Here’s Dave Weigel’s earlier story on how conservatives looked to Michigan to prove attacking transgender care for minors can defeat both Democrats and abortion rights amendments. It ended up a blowout for D’s in both cases. My money says they learned exactly nothing from this outcome except "double down on bigotry!" Republicans hope Michigan is proof-of-concept for an LGBT backlash | Semafor
'm not sure most Americans, even center-left folks, realized what a massive bullet we dodged this week. American democracy lives, and has a better prognosis than it's had in quiet some time - but we're STILL standing on the edge of the ledge over a very deep canyon. Had the "red wave" happened (anywhere besides Florida which...ugh) there would have been a better than 50/50 chance that 2024 would be the last free election in this country in my lifetime. The Dems held the Senate and are not out of it in the House - holding the Senate effectively blocks out the scheme to challenge the results of the next election. That's huge. Moreover, they beat all the Denier SoS candidates in swing state, potentially all of the governors (pending AZ) and gained a couple of legislatures (no president since 1934 has avoided losing any legislative chambers during their first mid-term). It defies description how remarkable this outcome was. And this in spite of CA and NY using non-partisan maps while TX and FL were gerrymandered to the extreme, while Ohio literally ignored the State Supreme court to run on maps declared unconstitutional under the state constitution and SCOTUS threw out all procedure and precedent to allow AL, LA, and GA to run on unconstitutional maps... (Cuomo's machine fucking NY state is a whole other story and if that mess hadn't happened that alone would have held the House for the Dems) The fact that a lot of the Trumpian candidates who lost are NOT refusing to concede is huge, the more Trump is an outlier the easier it is for us to avoid being led into full-on fascism. From a purely political point of view, the looming bloodbath between Trump and Desantis can only help Democrats. On the other hand, the danger is for Dems to do what they do basically in every election - learn all the wrong lessons and ignore the ones they should be learning. (the "run to the middle" instinct is VERY hard to dislodge even though, for example, there's no one more obsessively in the middle than Charlie Crist and he got crushed. That SHOULD be instructive, but it probably won't be. (speaking of, I was listening to a pod earlier discussing the NY situation and they pointed out that Maloney pushed Mondaire Jones out into what he (Maloney) that was a tougher district, and ran HARD to the middle parroting center-right lies - while Jones maintained his progressive platform in the district Maloney didn't want.... And Maloney lost while Jones won. Shit like this SHOULD be a wake-up call to Dems. It likely won't be. Not to the old school power brokers.
It is strange that people are making such a big issue out of something that only affects maybe 1-2% of the US population. For comparison, only 1.4% of the US population is of Indian descent. And that population group doesn’t factor into any political discussions at any level, except maybe local politics in the Bay Area/New Jersey. I am personally of the ‘live and let live’ mindset but it seems many people have an almost instinctual aversion to transgender people and homosexuality to a somewhat lesser extent and this is enough to whip people into a frenzy and override their feelings on more practical/relevant issues such as the economy/healthcare/gun violence/etc. But as we have seen, running on extreme issues can only get you so far. It might help you whip up your base and help you beat your primary opponent but could become a hindrance or a non-starter in a general election.
Not strange at all. it is far, far easier to demonize a small segment of the population than it is to demonize a larger group. You can then use that to pry your way into greater control. Those images of Nazis burning books in Germany? Those books were all related to studies of LGBTQ+ people. Yeah, serious academic research was being done on the topic 100 years ago, but because only a small sliver of the LGBTQ+ community was comfortable about being public with their identity, the Nazis were able to demonize them to gain power. Remember, Hitler wasn't the popularly elected leader of Germany. He was the "compromise" pick, and it was generally assumed that he'd be kept in check by Hindenburg. That worked out about as well as the landing of the zeppelin named after him in NJ.
Oh yeah. WA03 was the definition of a safe R seat. Why the models gave the D only a 2% chance of winning. This is the 2020 result: Party Candidate Votes % Republican Jaime Herrera Beutler (Incumbent) 235,579 56.4% Democratic Carolyn Long 181,347 43.4% Write-in 977 0.2% Total votes 417,903 100.0% Thanks Trump!
Huh ... the chyron on MSNBC says "McConnell out as GOP leader in new Congress." I haven't heard anything about Republicans ousting him, and I can't find any headlines to that effect, so I'm assuming somebody in the MSNBC control room got sloppy and confused "majority leader" with "Republican leader."
Mastriano admits he lost. https://twitter.com/dougmastriano/status/1591925822268788737?s=20&t=VsspOhs2ZZ1On7CBwHe-hg
I've been hearing people like Mark Levin blaming Mitch and this morning on Washington Journal/C-SPAN radio a lot of callers were blaming Mitch as well.
I can't wait for the rationalizations about how the guy who recognized the fact that his party was nominating shitty candidates is somehow responsible for those shitty candidates losing.
Mehdi Hasan just pointed out that Jared Polis won Colorado, a state roughly as blue as Florida is red, by roughly the same margin as DeSantis won Florida, but nobody in the media is swooning over him. He speculates that it's partly because the media has been obsessed with Florida as a swing state since 2000, even though it really isn't anymore. Another explanation: it all goes back to Republicans' success at "working the refs." Still terrified of being accused of liberal bias, TV pundits think finding a Republican to fawn over will keep Republicans from yelling at them.
Big drop in Maricopa county, Lake did well and picked up +9000 or so votes from the 94,000 cast. This leaves Katie Hobbs up 26K with about 100,000 left to count. Lake is going to have to pull off a miracle to win. The militia types are already out and about threatening for freedumb.
Whelp, it was fun believing it while we could but enough things look to be not trending our way hard enough in Cali for us to keep the House. Regardless, we all thought Congress was dysfunctional before. LOL! Get ready for daily ‘Motion To Vacate The Chair’s ‘Discharge Petition’s and ‘Parliamentary Inquiry’s.
There hasn't been a *single* day during ALL of the 117th Congress (current one) without a vacancy in the House. There were 4 vacancies by Feb. 2021; there were 4-6 vacancies (up to 7) for multiple monthslong periods. A 218-217 House would never actually exist. Total chaos. https://twitter.com/taniel/status/1591893144567959553?s=46&t=MQXwBxqFfbZIU9d8jHS2bA
Bouzy's still holding that it'll be 219-216. https://twitter.com/cbouzy/status/1591838120479264768?s=20&t=arrIHiLAr6H5y-AYJu3gBg
A lot of Trump->DeSantis supporters play the macho man game and they view McConnell as the weakest GOPer at this point.
Please stop trying to rely on California to save the house. We have 52 seats and 12 of them will go R. We did our part.
"it seems many people have an almost instinctual aversion to transgender people and homosexuality to a somewhat lesser extent and this is enough to whip people into a frenzy and override their feelings on more practical..." SOME minority of easily propagandized people. Same crowd, in essence, as the "satanic panic" folks in the 80's. One of the great talents of organized religion is weaponizing bigotry, the us/them rubric wherein "they" are a threat to your family and way of life and all you hold dear. merge that with politics to move votes. But the thing they failed to allow for is that outside their radicalized base...other people simply don't care. They can leverage the passion and intensity of their base, but they can't build a majority on it
It won't. That's not how working the refs works - the tragedy is that seemingly otherwise intelligent people KEEP getting worked 30 years and more into the con.
Per source: collection of prominent conservative movement figures — incl Heritage President Kevin Roberts — will be releasing a letter calling for delay to House and Senate leadership elections. https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1592132077184782337?s=46&t=Ln5JuFoXq9B2IzjlJKPZ-Q Yes… yes… let the chaos flow through you…
I like how you use secessionist with a negative connotation. The founding fathers believed secession was completely legitimate. It was widely understood during the antebellum period that secession was acceptable. In fact, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison even wrote about it in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions in protest to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. In fact, later on during the War of 1812, several northern states contemplated secession as well, but you knew this already, didn't you?
Words change their meaning. The South devalued secession when they got their traitorous fat fingers on it.
