2022 Elections

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, Busy

by Anne Laurie| September 29, 20227:13 am| 176 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, Biden Administration in Action, How about that weather?, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

Hope everyone is doing as well as can be expected…

Ian has weakened into a tropical storm but is still expected to produce strong winds, heavy rains, and storm surge across portions of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said https://t.co/T4wkSmZKuc

— Reuters (@Reuters) September 29, 2022

nightmare fuel (video takes place over roughly 90 minutes) https://t.co/WWmcSS74vQ

— Gerry Doyle (@mgerrydoyle) September 29, 2022

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Thursday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, BusyPost + Comments (176)

Monday Afternoon Open Thread: Way to Make Yourself Popular, Sen. Sinema!

by Anne Laurie| September 26, 20224:00 pm| 173 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, 2024 Elections, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment

Kyrsten Sinema is currently speaking at the McConnell Center talking about how proud she is to have “forged a friendship” with him “rooted in our commonalities.”

In 43 days, we can elect 2 more Democratic senators to make Sinema irrelevant & suspend the filibuster to codify Roe. pic.twitter.com/YdhFsUnB2V

— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) September 26, 2022

Gosh, one wonders why she’s not more popular among her constituents!

… These numbers, from a new Arizona poll commissioned by the AARP, are pretty remarkable! Her unpopularity “crosses the aisle” like that of no politician I’ve ever seen. A solid 54 percent of Arizona Republicans don’t like her. And 51 percent of independents don’t like her (her best result!). As for Democrats? Arizonans of Sinema’s putative party simply do not like her, to the tune of 57 percent. (And that’s a distinct improvement from her 80 percent disapproval rating with Democrats in January!)

Name a demographic group, and Sinema is viewed unfavorably by a majority of them. Women? 55 percent unfavorable. Men? 53 percent unfavorable. White voters? 56 percent unfavorable. Hispanic voters? 54 percent unfavorable.

She’s not very popular with college graduates (53 percent unfavorable), but unfortunately she’s even less popular with people who haven’t graduated college (55 percent unfavorable).

Voters 50 and over? Her unpopularity with them is also 50 and over (54 percent, specifically). But young people also don’t like her (55 percent unpopularity)…

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Monday Afternoon Open Thread: Way to Make Yourself Popular, Sen. Sinema!Post + Comments (173)

Mayday! Mayday! Is DeSantis’s plane stunt going down?

by Betty Cracker| September 21, 20221:37 pm| 137 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, Immigration, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity

I sincerely hope DeSantis’s performative cruelty toward the asylum seekers he relocated from Texas to Massachusetts costs him the governorship in November because we really need that fascist motherfucker to be a one-term governor and zero-term president. I don’t trust my fellow Floridians enough to be confident that will happen, but it’s possible. Even shitheads who don’t object to the plane stunt on humanitarian grounds might be disgusted by the lies and waste of resources.

It’s awful to listen the hideous pumpkin-head’s whiny, adenoidal voice and watch him ape Trump’s mannerisms, but endure it for 43 seconds if you can so you can hear the absurd explanation he gives for spending hundreds of thousands of Florida taxpayer dollars to bamboozle 48 vulnerable people (including children) for a Fox News bit:

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), when asked why the state paid to transport migrants from Texas instead of from Florida:

“The problem is we’re not seeing mass movements of them into Florida … It’s just coming in onesie-twosies.” pic.twitter.com/zY1Ma3cst8

— The Recount (@therecount) September 20, 2022

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Utter nonsense, and, as Josh Marshall notes at TPM, DeSantis seems pretty desperate to avoid a conversation about the “vendors” who are allegedly profiling asylum seekers in Texas and lying to get them onto the planes, probably because those vendors are shady as fuck (my guess is it’s some rabid wingnut anti-immigration group, but who knows?) and got paid untold amounts out of taxpayer funds for a program that does absolutely nothing to address the border crisis.

The truth is, he’s lighting bales of Florida taxpayer money on fire for the 2024 GOP primary campaign. Maybe DeSantis should have thought of how the stunt might play for normies before flying those folks from the jurisdiction of the county sheriff who serves San Antonio and into a stronghold of smart liberal attorneys. That’s a problem for people who live entirely in the right-wing media ecosystem. Here’s hoping it all blows up in his ugly face as coverage leaks out of the Fox News bubble.

Open thread.

PS: Y’all might have heard DeSantis chartered another plane yesterday, which filed flight plans for Delaware and then Teterboro in New Jersey. But the flight left later than originally scheduled, made a stop in Nashville and arrived in Teterboro with the crew only. Apparently there were never any immigrants on it, just the crew. Sounds like a big fat waste of money, but at least no humans were trafficked.

NBC News had the worst possible take on yesterday’s stunt-let, which is unsurprising because the article was co-reported by noxious hack Marc Caputo:

‘Punked’: DeSantis keeps White House, Delaware and media guessing on migrant flight plans

Never mind human beings used in a taxpayer-funded stunt, wasted assets and time and potentially criminal behavior. That loveable scamp DeSantis really punked the libs, woohoo! Meanwhile, I think valued commenter Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to Kalini provided the likeliest explanation on Twitter:

I’m gonna guess that the vendor got cold feet on loading “passengers” and didn’t want to risk aircraft seizure and arrest of the flight crew. Probably got some decent legal advice, not of the “hurr-durr, sticking’ it to them libtards” type.

— Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to Kaliningrad (@CardsFanTravel) September 21, 2022

That sounds about right.

Mayday! Mayday! Is DeSantis’s plane stunt going down?Post + Comments (137)

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Curses, Foiled!…

by Anne Laurie| September 20, 20226:54 pm| 73 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, Immigration, Open Threads, Republican Venality

The small Delaware town of Rehoboth Beach, where President Joe Biden has a vacation home, appears to be the landing spot for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ next round of expensive migrant flights, according to flight plans.https://t.co/xdfWoci9ko

— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) September 20, 2022

The element of surprise only works when it’s surprising:

The small Delaware town of Rehoboth Beach, where President Joe Biden has a vacation home, scrambled Tuesday to prepare for the expected arrival of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ next round of expensive migrant flights—but the day only ended with more confusion in the Diamond State.

Instead, confusion swirled as the chartered plane that was scheduled to leave Texas on Tuesday morning, filled with migrants, departed hours late and bound for a different city—Nashville, Tennessee—with no passengers on board.

Delaware officials had sprung into action on Monday night after word got out that the same plane DeSantis used to fly migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard last week was listed on a public schedule to fly to Delaware, via Florida, on Tuesday morning. There was also a $950,000 payment made by Florida to Vertol Systems Company Inc, the same charter company that flew migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

Once word spread, however, DeSantis lost the element of surprise that marked his Martha’s Vineyard stunt. This time, city, state and federal officials immediately began preparing for a possible arrival.

“We are aware of the situation and are working with state and local partners to compassionately address this situation and take care of the migrants who may arrive,” a spokesperson for Rehoboth Beach, a city of 1,108 people, said in a statement to The Daily Beast on Tuesday morning.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told CNN on Tuesday that he spent much of Monday night on the phone, coordinating with community leaders “to make sure that we provide an appropriate, welcoming and supportive reception in Delaware.”…

The White House also indicated that federal agencies had reached out to coordinate with Delaware Gov. John Carney and service providers in a bid to prevent a repeat of the Martha’s Vineyard episode…

The Republican mantra has been that any publicity is good publicity, but I’m not sure these stories look good to those not already part of the GOP Death Cult…

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Monday Evening Open Thread: Congratulations, Rep. Mary Peltola

by Anne Laurie| September 19, 20228:23 pm| 49 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, Local Races, Open Threads, Proud To Be A Democrat!, Something Good Open Thread

Of all of the amazing things that have happened over the last few weeks, nothing has been as great as being able to share this day in D.C. with my family. I couldn’t have gotten this far without them?? pic.twitter.com/ecP0VlM3vs

— Mary Peltola (@MaryPeltola) September 14, 2022

Good things still happen, too, as a piece in the Washington Post‘s ‘Lifestyle’ section just reminded me. “What good is 16 weeks in Congress? Mary Peltola is about to show us”:

She launched into her new life about noon Friday last week, flying from western Alaska to Anchorage, where she hopped on another plane around 3 a.m. Saturday, then hustled through the Seattle airport for her connecting flight to D.C., and a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives — a thrilling prospect that may, in fact, be quite temporary.

On Monday she did an MSNBC hit, during which the host compared her to both Barack and Michelle Obama, then swore her oath of office around 6:41 p.m. Tuesday on the floor of the House while wearing the traditional fur-lined footwear of the Yup’ik people. Within the hour she cast her first three votes as a congresswoman, then shepherded her four children and three stepchildren and two grandchildren to a jubilant reception hosted by Alaska Native organizations and headlined by Nancy Pelosi — all while running, on the side, yet another campaign: to retain the office she was just elected to (Alaska’s sole seat in the House) past the Jan. 3 expiration of her new, current, abbreviated term…

Her nameplate was up outside her new office, Rayburn 2314, the expansive former lair of her legendary predecessor, the late Don Young (R), who was as ornery as she is gentle. The masts by the office door were still awaiting flags. The waiting room was empty except for a box of Dunkin’ Donuts, two apples on a paper plate, and a fresh visitors log that already had the names of six constituents — one of whom had scrawled “YAY!!!!”, presumably in celebration of Peltola’s historic election.

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“I am feeling all of the cloud nine emotions,” said Peltola, 49, posture perfect in a green leather chair. The soaring office walls, stripped of Young’s bumptious archaeology (including his vertical herd of taxidermy), had been repainted in the dull buttercream of Capitol Hill bureaucracy.

“And I know that this isn’t a permanent state. Nothing is. Everything is temporary.”…

Her election alone is a major accomplishment in the eyes of Democrats, indigenous Americans, many Alaskans and even some Republicans. Peltola is the first woman to represent Alaska in the House and the first Alaska Native to represent the state in either chamber of Congress. She’s also the first Democrat in the seat since the Nixon administration.

“It’s going to be impossible for me to get through this without crying,” said Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a tribal member of the Pueblo of Laguna, at a Tuesday reception for Peltola in a ballroom of the Kimpton Hotel Monaco.

“I’ve known Mary for a long time,” said Lisa Murkowski, one of Alaska’s two Republican senators, as she walked into the ballroom. “She and I served in the statehouse together. I know the character of the woman. She’s tough. She’s got grit. I feel very proud today.”

“Mary looks like us,” said Republican Tara Sweeney, an Alaska Native who also ran for the House seat, on the phone from Anchorage a few hours before Peltola took the oath. “She understands what it’s like to be in communities with no law enforcement, to have to pack water, to being stormbound in remote communities where you’re guests at the school or the church. She understands those challenges of growing up in rural Alaska.”

Peltola was raised on the Kuskokwim River near Bethel, a 70-minute flight west of Anchorage, by a Nebraskan father and a Yup’ik mother, whose people have fished the area for 12,000 years. At 6 years old, Peltola began catching salmon commercially with her dad. In her mid-20s, after working for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Peltola won a seat in the statehouse in Juneau, where she earned a reputation as an independent thinker and a collaborative doer. After 10 years in the statehouse, Peltola focused on the Kuskokwim, helping to manage a nearby gold-mining project and advocating for imperiled salmon runs, which are the region’s economic arteries…

“We’ve been here as indigenous people — we predate the government, any law, any congress,” said Denae Benson, 26, a junior Hill staffer who approached Peltola for a photo. “Yet now, in 2022, this is the first time an Alaska Native is representing people in the body that governs them? It’s surreal that it’s taken so long, but it feeds into the hope that the country is changing and growing.”

There’s a great short video at Peltola’s local paper, the Anchorage Daily News, taken on the night she got the good news.

We’re going to make Alaska’s seat in the House pro-choice, pro-worker, pro-fish, and pro-family — and preserve what makes Alaska the home we all love.

— Mary Peltola (@MaryPeltola) August 20, 2022

Lisa Murkowski continues to be an extremely high VORP (Value Over Replacement Politician) senator https://t.co/DfK0nkXhO5

— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) September 1, 2022

Big dreams for a big state…

We need like 15,000 new federal jobs requiring graduate degrees in Alaska and it's a swing state. https://t.co/9edt7OePDA

— Leonid Baezhnev 🔥 (@rev_avocado) August 27, 2022

Monday Evening Open Thread: Congratulations, Rep. Mary PeltolaPost + Comments (49)

Open Thread: New Hampshire, Leaking Away Its Political Mojo

by Anne Laurie| September 14, 20229:19 pm| 78 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, Local Races

Absolutely astonishing. New Hampshire Republicans, after Trump lost there twice, may have just thrown away a Senate seat and two House seats with Trumpy nominees – which for all we know could be the margin in both chambers. https://t.co/cP6JyGinev

— Jonathan Bernstein (@jbview) September 14, 2022

Tourism is one of New Hampshire’s leading industries, and its First in the Nation! presidential primary is an important part of that industry. Not that the average leaf-peeper or outlet store shopper cares, but the quadrennial contest’s high-dollar Running of the Journos has been a reliable earned-media advertisement for the state — all those romantic leafy vistas, against which the quirky natives demand hands-on contact from every political hopeful. But I get the impression that the modern GOP’s increasingly sealed epistemic bubble is swiftly eroding the state’s draw for political junkies.

As far as I can tell, much of New Hampshire’s attraction for the Media Village Idiots has been its status as a mostly-reliable red state isolated in New England’s stalwart blue political sea (that, and its relatively convenient commuting distance from NYC and DC). For the thirty-odd years I’ve been living in what passes for NH’s biggest media market (eastern Massachusetts, which has all the high-power tv/radio stations, especially among the wealthier NH voters who cross over to work in MA) I’ve gotten the impression that New Hampshire has been marketing itself as the Kyrsten Sinema of political venues: Quirky, with a capital Q, because it’s cheap and it catches the attention of the easily bored. But candidates like Don Bolduc aren’t quirky, they’re borderline deranged… and they’re indistinguishable from every other election-denying Trump-cultist mounting their own media on YouTube and TikTok. Why spend the money sending a talking head and a camera crew to Laconia, much less Dixville Notch, when you’ve already got more B-roll than the station interns can get through?

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Election denier Don Bolduc is officially my opponent. He supports ending Social Security and decimating Medicare, and would vote for a nationwide abortion ban.

Bolduc is too extreme for New Hampshire.

— Maggie Hassan (@Maggie_Hassan) September 14, 2022

Captain Cosplay, as one snarkster labelled this clip:

A real expert at pointing projectile weapons at his own side. https://t.co/RpvCJFLBPk

— zeddy (@Zeddary) September 14, 2022

"This whole virus that Donald Trump started, denying the election results, has seeped everywhere. It's not just in the key states of Michigan and Georgia and Arizona, but now it's come to fruition in New Hampshire" – @matthewjdowd w/ @NicolleDWallace pic.twitter.com/O1foNQSrGI

— Deadline White House (@DeadlineWH) September 14, 2022

The Granite Staters couldn’t even get Ron deSantis to show up before the primary, and deSantis seems to be working every state fair in the Midwest!

No wonder Governor Sununu has gone squishy…

sir I demand you stop insulting me with “semi” and respect my full dedication to fascism https://t.co/FBRJdmpCHx

— kilgore trout, death to putiner (@KT_So_It_Goes) August 28, 2022

… Sununu conceded there are “elements of fascism and white supremacy” in the U.S. but explained it’s also not true that “all the Democrats are communists.”

“When we allow ourselves just to talk in these extremes, we polarize the country,” Sununu told CNN on Sunday, adding that Biden on the campaign trail had “said he was going to bring everybody together.”

“And then to call half of America fascists?” the GOP governor asked. “He owes an apology. That’s not appropriate. That isn’t leadership.”

… while the glibertarian Free Staters gnaw at his ankles:

‘Free Staters’ roil New Hampshire politics in ski area spat https://t.co/BR63OdzLbR pic.twitter.com/0I6bo7ZbhO

— The Associated Press (@AP) August 28, 2022

Even the bedrock of NH’s right-wing political empire has been quietly unpersonned, for predictable reasons:

A New Hampshire newspaper has removed its onetime publisher from its masthead after disclosures that he had been a child molester.
“We know now,” the paper wrote, “that William Loeb is not a man to be celebrated. https://t.co/vTSMfdWN4s @UnionLeader

— David Beard (@dabeard) May 1, 2022

2/n: William Loeb has been dead for a long time, but this kind of disclosure still matters. It may empower others to finally share past abuse and, perhaps, gain some closure. It’s also important to anyone who cares about a full, accurate account of history.

— Meg Heckman (@meg_heckman) May 1, 2022

Open Thread: New Hampshire, Leaking Away Its Political MojoPost + Comments (78)

You Love to See It Open Thread: Repubs in Disarray!

by Anne Laurie| September 8, 20227:19 pm| 92 Comments

This post is in: 2022 Elections, Grifters Gonna Grift, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Repubs in Disarray!

this would be a five-alarm, front-page story if it were the democrats in disarray https://t.co/2iR1OI4Sk5

— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) September 6, 2022

A fear among Republicans: The NRSC won’t be able to bankroll its part to target voters with direct mail and urge them to come to the polls in key battleground states, something that the party committee spent tens of millions of dollars to do during the 2020 cycle.

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 7, 2022

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First time GOP candidates in places like OH & PA are struggling with fundraising and have so far kept a slow campaign schedule, @margarettalev tells @mkraju. @ccadelago says that’s why Democrats think they have a “fighting chance” in some uphill races. #InsidePolitics pic.twitter.com/chQK9QN8J6

— Inside Politics (@InsidePolitics) September 4, 2022

R strategists and pols did not believe Dobbs would cost them 4 points on the generic ballot and House control in what should be a layup year for them. https://t.co/gKsTkoKZJH

— I, Fred, will knock you all down!! (@LesserFrederick) September 8, 2022

R strategists and pols thought they could run on nothing but “Let’s Go Brandon!” against a doddering fool 20 points underwater and win the House with 250 and the Senate with 54 on an 8-point national margin. Based on 2021 election results, this assumption was reasonable.

R strategists and pols absolutely did not expect to be facing a probable D Senate gain and possible D House hold with a president on a trajectory toward positive net approval by election day, and they would not have traded that for Dobbs.

It is so embarrassing for them that they find it necessary to excuse a dramatically unusual midterm shellacking even though we are two months from election day and they could still very well win.

But the psychopathic course was already set, since the remaining Republicans who subscribe to Douthat's views number approximately one person.

— I, Fred, will knock you all down!! (@LesserFrederick) September 8, 2022

It also fits in with the 'MAGA' frame that Biden and Ds have been setting up the past few months. These are extremists. The abortion issue is the most salient for people but also guns and Trump. People are sick of it

— Adam (@Kosher_Butcher) September 8, 2022

Reminder:

Honest to god. Trump could literally shoot a person on 5th Avenue and a reporter would tweet, “Some doubted Trump would follow through, but the shooting really puts Biden in an awkward position of how to respond.” pic.twitter.com/76HNlJNZNs

— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) September 1, 2022

party of thieves, grifters, liars and, frequently, abusers

— GONELIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) September 4, 2022

You Love to See It Open Thread: <em>Repubs in Disarray!</em>Post + Comments (92)

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

We still have time to mess this up!

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

No one could have predicted…

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

In my day, never was longer.

This blog will pay for itself.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Everybody saw this coming.

Let there be snark.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Busy, Busy, Busy

Monday Afternoon Open Thread: Way to Make Yourself Popular, Sen. Sinema!

Mayday! Mayday! Is DeSantis’s plane stunt going down?

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: Curses, Foiled!…

Monday Evening Open Thread: Congratulations, Rep. Mary Peltola

Open Thread: New Hampshire, Leaking Away Its Political Mojo

You Love to See It Open Thread: Repubs in Disarray!