully ‘off the fence’ and excited to vote for Harris/Walz)
Kay
Gov Walz yesterday : “politics cannot be just against a threat but for a positive future”
Thats this cycle in a nutshell, IMO and they both get it completely.
louc
@twbrandt:
Not only that, but his theme for the event is “Crime and Punishment.” The dog whistles are more than dog whistles these days.
MisterForkbeard
@Baud: “When they go low, we scotchguard the couch. Because we all know what they’re coming for.”
Maybe she can follow that up with a semi-plausible explanation like “We cannot abide their continuing attacks on reproductive health and sexual orientation” and then move on :)
FastEdD
@Another Scott: That’s true, some people are born old and it doesn’t matter what their actual age is. I’m 72 and I don’t feel old at all, but I spent 34 years as a teacher, sucking the youth out of my students!
Baud
@MisterForkbeard:
Haha. I know she shouldn’t, but now I wish she would.
Ruckus
@Scout211:
Is that why they keep posting these obvious lies and fakes?
Isn’t that all they’ve got, lies and fakes?
Kay
@louc:
I think it’s the exactly wrong approach for MI right now
MI is rejecting extreme Republicans. Voters have expressed that in MI for the last 2 cycles now. They don’t want violent nuts. Republicans keep ignoring voters in that state. They told them twice they won’t accept far Right nuts. So Republicans say “let’s do the KKk!”
Geminid
@Kay: What I saw near me were moderate and moderately conservative Independents slipping away 2004-2006. I think a lot of them never came back and were replaced by Tea Party cranks. I thought this shifted the balance of power in Republican Party, and that Eric Cantor primary loss in 2014 showed this.
FDRLincoln
I ordered an independent vendor Harris/Walz yardsign off Amazon, not an official campaign sign since those haven’t shipped yet, although I ordered one of those, too. When it arrives, I’ll have both signs up.
The sign arrived Saturday and I put it up. A neighbor on my street did the same thing, and I saw a third in another neighborhood.
I know that most independent vendors don’t give any money to the campaign, but I wanted a sign NOW! I’m already giving monthly and will shove a few extra $$ Kamala’s way when I can.
Jackie
BAHAHAHAAAHAHAAA!
The DNC has projected an anti-Trump campaign slogan on the side of Trump Tower in Chicago!
MSNBC just showed it and everyone is laughing.
Baud
@Jackie:
I saw that, but I thought it was some independent group, not the DNC.
SFBayAreaGal
@Ken: 🤣🤣🤣
Ken
And winners write the history books, unless they’re the kind of winners who burn the history books.
Kay
@MisterForkbeard:
To contest you need candidates and it sucks to run in a dark red district. You bust ass for free for a year, neglect your family and relationships and real job and mostly lose. The 50 state strategy should be candidate recruitment , like Run For Something.
Jeffro
@Baud: seconded! PLEASE, Michelle! 🤣🤣🤣
Ken
@Jackie: There was a different sign earlier, “Project 2025 HQ” or something like that.
@Baud: Plausible deniability.
zhena gogolia
@Jeffro: What was it about Trump that they liked before Harris became the candidate?
Kay
@Ken:
Im just relieved and grateful. I dont think I’ve ever been as grateful to a political party as I am to Democrats right now. None of this was easy and it could have gone very wrong. Finally – a fucking “institution” that actually delivers. If one more had failed I might have given up.
trollhattan
@Another Scott: Step the first: do not smoke.
TBF I can’t recall seeing a photo of Nixon smoking, but everybody smoked then and if you didn’t you smoked anyway because 2/3 of the room was.
zhena gogolia
@FDRLincoln: Biden had “it” until he committed the unforgiveable sin of getting old.
Mousebumples
Agree. I think it’s good to have candidates on the ballot in these places, but I couldn’t do it. Run for Something is one of my monthly donations (along with WisDems).
Also why I like the off cycle Postcards to Voters campaigns for special elections. Often in red districts that we’re unlikely to win. But let’s try – and let’s support the Dem candidates who are running in these races
(yes, I am a postcarding evangelist – this isn’t news 😂)
Kay
Part of political medias churlishness and pettiness is them recognizing that the Democratic Party – the people they jeered at for the last 30 years – are one of the few things that still function in this country. Media sure doesn’t. They’re mad that we’re the adults in the room. They bet on Republicans.
Bad bet. Daddy Party is abusive and has lost its mind. Mommy party is going to hold the country together.
They’ve always been poor judges of character.
dm
In defense of Tim Ryan’s failure at oppo research: the Harris campaign has an entire nation full of people looking into JV’s past and interviews in weird corners of the internet. Ryan only had a fraction of that. But still, it seems like some of that stuff should have come out.
Also, the Harris campaign has the social media experience of the Fetterman campaign as a potential inspiration, as well as AOC.
superdestroyer
@Steve LaBonne: But her advisors knew how it worked and decided to focus on North Carolina believing that the blue wall states were locked up.
Ruckus
@Kay:
It’s a lot of good decisions and things like timing and a public that no one can really predict. I wish there were “a way” – I don’t think there is.
There isn’t one way. And any one way will have good and bad times. Because this is humanity. It’s rarely logical, it’s rarely constant, it’s humanity, with ALL it’s faults, failings, good points and successes. It’s rarely even reasonably fully explainable – because it’s humanity. And the bigger humanity gets the wider the range. We all have our goals, limits, good/bad reasoning/results and days. Some days/times it’s just a leap of faith that we can even predict if it might work, or is working at all. And what works one day may not the next. We all get up and put a smile or a frown on our faces and do whatever, however, wherever, and hope to have many more days.
MisterForkbeard
@Kay: I like this take. And I think Run For Something has worked, to a pretty good degree
RedDirtGirl
@Jackie: Thanks for that clip!
HumboldtBlue
DNC schedule and where to watch.
Steve LaBonne
@superdestroyer: Hindsight is always 20/20.
Hungry Joe
POSTCARD UPDATE — SERIES 2
Postcards for Jon Tester:
Yesterday — 12
Running total — 47
dm
@Jackie: earlier it had
(Ken beat me to it)
CliosFanBoy
It’s not just the Egyptian bribe, but how little it was!!! $10K? That’s it? Cheapest “billionaire” ever.
Jackie
@Omnes Omnibus: Stephen Miller was giddy with happiness when he helped rip young immigrant children and infants from their parents’ arms and separated them. Several hundred children still haven’t been reunited with their families, and may never be – thanks to the deliberate lack of a paper trail to match up children to parents.
For that alone, I hope Miller is found dead somewhere and the cause and means remains an unsolved mystery. 😡
Kay
I worte here that my IBEWson said electricians were talking about the sloppy Trump sound systems at rallies. They said he hasn’t paid electricians and sound people so now they just slap whatever together.
Someone at BJ asked me to follow up so I did and he sent me here – a post in Heavy Equipment Forums where they talk about the “tractor with the speaker stack in the sky”. I thought it was a crane they were using but my son said no – it’s a forklift and tractor.
Anyway. We all knew he was gross and cheap and didn’t care about anyone else but himself. Hopefully if something fails it won’t be a catastrophe.
HumboldtBlue
@FastEdD:
I read every word of your comment, and I am still at a loss as to what your point is.
Harris and Walz are old?
RedDirtGirl
@Jeffro: My 22 year old niece and her boyfriend, who were refusing to vote for Biden over Gaza, are apparently warming to MVP! I’m very excited by the news! And he is registered to vote in PA!
trollhattan
Well, when you put it that way, totally sorry mate!
Jeffro
@zhena gogolia: nothing
they liked nothing about trump…they were just unenthused about voting
in the end, would many of them voted D regardless? Probably. But they are young and haven’t had several voting cycles to “build the habit”, so some would have just blown it off/stayed home
(sad but true!)
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue: Guessing to my kid they’re old. She viewed Biden as though she were a geologist.
Fake Irishman
@Kay:
I was hoping I’d see you in this thread. Agreed with your point about how winning campaigns are all genius and losing campaigns all suck.
One thing we forget is what Hillary Clinton’s social media team was doing to Trump. They were killing him — baiting him, goading him and making him melt down on twitter. I remember one commentator reflecting Trump was personally wasting his all his time and energy losing a twitter spat that HRC probably barely knew was happening because she was focused on other more important things. Yet Clinton lost, so we don’t see that.
Also, love him or hate him, Tim Ryan ran something like 12-15 points ahead of every other statewide Dem in Ohio in 2022.
On some level it’s true that Ryan did have a campaign template from Sherrod Brown available. But Tim Ryan is not Sherrod Brown, he’s different. And Sherrod Brown has been building that statewide identity since 1982.
RedDirtGirl
@Mousebumples: I wanted to thank you for your donation of stamps. I am sending postcards to Native Americans in Arizona right now.
Chacal Charles Calthrop
@Kay: true that. Of course, sometimes lightening does strike….
In 2010, Chris Coons ran on for Senate on the democratic ticket. He was supposed to lose against Michael Castle, the Republican. Then Castle got primaried by “ex-witch” evangelical Christine ODonnell and everyone in Delaware voted for the unknown Democrat over the evangelical Republican and Coons has been a Democratic senator ever since.
Fake Irishman
@Scout211:
Agreed on the Allred-Cruz race. There is polling that shows it more in the 8-10 point range, but some that show it in the 3-4 range. Judging on how Cruz is acting, I suspect his internals are closer to the latter. Please don’t go to sleep on this race just because some folks have this idea that Allred is making some choices they don’t like.
Also remember when we compare Beto with Ryan and McGrath than Ohio is heading in one direction (and Kentucky is way farther down that road) while Texas is heading in the other. That shapes what sorts of campaigns you can run.
trollhattan
@Chacal Charles Calthrop: Which has me remembering the famous “I am not a witch” ad that inevitably makes me laugh.
So thanks for that. :-)
rikyrah
@FDRLincoln:
Someone said that she found herself a younger Joe Biden.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jackie: I think there was another that projected “Project 2025 HQ”
Jackie
@Baud:
Ana Cabara specifically said the DNC. She could have misspoke, but I can easily see Jaime Harrison doing this. He’s been having a blast these past weeks 😁 He also put up billboards in Milwaukee taunting TCFG during the RNC convention.
BR
@RedDirtGirl:
I hope you talk with them after the discord that will be sown this week regarding Gaza, to keep them moving in Harris’s direction.
Harris is meeting regularly with Palestinian-American leadership but that’s not in the news.
Belafon
@HumboldtBlue: I think he’s advocating for Vance.
Fake Irishman
@Kay:
Hell, look at the margins in Ottawa County. West Michigan suburbs of Grand Rapids. GOP ground zero in the state culturally and economically. Place went for Romney, something like 68 percent of the vote. Now Dems are well above 40 there. Their nutball county commission is really accelerating the shift.
Geminid
@Fake Irishman: I thought that if Ryan had had run as “Fighting Tim” intead of Triangulating Tim he might have picked up a few extra points but not enough to win. So the triangulation was how he lost, not why he lost.
But a more partisan campaign would have left Ohio’s Democrats in better morale and that is a consideration, in my opinion.
rikyrah
CSPAN
@cspan
C-SPAN toured and traveled between the two secured perimeters for the #DNC in Chicago. The United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls, is the location where delegates gather on the convention floor and McCormick Place is the operational site for the convention.
https://x.com/cspan/status/1825560672328925671
sdhays
@CliosFanBoy: …wasn’t it $10 million?
George
Why the hell are people wasting time and effort discussing what Tim Ryan did or didn’t do in his race against JD Numbnuts in Ohio two years ago?
Jesus, people. So what? Ryan probably did better than any other Democrat who would have run against JD. There likely was no way that Ryan would have won, even with any assumed oppo research to use. He ran the race he felt was best geared toward winning Ohio, based on his knowledge of Ohio voters.
HumboldtBlue
Trump doubles down…
artem1s
@Steve LaBonne:
Ryan’s campaign isn’t the first time this has happened. There’s a fight going on in Ohio over who gets control of the state money. Back in 2010 Jennifer Brunner, the excellent Ohio SoS (2007-11) who expanded voting rights in Ohio and undid most of what Blackwell instituted to get W in office, made a run for Voinovich’s Senate Seat when he decided not to run. She launched a grassroots bus tour campaign for the primary that energized the state Dem voters in a similar way Harris is doing now. Young and first time voters knew how important her work was and felt she was a real ally. The State Dems decided to endorse Lee Fisher. Who the hell is Lee Fisher you ask? He’s someone who would bring in a lot of money – from lawyers and banks and such. His candidacy was dead the minute the party endorsed him over Brunner.
Then in 2014 the Dems decided to let this hapless asshole Ed Fitzgerald run for Governor get slaughtered by John Kasich. I have no idea what connection gained him the party endorsement. But these decisions and how Ryan’s campaign was run have made it seem to me they have been trying to lose elections for a long time now. And I can’t quite figure out why. I suspect a lot of the old timey Dem union bosses and businesses have gotten rich off Kasich, Voinovich and DeWine admin state contracts. They like privatization, high unemployment, and low wages.
And well, frankly they also display GOP and RMoney style misogyny and racism when it comes to policy that affects people. There are Dems that want to stay tight with those assholes and they don’t care how it affects the state’s economy or people.
Chief Oshkosh
@Jackie: You’re too kind. I have worse thoughts about Miller and Trump and all the others specifically due to that child separation policy. I include the press on this. There should not have been a single day go by where someone in the press didn’t ask Trump and Miller about those lost children. Not one day.
Kay
@Fake Irishman:
AND Vance undeperformed in the primary (and then the general- hr ran behind Trump). But Ryan could have looked at the GOP primary and thought “Republicans don’t like him, so I’ll run Right and pick some of them up”. Not a horribly bad strategy.
Sherrod says he has to win 1 in 5 Trump voters, so it’s not just centrists who court Trumpsters. His campaign thinks they will get them.
Sherrod’s campaign manager in NW Ohio is great. This very combative young Irish- American man. He’s fresh out of law school. He called my office and our new young soon-to-be- associate answered and they knew each other. It’s such a small world. Our associate is a conservative but bookish and not insane. I feel kind of bad for him. He reads and I have seen him carrying around a book about Elon Musk, a book by Ross Douhat and the lastest is “the war against boys” (something like that). He so wants to get married. His mother is our paralegal and his father is a cop and they have a great, long marriage. This is not the way to get married! Those books are not helping him! But I told him we can’t talk about his relationship problems because it’s not approrpiate at work and people will think he’s weird. I said weird, but it was before we were calling them all weird. I like him.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: That was me, Kay. Thanks for following up.
UncleEbeneezer
AOC on Xitter:
wjca
I really wish articles like this would be clear whether they are talking about
As it is written, it isn’t clear whether the author even realizes it makes a difference.
UncleEbeneezer
@George: Because complaining about Dem failures is a never-ending obsession for some.
Wouldn’t want to just enjoy a week of positivity now, would we?
rikyrah
Dave Jamieson
@jamieson
A Teamsters spokesperson tells me the union’s president, Sean O’Brien, did not get a response to his request to speak at the DNC this week. O’Brien spoke at the RNC after seeking an invitation from Trump. The DNC speaker lineup will be heavy on union leaders tonight, per CBS.
9:07 AM · Aug 19, 2024
https://x.com/jamieson/status/1825535042757484578
chemiclord
The problem with getting “energy” or “enthusiasm” is that it’s not something you can just go out and get. You either have it, or you don’t, and trying to force it just makes you look fake, and it isn’t going to win anyone over.
I think there’s a degree that we have to accept that certain levels of support are baked in, and no good campaigning is going to overcome them. I’d posit that Allred isn’t losing in Texas because his campaign is a “bad” one. It may very well be “bad,” but that’s not why he’s losing. He’s losing because enough people in Texas don’t give a shit who he is or who he’s running against. They’d vote for Hitler before they ever vote for a Democrat in Texas, and there’s really not much a candidate can do that will overcome that.
I mean, think of Doug Jones’s political career in Alabama. He won that Senate seat not because of anything he did specifically. He won that seat because Roy Moore managed to look enough like a pedophile that not even his voters could stomach it. Jones then promptly lost that seat not because he suddenly forgot how to campaign, but because the old ball coach at Auburn threw his hat in the ring.
wjca
And progressive advocates would say he lost because he wasn’t progressive enough. Both groups tend to live in a bubble where their preferences are the key to voctory always and everywhere.
Baud
@wjca:
Definitely doesn’t mean legal residents because they wouldn’t be Americans.
UncleEbeneezer
State Legislature Fundraising links from Charles Gaba (Xitter link):
Baud
@wjca:
Correct. No one of any ideological stripe says “my preferred candidate lost so my policy views must be bunk.”
Delk
BTW, it is a gorgeous day in Chicago.
Fake Irishman
@Kay:
I was just back in OH for about a week, first Cleveland, then Putnam County. Saw a couple of Brown ads in NE Ohio during the Olympics. One was the ad about Chinese companies owning US farmland
On one hand, I didn’t love the premise of Sinophobia.
But on the other, it wasn’t overtly racist and didn’t lean into stereotypes. It was a focused on rural areas, is very much in line with Brown’s long-term positions on protecting American jobs and gave him the ability to say “hey I’ll work with Republicans”
I think there was a very clear and clever strategy behind it, especially if he’s also leaning into his union/worker/manufacturing bonafides.
Hoodie
@Kay: Trump has been pretty much locked into a base campaign and has apparently decided not to change even in the face of the Biden/Harris switch. Before the switch, the feeling was that his campaign had pretty much decided that he wouldn’t pick up a lot of the double hater votes, but that Biden wouldn’t either, so the goal was to maximize the base. Hence the Vance VP selection. Even after the Harris change, they may still feel that’s the best approach. Beyond that, trying to move to the center would be difficult given they are pretty much stuck with that theme given the Vance pick and Trump’s performance at the RNC.
The jury’s still out on what the switch really means for November. Harris got back the enthusiasm that was lacking on the Dem side, but a lot of those voters likely would have come back to Biden if he had stayed in. The $64,000 question is whether she can bring in enough new voters without losing too many of the older swing voters who were comfortable with Biden.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
Yes healthcare is better and far more knowledgeable now than even 50 yrs ago. We have far better and wider reaching communications than back then. (Take what we are doing right now….) We can discuss issues with people we’ve never met and very likely never will. We can easily call people most anywhere in the world, we can travel most anywhere in the world. And much of this isn’t even 50 yrs old even as just an idea. The world has changed significantly in my 3/4 of a century, in so many ways. I remember being in single digits and seeing the electric buses with overhead wires in downtown Los Angeles. Now I ride on the electric transit trains here in LA with overhead wires, that cover much of LA county, many decades later.
chemiclord
@Fake Irishman: Not to mention, Kent County (the heart and headquarters of the CRC) flipped blue in the 2018 midterms, and has been getting steadily bluer.
That flip really demolished a lot of pathways for the GOP to hold power in the state. Kent County (the second largest metro area in the state) had been their bulwark that blunted the Detroit metro’s impact. Losing Kent really doesn’t give them the numbers to reliably win any state-wide race anymore.
JustRuss
@Citizen Alan: Please don’t use the word “patriotic” to describe the hawks and war mongers who lied us into the Iraq cluster.
narya
I like that formulation! I was on Team Walz from the beginning, and now that I’ve seen them in action together, they just seem to vibe together in a way that amplifies what they both bring to the table. Plus all of the cheerful and happy (with some edge) are fun to see.
MCA1
@HumboldtBlue: I find myself slightly out of the cw with my take on this one. I think the issue here is borne of Trump’s colossal narcissism and purely transactional mindset, not his seeming need to continually, intentionally, insult the military (I’m totally on board with most people interpreting it that way, of course, because it’s damaging to him with military members and vets).
He does not hear and interpret the question being asked, and any discussion about the two different honors, through the lens of “Which one is generally regarded by American society as the higher honor?” No. He hears it only as “Which one would I, Donald Trump, more like to be given?”
That’s why he’s so focused on being injured or dead in his answers – because that, to him, is a possible price to obtain the Medal of Honor. He doesn’t necessarily mean to slander fallen soldiers, he’s just signaling that he can’t imagine a universe in which he himself would be willing to pay that price and so can’t understand why anyone else would, either. In his simple mind the price of the Medal of Freedom is being really famous, which of course is no price at all for him.
Since of course he is incapable of comprehending the value of service to another or to a cause outside oneself, he also doesn’t see any value in the whole “honor” thing for himself personally, anyway. Which makes the equation for him high price for very low value, so obviously a bad “deal.”
Jackie
This is stunning! But, maybe not surprising…
A LOT of prominent republicans are endorsing Harris! TCFG has to be livid: I haven’t heard of ANY prominent Democrats endorsing him! 😂
J6 was the last straw for many who may have held their noses, yet voted for him before the insurrection.
FastEdD
@HumboldtBlue: No, they aren’t, but what we perceive as old nowadays is different than what it used to be. Like Another Scott said, we take care of ourselves better than we used to.
Soprano2
I think this is true. People want to know what you’re going to do in broad strokes; they don’t care at all about policy white papers or whatever else it is that the press is always yammering for. Look at how Hillary had a bunch of that stuff, and they mostly ignored it.
Geminid
@sdhays: Yeah, it was $10 million, withdrawn in cash from an Egyptian bank. I have a hunch that more stories like this will come out after Trump loses. Trump had the “For Sale” out in 2016, and he never took it down afterwards.
jonas
@RaflW: Media one day: “Data and economic statistics say one thing, but at this Ohio diner, the economic ‘vibes’ are far from positive”
Media the next day: “Cheery policy ‘vibes’ are one thing; where are the Harris campaign’s policy data and details?”
Also MSM: “Trump’s policy proposals a tissue of lies, hyperbole, and bizarre calculations, but will voters care?”
jonas
@Geminid: The Egyptians were also the ones who eventually got to (soon to be former) Senator Menendez. Has anyone suggested there’s a connection?
wjca
More like: Definitely shouldn’t mean legal residents, because they wouldn’t be Americans. But it isn’t clear, at least from the quote, if it does.
Hoodie
@MCA1: There’s also rhetorical reasons he doubles down. First, he never admits error. Second, if he starts to say there is some value in this type of sacrifice, it undermines his rhetorical scheme. Trump’s whole schtick is the Virtue of Selfishness, i.e., America succeeds when everyone pursues their own selfish goals. That’s behind all the “winning” stuff that he spouts; winning is fucking other people over. It’s kind of a lowbrow libertarianism. It conveniently allows people to embrace their inner asshole and, unfortunately, a lot of people want to do that. Acknowledging the virtue of people like MOH recipients undercuts that.
Geminid
@jonas: I’m still waiting for reporters to interview people at Starbucks shops. That seems like a more relevant crowd now than diner patrons.
Soprano2
@Baud: Oh ITA, I just think because she said that people throw it in Democrat’s faces every time they find something like this that works. TCFG can be as dirty as he wants, while we have to play by the rules. It’s maddening!
wjca
Hence Walz. Keeping them comfortable is as much visual as anything else.
Jackie
@Hoodie: I believe Biden would have won, but I think we would have lost the senate for sure, and definitely more House members. This, IMO, is why Biden stepped down. He truly loves America more than himself.
If Harris wins, and we regain the House and keep the Senate, Joe Biden’s legacy will be sealed forever for saving OUR Democracy.
jonas
Yeah, we’re pretty much living in a “post-truth” world now. It sucks.
jonas
1 million upvotes ^^^^
Scout211
@Jackie: Yes, Republicans, especially old guard “conservatives,” are announcing their support for Harris-Walz. Yesterday it was Barbara Freaking Comstock.
Mousebumples
@RedDirtGirl: you’re welcome, but I didn’t donate stamps – just helped coordinate with WaterGirl (needed to replace our AC last month, so low on cash in the short term). And thank you for writing postcards!
sdhays
@Geminid: He’s had a “For Sale” sign around his neck for even longer than that, but no one found that concerning.
cain
@tobie: Sorry, but it’s the media that has that expectation and then voters follow through. You can see by just the coverage. They bring all these opinion pages. Just look at Maureen Dowd – after the debate, “QUIT JOE FOR GODSAKES” then now “IT’S A COUP!”. I mean, JFC, lady – go suck a lemon and smoke a joint.
Scout211
@Jackie: Hey, thanks for posting that Time article with the secure site to check if your personal information was stolen in the massive breach. Mine was not but my husband’s was. We already had accounts with Experian so that was easy to freeze. I had to get accounts with the other two for both of us and then I did a freeze for those accounts as well.
Thanks!
UncleEbeneezer
Great advice by Magdi Jacobs:
Geminid
@jonas: It seems unlikely to me, except in the broader sense that both men are corrupt and Egypt wanted something they could deliver.
Qatar was another player in Menendez’s corruption case. That was penny-ante stuff, something about a Hala meat business that operates in New Jersey.
Egypt had bigger fish to fry, I think. Each year the US holds back a large chunk of the military aid promised Egypt under the Camp David Accords, on account of human rights issues. Trump and Menendez could help them a lot in that and other areas.
squid696
I have an Allred sign in my front yard. One of two campaign signs in my subdivision, which is weird. The other is a lone Trump sign. Allred has been pretty active running TV ads here in Houston, but they had the same bland introducing the candidate vibe for months. At least he mentioned he was pro-choice in the ads. Now his ads are on the border and trying to differentiate himself from Biden and attacking Cruz for not supporting the border bill. Hie seems to be invisible as far as public appearances go. I did not even realize he was here in Houston at Sheila Jackson Lee’s funeral service. I have no idea if he did anything else while he was here. They better have ads ready to go pretty damn soon with pictures of Cruz at the airport getting ready to ditch the state during the ice storm. Maybe even show the dog he left behind to freeze. You absolutely have to remind the normies about what a POS Cruz is.
Jeffro
@Scout211: I saw that and was thrilled!
it won’t register with my RWNJ dad and bro, but it’ll land with some of my older R-leaning female relatives
wjca
Which is probably also a factor in why so many of us Baby Boomers aren’t just retiring as young as previous generations.** (I’m still working, W-2 and everything, at 77. It’s interesting, not excessively taxing for me, and someone is willing to pay me.)
I understand that it can be irritating for the next couple of generations, that they aren’t reaching the top as fast as their parents, not to mention grandparents, did. But they’ll eventually discover that they’ve gotten there. And then they, too, will have time to enjoy lording it over their descendants.
** It may be worth noting that Social Security was originally set up with a retirement age of 65 precisely because most workers didn’t live all that much longer than that. Made the whole thing more affordable on paper.
Paul in KY
@FastEdD: Pres. Lincoln and Pres. Kennedy were murdered. They didn’t just ‘die’.
Soprano2
Evidently this is a huge issue especially on the Republican side, because pretty much all of the Republicans in the MO primary ran on some version of “I won’t let China buy all our farmland”. Which is ironic, since several years ago the R’s in MO passed a law to specifically help Smithfield because it was bought by a Chinese company. They wanted them to be able to buy facilities in Missouri, and there used to be a law about restricting foreign ownership of MO land.
eclare
@narya:
I agree. I was also Team Walz after I saw him on a few TV shows. He is very much like Joe in that they both like people. It’s a great team
Josie
@squid696:
I agree about showing his running away during the ice storm, especially leaving the dog. There are pictures of the dog alone in the house looking out a window. What an ad that would make for all the animal lovers out there. My family and I shivered through that winter and will not forgive anyone who didn’t try to help.
More recently, Republicans didn’t look too good during the week long electricity outage after the hurricane.
eclare
@Soprano2:
Same with Elizabeth Warren, which is a big reason that I did not support her in 2020.
Rand Careaga
@Jackie:
Should such a thing come to pass, for the “unsolved mystery“ part I’d like to imagine one the first responders exclaiming (as the others retch uncontrollably) “Holy mother of God! What the hell could have done that??”
Geminid
@squid696: The picture of Cruz’s dog was very poingnant. It looked so abandoned.
That dog might not have been missing Cruz, though. It could have been looking at all the snow and worrying about Texas’s dog food supply chain.
jonas
@Geminid: Sure, but then they’d run the chances of encountering a liberal and that would screw up their whole narrative. Best to stick to places where white men in old tractor hats hang out.
Jackie
@Scout211: That wasn’t me, and I can’t remember who posted it. Glad it was helpful for your husband’s sake, though. It didn’t work for me, unfortunately. My name/DOB/state was too common and it wanted more information than I was comfortable giving.😢
FastEdD
@Paul in KY: Of course, but the point was that they weren’t that old during their entire terms of office.
Scout211
Oops! Sorry.
Sorry about that. That’s odd.
Whoever posted that information last night.CaseyL, Thank you! 😉Paul in KY
@FastEdD: I just think that should always be noted , when talking about how long various Presidents lived, etc. Would apply to Presidents Garfield & McKinley too.
Frankensteinbeck
@Chief Oshkosh:
There are many things that reveal what vile scum Trump and his closest associates are/were, but for me the piss vomit icing on that shit cake was the executions. There was no political benefit or ideological requirement in making sure all the death row inmates were killed before Biden could take over and put them back on indefinite stay. Trump and his cronies just got a kick out of killing people.
Ramalama
@Betty Cracker: SAME (ish – I love some other American poets too)
Love’s the boy stood on the burning deck trying to recite “The boy stood on the burning deck.” ….
Her poem Casabianca is etched in the bricks of the T station floor in Cambridge / Somerville MA.
Barry
@Feckless: ”
Hillary spent half a billion dollars to lose the presidency and both houses of Congress.
Where did all that fail money go?
Was there any accountability for the grifters?”
Remember that she was facing at least $1 billion in attacks from the same MSM which had been shitting on the Clintons like a branch of Fox News for 15 years.
Citizen Alan
@JustRuss: Sorry. “Patriotic.” I left out the sarcasm quotes.
Lyrebird
Quoted For Truth.
I’m not disagreeing with the OP, just vehemently agreeing with Kay’s statement above. I’ve been reminding myself, there is NO “one weird trick” or one guaranteed formula – HRC was a big innovator in youth outreach in 2016, not sure if y’all remember her getting slammed for her Pokemon Go stuff, and I loved the vibes of the pant suit flash mobs etc.
I figure everybody’s got to do what they can – some love rallies, some write postcards, some talk to neighbors. Impressive how many things are being done by so many Jackals!
West of the Rockies
@Jackie:
Trump is hoping to get Tulsi Gabbard’s all-important “Democratic” endorsement. //
Jackie
@West of the Rockies: Ex-democrats don’t count. She divorced the party shortly after she lost her bid for the presidency nomination in ‘20.
Barry
@jonas: “You’re absolutely right — balls-to-the-wall corruption is just part of the Republican brand now. It’s a dog-bites-man story as far as the MSM is concerned.”
I don’t give them that much credit. They like GO P corruption.
Barney
When “childless cat ladies” came up this year, I thought I had heard it before – probably on Democratic Underground, or possibly a blog. It made it on to The Independent’s website, and AOC’s response too, when he first said it: AOC hits back at JD Vance after he calls her and Pete Buttigieg ‘childless cat ladies’ who shouldn’t govern because they don’t have kids | The Independent
(that also points out Vance included Paul Krugman in the “childless cat lady” group, and he responded in his column: Opinion | Return of the Family Values Zombie – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Barney
More notable mentions from 2021 of the “cat lady” crap – it was “weird cat lady” as well as “childless” (ironically), but the childlessness was always central:
Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance blames America’s woes on ‘the childless left’ | Republicans | The Guardian
The Fake Hillbilly Versus the Cat Ladies – by Jeet Heer (substack.com) (published a couple of days later in Washington Monthly: J.D. Vance’s Misogynist Dog Whistle | Washington Monthly
Chasten Buttigieg Slams J.D. Vance for Insulting Childless Democrats – Business Insider
Do Ohio Voters Actually Know Who J.D. Vance Is? | Vanity Fair
Matt
You’d think so, but this was a moderate Ohio Democrat – he spent more time insisting that he was BARELY a Dem than he did campaigning.
Chris T.
@tam1MI:
The same way you buy a stock before it goes up: use a time machine.
columbusqueen
@RaflW: There’s an understatement. Tim landed on my shit list years ago when he decided that running for Speaker against Nancy was a good idea. My aunt & I chalked it up to him being a cocky little prick, & we haven’t trusted him since.
columbusqueen
@Chris T.: You could talk to the party’s grassroots for a change. Aunt Kathy & I were not the only Ohio Dems on the ground who marked Ryan as an egotistical ass who thought he was smarter than he was, years before his Senate race.