We opted not to watch Trump tell belligerent lies while Republicans clapped like trained seals last night. Instead, we rewatched “The Royal Tenenbaums.” I figured I’d catch up on the speech via clips, social media reax and media coverage this morning. But after a perfunctory look, I find myself completely uninterested in what Trump said.
I do care about how Democrats responded. It looks like they road-tested ALL peanut gallery suggestions last night. Some boycotted the event, including AOC and Senators Murray and Murphy. Some walked out mid-speech in protest, wearing t-shirts with slogans like “No Kings Live Here” and “Resist,” including Florida’s Maxwell Frost and Rep. Crockett of Texas.
Some, including Rep. Jayapal, held up signs that said “Lies” and “Save Medicare” and “Musk Steals.” Some heckled — Al Green of Texas was removed from the chamber after shouting out the truth, which is that Trump has no mandate to cut Medicaid.
Other Democrats jeered and laughed out loud at particularly dumb lines, like when Trump praised anti-science kook RFK Jr., who is currently presiding over a measles outbreak, and when Trump said “rule by unelected bureaucrats is over” while praising the unelected, un-confirmed, apartheid South Africa-born gazillionaire who is illegally dismantling the federal government.
The only truly idiotic response by a Democrat that I saw came before the speech:
Mark Warner on Fox: “I may disagree with the president, but I respect the office of the president. I’m probably not gonna be jumping up applauding a lot, but I owe him his due as president. The president has made great, great progress on border crossings. That’s something we ought to celebrate.”
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) March 4, 2025 at 3:51 PM
And no, I didn’t see what he said before or after, and I don’t need to. There’s no context that would make that inane blather acceptable, especially from a senator whose state will bear the brunt of a massive, illegal firing spree by Musk. Any Democrat who feels they just have to hand it to Trump — on any issue — should shut the fuck up and maybe consider leaving politics forever.
I watched Senator Slotkin’s rebuttal and thought she did a pretty good job considering it is a historically thankless role. I appreciated that she called out Musk and his minions. (The speech could have contained less implicit Reagan hagiography, but I guess that plays well among the dwindling number of surviving “Reagan Democrats” in Michigan.) I liked her call to action — stop doomscrolling, get involved.
Overall, I’d give Slotkin a B+, unless grading on the Katie Britt scale, in which case Slotkin gets an A+.
What say you? Open thread.
On The Road – Auntie Anne – Southeast Asia – Cambodia 1 of 3
Baud
That is a bad response by Warner. I think he’s not going to run again.
ETA: he said that on Fox, so I wonder if he was the designated sacrificial lamb to reach out to some Trump people having second thoughts. Just a guess.
ETA 2: As a loyal member of the Internet, I will spend the day focusing on the approaches I didn’t like and attribute that to the whole party.
lowtechcyclist
Last night, thinkin’ ’bout last night…
zhena gogolia
I finished watching Anora (why did somebody tell me it had a happy ending?), then an Inspector Morse episode from 1988. I’m blissfully unaware of anything that happened last night.
I had a bunch of decades as a free woman. Really not enjoying losing my freedom to these assholes.
lowtechcyclist
Good Lord, Warner, what were you thinking?
Makes me glad I’m on the north side of the Potomac these days. I’ve got two good Senators over here.
Betty Cracker
Just realized when looking up the “shut up, hissy kitty” post I put up the night of the Katie Britt debacle that I was unexpectedly admitted to the shitty local hospital a year ago today. I feel so much better! ;-)
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker: I’m glad!
Princess
@Baud: Your ETA2 is par for what I’m seeing on Facebook this morning.
I told one woman I’d be happy if Americans spent half as much time complaining about Republicans as they do about Democrats. Note, I said complaining about not complaining to — pressuring Democrats to do better is fair game and important. But the weary whining to others does no good.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
What a year. Glad you’re feel better.
YY_Sima Qian
Mark Warner praising Trump on anything? Can’t say I am overly surprised. The guy is obsolete, unfit for the times.
Baud
@Princess:
As AOC said recently, everything is a scam. Including Internet political opinions.
Josie
@Betty Cracker:
Glad to hear it. What a difference a year makes.
Spanky
@Betty Cracker: Yay! And jeebuscrispiez, it’s been a whole year?
Josie
@Princess:
It’s why I avoid all social media except for BJ.
Ben Cisco
So, so good…thanks BCrack and glad you’re doing better.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker: So glad you’re doing better!
Kayla Rudbek
@YY_Sima Qian: Warner at least has his voicemail on at his office and eventually sends out email replies, unlike Kaine who doesn’t even have his voicemail set up. I will be voting for whoever primaries both of them.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trump looks like he had a stroke. That’s what I saw.
Liminal Owl
@Betty Cracker: So glad you’re feeling better!
lowtechcyclist
WaPo headline: “Trump signals full speed ahead on divisive policies.”
Would be an enormous improvement if they were merely divisive. Yeah, a full-scale assault on the Constitution is merely divisive.
And their header about the reaction was similar: “Republicans applaud speech; Democrats blast it as divisive.”
Fuck you, Jeff Bezos.
NotMax
Yeah, dragging in Reagan rankled. A lot.
I also didn’t care one goddam bit about her taking up a portion of the precious allotted time on a recitation of how she got here.
The point is that she’s here. Now. And I care what she proposes be done given her position and even more how she proposes to do it.
Past time to jettison the entire exercise of these toothless, instantly forgettable responses.
J.
@Betty Cracker: Glad to hear you are doing better, at least physically.
JoyceH
I just saw clips of the speech, but…. Dang! We’re going to have to start using the C word. Crazy. Trump sounds Crazy.
Betty
Thanks for the good news about your health amid all the truly bad news we are enduring these days. Keep it going!
satby
@Betty Cracker: That’s great! So much bad has happened over the last few months, so you feeling better is the good news we all want to hear.
YY_Sima Qian
Glad to see all the Dems w/ the signs, though.
NotMax
@JoyceH
Coup coup for Cocoa Puffs.
//
MagdaInBlack
@Betty Cracker: Im glad you’re here with us and feeling better. You sure “sound ” like you feel better. =-)
Betty Cracker
@YY_Sima Qian: Yes, and now we have definitive proof that signs are allowed in the chamber during a joint session. I had wondered about that when WG suggested signs.
Baud
@JoyceH:
He’s also the other C word.
Ohio Mom
I am usually loathe to criticize Democrats. My thought is, Not going to micromanage, going to extend the benefit of the doubt. They managed to get elected, they must have some smarts. Plus they are privy to information I don’t have.
But last night?! A hodge podge of mostly silly gestures. We don’t look united or strategic, we look like chickens with their heads cut off. Circling frantically and aimlessly, winding down (I once saw a chicken get its head chopped off, it was a demonstration for city slickers).
I am embarrassed and angry. And feeling not so hopeful. Going to eat breakfast now, maybe that will raise my mood.
eclare
@Betty Cracker:
What a year! So glad you’re feeling better.
Betty
An example of how crazy things are is my staunch Republican investment banker nephew (but long-term Anti-Trumper) endorsing a clip from Bernie Sanders’ response to Trump. Learning is possible.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: Yay for feeling better! Keep it up. We need you
Dorothy A. Winsor
What is Crazy Man’s obsession with Greenland about anyway? What does he think he’d get?
His harping on it should push Europeans into solid support for one another.
NotMax
@Baud
Crumbum?
Cretin?
Cudlip?
;)
Jeffro
I watched for about 10 minutes, near the start of the speech. (I don’t know why…it was like the return of an old, bad habit?)
He berated the Democrats for ‘never applauding, no matter what’ even though trumpov is ‘the greatest president ever, with Washington at #2’ (yes, he really said something like that). CLICK
Jeffro
@Dorothy A. Winsor: 1) it’s big, 2) it supposedly has all kinds of minerals and rare earths, 3) I’m sure he thinks he can magically add it to the U.S. without firing a shot, which would 4) add to his magnificent legacy.
oh, also 5) he’s nuts
Jeffro
@Kayla Rudbek: Warner will almost certainly have a primary challenger (and deservedly so) in 2026 if he chooses to run again.
Kaine has, I think, already said that this is his last term (he was re-elected just last year)
If Warner doesn’t run, Jennifer McClellan would be a very strong contender for that seat. For Kaine’s seat/vacancy in 2030, the hope is that Abigail Spanberger, fresh off of a successful term as Governor, would run and win.
(deep Dem bench here in VA; the GOP, not so much!)
Professor Bigfoot
I spent the evening watching my Cleveland Cavaliers erase another deficit in the third quarter and run up a 20 point lead in the 4th. I think my evening was much more enjoyable.
Y’know, you gotta give it to Trump— evil motherfucker is making this Nazi shit work, ain’t he?
<grrrrr>
JoyceH
Here’s what I don’t get – we’re told that the wonks at Heritage spent years planning for Trump’s return and put out a multi-hundred page document to carry out the big plan – so why is everything so shambolic? With all that planning and even identifying the specific players, why isn’t it a well-oiled machine? Why are they ordering everyone back to the office at the same time they’re putting the office buildings up for sale? Among other truly incompetent moves. A friend tells me that downtown DC is a massive pre-dawn traffic jam of people trying to get in to the Navy Yard so they can snag a parking space because there aren’t enough to go around.
Princess
@JoyceH: I think the answer is Elon Musk. I think he was a latish add, and doge was not part of the original plan.
different-church-lady
We might as well call it Reign of Terror Ii.
NotMax
@different-church-lady
ElectricPetroleum Boogaloo.//
Spanky
@JoyceH:
So did Hitler, and folks ate that shit up. There’s no downside to sounding crazy if you mean it.
Baud
Wasn’t Trump supposed to arrest all the Dems last night?
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: As the Arctic melts, sea levels may rise but there are natural resources to be got under the ice. I think the oil companies wanted it to happen all along so they could grab some of that bonanza (and open the Northwest Passage too). Canada and Greenland are prizes for that reason. It’ll help Russia too.
different-church-lady
@JoyceH: Every Frankenstein thinks he can control the monster.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: He doesn’t have to if he can render them irrelevant. The calculation might change after the midterm if they win big.
different-church-lady
@Professor Bigfoot: You know who else made Nazi shit work?
Matt McIrvin
@JoyceH: Totalitarian regimes are usually not well-oiled machines because they elevate hacks and snitches rather than competent people.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Here’s hoping.
different-church-lady
@Ohio Mom: You got a better suggestion?
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=euHfP6X_axY&t=67s&pp=2AFDkAIB
Anyway
RW thinktanks live in their own reality — remember the shambles after the initial “victory” in Iraq? Same “debaathification” here – goal was to get rid of long-time employees and bring in RWers. It’s like supply-side economics — faith-based. There is very little empiricism or true data analysis in current RW world.
glory b
@Princess: I agree. He doesn’t know how government works, all of the statutes & regulations to be followe, and neither did his teenagers.
All those firings will have to be reversed, all of those employees will have to get back pay, a judge ruled that firings have to come from the chain of command, that OPM has no authority to fire, that the civil service and merit protections systems can’t be ignored.
I mentioned this before, but Musk’s youngest minion, “Big Balls,” father, Charles Coristine (former hedge fund manager), owns the multimillion-dollar organic snack food company “Lesser Evil.”
another boycott target. I don’t believe he is just naturally this much of an asshole, nurture, not nature.
Ohio Mom
@different-church-lady: Too late now. I wish they had been united in what they did. Instead the Democrats were a hodge podge — one heckler who got removed, different outfits (I liked the tee shirts), some people leaving (would have been better if this was choreographed), those silly signs, what was this, an auction?
It all added up to, didn’t send a message of strength and unity.
Doesn’t matter now, maybe next year they will have a smarter approach. And we have lots else to do.
Betty Cracker
@JoyceH: & l@Matt McIrvin: Read an interesting theory about the Trump 2.0 incompetence earlier, can’t remember where. The article’s main thrust was that the true nature of Trumpism isn’t fascism or authoritarianism per se, though it has those elements. The author said the governing mode is “patrimonialism” or something like that, a term I’d never heard.
It’s government based on loyalty to a single person, with that person installing loyalists who will almost invariably be incompetent because their primary characteristic is submission to the leader. The author argued that authoritarian and fascist regimes often have a vast and competent bureaucracy, whereas patrimonial systems are marked by incompetence and epic corruption.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@glory b: Musk goal is always to make something that looks good to the stockholders so he is just following the same playbook he does at any company he takes over. An idiots theater for other idiots.
Trump thinks government is a reality TV show. There is no other goal for Trump but people screaming at each other.
The Heritage Foundation are the smartest men in the room, just ask them. Needs to say, input from anyone who don’t agree with them is never allowed.
Jackie
Just caught a clip of Muskrat in suit and tie. Almost didn’t recognize him. He must have been commanded to clean up by…?
TBone
I love The Royal Tenenbaums very, very much! Now I’m gonna hafta find & rent it soon, haven’t watched it in years although I watched it several times when it became available for home viewing. I’m sure I’ll see something I didn’t catch before.
The Thin Black Duke
@Spanky: There’s no downside to crazy when enough people buy into it.
Betty Cracker
@Betty Cracker: The patrimonialism theorist also argued that Dems should focus on corruption in making their case as the opposition. They acknowledged that Trump was corrupt as fuck in his first term and still got elected again but said it’s worth pursuing. I tend to agree — corruption pisses me off. But people really do seem resigned to it. It rarely seems to matter. But maybe the scale at which Trump 2.0 is already embracing it will knock voters out of their torpor. I don’t know.
Soprano2
I know where they got the idea to sell the buildings – in private business a lot of people buy their building and then lease it to their business. We did that, it’s a way to control the rent and other expenses related to the building rather than paying it to a landlord, but in the case of government it’s going to be the reverse – you’ll start paying rent to someone else rather than to yourself. None of this is designed to actually save money, it’s designed to destroy and privatize the government. One of the funniest things is all the people who think we don’t need NOAA and the NWS because that app on their phone is so great!!! People have no idea what government actually does…..
TBone
Today’s Inky: DelCo represent!
Grant Grissom, 80 y.o. ex-Rethug:
Also
glory b
@Ohio Mom: But there isn’t any unity, that’s the problem.
We have put so much stock in this performative nonsense. Yell, boo, stay, leave, carry signs, wear black, wear blue and yellow, livestream, press conference, town hall, protest.
Each one had its adherents, each group said that any other way was doing it wrong.
Dems scrambling to appease every group was a microcosm of what’s wrong.
Now, the proponents of every idea are flooding the media with criticisms of how they did it wrong.
Republicans rarely criticize their party, can exercise message discipline and won. It would be nice if we could do the same.
karensky
@Betty Cracker: So glad to hear that, Ms Cracker! You are a beacon of good trouble for me. And, your photos of your animals and all the swamp critters. Have a good day and say hi to the wildlife for me.
Jeffro
that mostly checks out…except for folks like Vought, who most definitely is (maliciously) competent and then some
also, having incompetents like RFK Jr in important posts is at least as dangerous as having some evil genius in there
it’s like the full combo platter of badness with this gang…full-spectrum peril for the country
TBone
@Betty Cracker: I am unabashedly unresigned to the corruption of patrimonialism. Smash the patriarchy in its every iteration!
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: I know, right?
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: I agree with this – they’d do well to make THE STEALING MUST STOP a major theme going forward
it’s not hard to make a case that the trumpov crime cartel’s thievery is what’s making government stop working/cutting checks/providing services to America’s working families and wrecking the economy
(well…thievery and arson…)
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: This time they aren’t even trying to hide the corruption, it’s right in the open. That would make it easier to make an issue of it, I think. People generally don’t like corruption – that’s what the rhetoric about “drain the swamp” is all about.
Baud
@glory b:
Agree about lack of unity. It’s our core problem.
The Thin Black Duke
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: It’s depressing to see how many stockholders believe in the concept of “magic beans”.
TBone
@TBone: mood music for smashing patrimony
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fOKtbJfNLFk
Patrimoney
Genderless Robbin’ Hoods
Gretchen
@Betty Cracker: If they start selling off the FBI building and the Murragh Federal Building in Oklahoma City (people there have some feelings about that building) it might get people’s attention. I’m wondering who has to approve those sales – can OMB just say we’re selling buildings for pennies on the dollar and nobody can stop them?
Geminid
Some Georgia political news from Greg Bluestein:
Lucy McBath was one of the forty Democrats who flipped Republican seats in 2018. Hers was a plurality-White district in suburbs just north of Atlanta.
McBath had never held public office before; she was an airline flight attendent who became a gun-control advocate after her son was murdered.
Soprano2
That’s because we’ve become a TV/online/visual society. People put a lot of stock in the things they can see, more than is warranted IMHO. It’s like all the yelling at Jeffries – he could be doing a bang-up job behind the scenes on some things, but all that matters online is how it looks and sounds. I think they should call “The New Abnormal” the “Bash Democrats” podcast, because that’s what they spend a lot of the first part of the podcast doing. I think it’s ironic that some people here got mad at white people for criticizing Jeffries, because the biggest critic I’ve heard of him on the left is Danielle Moody on this podcast; she’s a black lesbian! She almost hates him, she yells for him to resign for someone “who can lead” on almost every episode. I only listen to that podcast for the interviews, because they do surprisingly good interviews, but their opining is almost unbearable.
different-church-lady
@Gretchen: I dunno where they think they’re going to put all the FBI agents who are going to investigate us.
Soprano2
@Baud: You’d think having FFOTUS to fight against would unify us, wouldn’t you, but that hasn’t happened yet. I’m still hopeful it will happen eventually.
TBone
@different-church-lady: in Elno’s sprawling Texas compound so they can work from home?
Soprano2
@different-church-lady: Oh, I know what they’re planning – they’ll sell the building to some hedge fund billionaire’s company and then lease it back from them, they aren’t planning on moving anything. I’m now fully convinced that none of this is about saving money.
different-church-lady
@Ohio Mom: The “unity” plan was to sit there quiet and dignified. I’m glad it fell apart.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: Yeah, the first thing the Trump DOJ did was stop enforcing anti-corruption laws. Big red flag there!
@Baud: Agree, but I really don’t see a way out of that problem. We’re a coalition whose factions often openly and implacably despise each other. Maybe “not worse than unified but incompetent fascists” is our high water mark.
Baud
@Soprano2:
We didn’t unify before the election and we’re not unified now.
Despite all the crocodile tears, a lot of people like what Trump is doing because they think it gives them leverage over others in the Dem coalition to force them to compromise. So you’re going to see a lot of sniping for a while.
different-church-lady
@glory b:
I say do it all.
different-church-lady
@Baud: We unified behind Kamala.
.
Trying to remember how that turned out…
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Agreed. I have no solution to the problem. I just try to focus on people doing positive work.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
I don’t think we did. Not enough.
NotMax
@TBone
The Royal Tenenbaums currently streaming on Prime; leaving there at the end of this month.
Speaking of Prime, can’t recall if ever recommended the Spanish series Little Coincidences (Pequeñas coincidencias) to you.
Good fun and writing which grows sharper and sharper the more it proceeds.
different-church-lady
@The Thin Black Duke: The thing about crazy is it doesn’t even calculate things like downsides.
TBone
@NotMax: hank you! However, I don’t pay Bezos a red cent in any way, shape, or form so I’ll look for it elsewhere. I’ve been boycotting that bald headed chicken fucker for at least a decade.
Is the series available elsewhere?
ETA of course, I understand that living on an island, you may have no other choices!
different-church-lady
@TBone:
“Alexa, why does Jeff Bezos have all the money?”
“Because you gave it to him.”
different-church-lady
@TBone: I realize this doesn’t work in every community, but my public library has tons of DVDs and BluRays.
YY_Sima Qian
Since there wasn’t a late night thread, & this is an open thread. Per Gloria DryGarden‘s request, here is an AI generated poem on the current state of affairs in theUS, courtesy of the DeepSeek R1 reasoning LLM, , in the style of Yong Yu Yue from the Song Dynasty, specifically a poem by Xin Qiji (a Chief Minister of the imperial court) decrying the state of affairs & his impotence in old age to set things right. I think it is still topical.
& DeepSeek R1‘s translation into English (w/ a few edits from me on word choices):
it should be noted that the cut off date for the training data for the R1 model was likely in the 1st half of 2024, & DeepSeek‘s web search function is down, so R1 is only working w/ the material from Trump’s 1st term. My prompt specifically asked R1 to lean into polemical hyperbole, & not only does product still feels current, it feels just about right in light of the most recent Trumpian misrule. That’s… not good.
Anyway, call it another experiment. May it raise a few chuckles & nods.
TBone
@different-church-lady: yep, my library will definitely have it, it is a hotbed of subversive content and insubordination!
different-church-lady
OK, new take: the signs were brilliant. Because they were visual, in a visual age. The cameras cannot resist them, they’ll be on home pages everywhere today.
different-church-lady
@YY_Sima Qian:
It had me until that.
Ceci7
@glory b: Yes. As the kids say, no one is coming to save us. I was at a 50-50-1 rally yesterday on the Boston Common and found myself getting impatient with the speakers. But then I thought, this is not a performance, and not every rally will have a gifted orator like Ayanna Pressley giving voice to our collective troubles.
I’m not discounting the importance of leadership and messaging. I’m just trying to spend my energy on doing the activism instead of criticizing Dems.
glory b
@different-church-lady: They did, and now they looked scattered and unfocused.
NotMax
@TBone
Little Coincidences is an Amazon-only original series.
And thanks for your understanding of the disadvantages of living on an island in the middle of the Pacific.
;)
YY_Sima Qian
Another request from Gloria DryGarden, this time in style of an American poet. I prompted DeepSeek R1 to create a poem in the style of Robert Frost, challenging it to emphasize strong emotions such as rage, contempt and sorrow. From the Chain of Thought reasoning, the model immediately recognized that this is not Frost’s style, & that it needed to strike a balance. Not a bad attempt IMHO:
Melancholic, yet w/ strong emotions ready to burst forth.
stacib
@glory b:Dems scrambling to appease every group was a microcosm of what’s wrong.
I can’t agree more, and I think it’s what will keep Democrats out of power for a while. I’m not saying they should start kicking folks from the table, but I do believe it’s a losing strategy to try to appease everybody. People feel how they feel, even when they’re wrong as hell, but we, as Democrats, seem determined to prioritize changing minds over and winning battles while we’re losing the war.
YY_Sima Qian
@different-church-lady: More appropriate for 2017 than 2025, one of the few places where R1‘s training cut off date shows.
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: You’re right. I was there too. We didn’t have Kamala’s back.
different-church-lady
@glory b: To us. Normies are seeing Dems fight back. They hear the groove, not the harmonic structure.
zhena gogolia
@different-church-lady: Uh, did you miss her being heckled at every speech? Did you miss a few million people staying home?
Professor Bigfoot
@different-church-lady: Oh yeah. That vile motherfucker from last century reborn.
TBone
@NotMax: muah!
TBone
@NotMax: 🎯
Geminid
@glory b: There are some critical House votes coming this month and later this Spring. That’s where Democrats need to show unity, or at least that’s where I want to see it. I want to see all 215 House Democrats vote as one bloc: Blue Dogs, Squad and everyone in between.
If they can do that, they ought to be maintain it throughout this Congress. Sooner or later this will have real consequences, because I don’t think Mike Johnson’s caucus can pull that off.
Speaking for myself, the way I want to demonstrate unity is to get behind House Democrats, as a whole and not this group or that group within it; and not get wrapped up in essentially ephemeral matters such as how they behave at a State of the Union address.
glory b
@Soprano2: Danielle may have her own thoughts, but Jeffries is still pretty popular with black voters.
Last month USA Today did a poll of Democrats, asking their thoughts on new leadership, post Trump’s inauguration.
No one had a commanding lead, but Jeffries was first, at 16%, Harris next, at 15%, 13% couldn’t think of anyone, Newsome was at 4%, Buttigieg and AOC tied at the bottom at 2% each.
TBone
@NotMax: when my fur family has aged out of existence, I want to alleviate grief and surprise hubby with a trip to said islands. A hubbymoon. I will be picking your brain for tips and tricks!
Geminid
@glory b: Hakeem Jeffries is popular among plenty of White Democrats too. I’m White, and I rate Jeffries very highly and have ever since he first came to my attention in November, 2018.
That was when Jeffries won the election for Caucus Chairman and became Nancy Pelosis heir apparent.* That election also the beginning of a sustained campaign to tear Jeffries down that’s been waged by an almost all-White faction of so-called “Progressives.”
I’ve watched that campaign carefully, and that is one reason I have defended Jeffries so vigorously here.
But I have a friend in Atlanta who is totally oblivious to all these intra-party squabbles. He is as White as me, and he’s a Jeffries superfan. My friend thinks Hakeem Jeffries is the most formidable Democratic politician today, bar none.
* My understanding is that Rep. Ben Ray Luhan of New Mexico had been considered the likely successor to Rep. Pelosi as House leader. Then, a retirement opened the the Senate seat Luhan ran for in 2018 and holds today.
frosty
@Betty Cracker: What a year you’ve had! I’m so glad you’re feeling better.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: As you often point out, you have to be a pretty able politician to get to where Jeffries is as fast as he did. For me, the jury is still out on how effective he’ll be as a leader — he hasn’t been on the job all that long — but we’ll know soon enough. I hope he turns out to be the best minority and then majority leader in U.S. history. We’ll need someone that good to get us out of this shit pile!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Jeffries was not that well known here when he was elected Minority Leader, after the 2022 midterms. Like I said, I’d been following him since November of 2018 when he was elected Caucus Chairman. But I think a lot of folks did not know there was such a thing as a Hakeem Jeffries until they saw him as one of the ten House Managers during Trump’s first Impeachment trial..
Jeffries had only served 3 terms in the House when he won that Caucus Chair election. I figure his peers– and not just leadership– must have seen qualities in Jeffries that impressed them. This wasn’t a matter of Nancy Pelosi singling out some unkown and then “mentoring” him.
Other Democratic leaders had recognized Hakeem Jeffries’ potential years before that. Jeffries’ Wikipedia biograghy has an interesting item about his 2012 campaign to succeed Rep. Edolphus Towns in the Brooklyn-based 8th CD. Jeffries was a New York State Assemblyman then, and the Democratic primary was his big hurdle.
Jeffries’ campaign circulated an interesting picture. It showed Jeffries flanked by Barack Obama and Biill Clinton; all three were smiling of course. At the time, Obama was President and would not formally endorse Jeffries in a primary, but posing along with Clinton for that picture was the next best thing.
mrmoshpotato
The clips of Dump’s bullshit that Stephen Colbert played on his live show last night were enough for me.
Thanks for the rebuttal link.
dnfree
@Ohio Mom: Somebody chopped the head off a chicken as a DEMONSTRATION? That’s disgusting. Here’s a chicken, just minding its own business being a chicken, and WHAM it’s in pain and then dead just so people can watch?
My grandmother used to cut heads off chickens on the farm and I still remember the sight. But at least there was a reason, and the chicken had lived a good farm life until then.
dnfree
@YY_Sima Qian: That is very creative, and I’m sure your specific prompts helped shape the result. Thanks!
dnfree
@YY_Sima Qian: Whoa, another interesting take!
Do you like W S Merwin? One of my favorites.
Gloria DryGarden
@YY_Sima Qian: fabulously apt! Satisfying. Thanks!
this line in particular, but the whole poem is wonderful, alas.
Kayla Rudbek
@Betty Cracker: wouldn’t patrimonalism be like old-school kingship?
Kayla Rudbek
@Soprano2: and the annoying thing is that GSA has already been the owner of the buildings and the other government agencies lease them from GSA. I remember my dad complaining about that back in the 1980s.