Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This really is a full service blog.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The revolution will be supervised.

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

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Fucking Bloody Hell

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This makes me want to vomit:

Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, a veteran lawmaker who was once the highest-ranking Black member of Congress, endorsed former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Friday.

Mr. Clyburn made the case that Mr. Cuomo was the right candidate to help Democrats fend off the ill effects of President Trump’s second term, when Mr. Trump is “challenging the pillars of our democracy.”

“The mayor of New York is uniquely positioned to play an important role in the future of the national Democratic Party,” Mr. Clyburn said in a statement, adding that Mr. Cuomo had the “experiences, credentials and character to not just serve New York, but also help save the nation.”

We’re never going to get rid of this man, Cuomo, are we? My god how must women feel about him. I wish he would not have endorsed him.

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Second Guessing

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For the last 24 hours I keep asking myself if I am being too hard on Schumer and the Dems who voted for the CR. Maybe they are right and Trump would do worse if the government were shut down. And then I realize it doesn’t matter.

Any way you slice or dice this it was a disaster by Schumer. The way he set the House up, went to the cameras and said NO NO NO on Wednesday night, and then woke up the next morning and uno reversed himself in the mirror, infuriated the overwelming majority of the Democratic Senate caucus, fucked the House Dems, and enraged the masses, it doesn’t fucking matter if he was right. He needs to fucking go.

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Are We Allowed to Criticize House Leadership Yet?

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Via Axios:

House Democratic leadership is privately confronting members who disrupted President Trump’s speech to Congress, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: Many progressives defied House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-N.Y.) request to avoid making themselves the story.

Jeffries, in a dear colleague letter ahead of the speech, urged a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber.”

Trump’s speech was instead rocked by constant heckling. Democrats held up signs and other props, and Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was ejected.

In meetings and discussions with leadership this week, Democrats who heckled, walked out in protest or were otherwise disruptive were given a talking to about their tactics, sources said.

What we’re hearing: Leadership is “very unhappy” with those who went beyond traditional protest tactics like outfit coordination and refusal to clap, a senior House Democrat told Axios.

Roughly a dozen Democratic disruptors — including Reps. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.) — were called into a “come to Jesus meeting” on Thursday morning, the senior Dem told Axios.

The top three House Democratic leaders were present: Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.).

Yes, but: A source familiar with the matter stressed that these lawmakers are “not getting yelled at.”

“It’s a consultative process. We understand the pressure they are under.”

“They are not being talked to like they are children. We are helping them understand why their strategy is a bad idea,” the source said.

A spokesperson for Jeffries declined to address the private meeting. Spokespeople for Clark and Aguilar did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

And don’t tell me it’s Axios and all made up. If it was not true, there would be pushback.

At some point, Democrats need to learn that the reason so many people don’t rally to them is because they just look and act like weak twats. And that’s not even going into the ten motherfuckers in the Democratic caucus who voted to censure Al Green.

I am so over these spineless cowards. They’re going to be grumbling about decorum as they get frogmarched to the firing line. Leadership might allow them to coordinate lapel pins for their execution, so that will show the Republicans.

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This Is a Pretty Stupid Headline

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This Is Pretty Lazy Analysis

This is pretty stupid, and you can see why in the first few paragraphs:

After being badgered to death by moderate Senate Democrats, the Biden administration has agreed to put stricter limits on who will be eligible for a relief check as part of its big COVID recovery bill.

Centrists such as Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia have spent weeks urging the administration to “target” the new round of $1,400 economic impact payments more narrowly to lower-income families in order avoid spending money on households that might not be facing financial difficulties at the moment. On Wednesday, Democrats said they would phase down the checks more quickly for higher earners than originally planned. As a result, approximately 11.8 million fewer adults and 4.6 million fewer children will benefit from a payment, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Singles who earn up to $75,000 will still receive the full check amount. But the payment will ramp down to zero for those who earn more than $80,000, well below the previous cutoff of $100,000. Married couples who file jointly will still receive their entire check if they make up to $150,000. But payments will fall to zilch for those earning more than $160,000, down from the previous threshold of $200,000.

Maybe it’s just me, but NOT BEING ABLE TO PASS ANY BILL OTHERWISE seems like a pretty good reason to me.

Now Manchin and Sinema and whoever else’s reasons for opposing the bill as is, might be pretty bad, but I would argue the overall reason team Biden is acquiescing to these dipshits is pretty fucking solid.

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3rd Party candidates and second choices

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Building on Adam’s thread on Kanye West (not a sentence I expected to write this year), I wanted to look at the spoiler effect of a third party candidate in a first past the post election. We don’t have great data on that counterfactual, but I think that we can look at Maine’s 2nd Congressional District election in 2018 to get some idea of what percentage of not-first-two party vote is persuadable to vote for one of the two major parties.

Maine using Ranked Choice Voting for its federal elections. A voter sees all the candidates who are running and ranks them from 1 to the number of candidates. The voter has a choice to stop ranking at any point. If there is no clear majority winner in the first round, the ballots of the candidate who received the fewest 1st choice votes are re-allocated on the basis of the second choice. This repeats until there is a clear majority winner.

Maine’s 2nd District went to a RCV run-off in 2018. The first round had the Republican incumbent hold a tiny plurality lead. The Democratic challenger won after the run-off. That is not the interesting part. The interesting part is this paragraph from the Portland Press Herald on the 3rd and 4th choice candidates:

In the end, Golden gained 10,232 votes from the ranked-choice retabulations and Poliquin gained 4,695 votes. That 5,537-vote edge allowed Golden to overcome Poliquin’s 2,632-vote lead. Roughly 8,000 of the ballots cast for the independents did not designate an additional choice or did not select either of the major-party candidates.

Roughly 8,000 out of almost 23,000 minor party voters did not choose a major party candidate. These folks were mobilized specifically for the minor party candidate. However over three fifths of the minor party voters were okay with at least one of the major party candidates. We can assume that most of them would likely have voted for a major party candidate in a first past the post system.

So what does that mean?

Some fraction of a third party candidate’s vote is never in play for a major party candidate. However a decent to large chunk of it is in play. And an ideological or identity based third party candidate is going get most of the in-play voters from the major party closest to it. So, a spoiler candidate is likely to get some small percentage of idiosyncratic voters who were never in play and then a good size sliver of voters from the major party closest to it. Looking at Maine, the 2nd District results had a net swing of about 1.8% which in a close race was a decisive swing.

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Hill Resigns

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Katie Hill, D-CA-25, just announced her resignation after having a threesome with a female campaign staffer and someone else her soon-to-be-ex husband, being accused of having an affair with her legislative director, and after having nude photos leaked to RedState. Hill had previously blamed her soon-to-be-ex husband for leaking the photos and also making accusations about Hill as part of an apparently very acrimonious divorce.

Hill had flipped CA-25 in 2018, which is rated as PVI of Even. Hopefully, another Democrat who isn’t fucking his or her staff will be able to win the special election.

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