It’s not over until it’s over in a Florida election. Election weirdness has been discovered in heavily Democratic Broward County where there were some 24K fewer ballots cast for the Senatorial candidates than Goober guys, Gillum and DeSantis. Oops.
This could be incompetence instead of Brian Kemp-style fuckery but that remains unclear. What is clear that we’re in for a good old fashioned political brawl ala the 2000 Gore-Bush recount battle. Will there be a second Brooks Brothers riot without Roger Stone to stage it?
Things are getting ugly fast in Florida. Rick Scott, clearly thinking he’s going to fall behind in the vote count and lose his campaign for Senate, is both filing lawsuits to stop the vote counting in South Florida and using his police powers as governor to do so. As in Georgia, having the candidate oversee the election has real shortcomings.
“Late Tuesday night our win was projected about 57,000 votes. By Wednesday morning that lead dropped to 38,000 votes. By Wednesday evening, it was around 30,000 votes. This morning, it was around 21,000. Now, it is 15,000,.”
And then this.
“Every Floridan should be concerned that their could be rampant fraud happening in Broward and Palm Beach Counties.”
It looks like I’m going to lose … ergo there must be ‘rampant fraud’ … ergo I’m ordering the state police to investigate the election administrators.
I should apologize for the long quote but the man nailed it. It’s too early for me to use a hammer even if I had a Hankering Aaron to do so.
Josh’s post is titled Getting Ugly Fast. Anything involving Rick Scott is de facto ugly:
Ain’t nothing like a Michael F image in the morning. It’s almost as good as a cuppa Tom Petty style Joe. Why TP? Gainesville, y’all, Gainesville. Dig the Florida Gator guitar wielded by Heartbreaker Mike Campbell in this clip from their 40th anniversary show in Gainesville:
Back to Florida election weirdness. I’m feeling as low energy as former Governor Jeb Bush, so I’ll post two tweets I fired off last night:
Bill Nelson took a lot of abuse for being a boring old white guy during this cycle. There’s some truth to that BUT he had the sense not to concede on election night. It’s Florida, y’all. Weird shit happens there.
@AndrewGillum ran a good race but he made a mistake by conceding. Time to retract it and get in there and fight like Bill Nelson, Stacey Abrams and Kristen Sinema. Time to count all the ballots.
I can’t let go of my beloved tick tock image of Harold Lloyd in Safety Last. I decided to give it an encore after a long night of watching/following the election returns. It still aptly describe the state of a nation with a Republican senate and lunatic president*.
Overall, it was a good night for Democrats: the House was the Big Kahuna. But it has so many moving parts that it’s harder for the average person to follow. Still, Democrats won the majority and there were upsets galore in Virginia, New York, Iowa, California, Texas and a real shocker with Kendra Horn’s win in Oklahoma. There will be more than 100 women in the next Congress. That’s genuine progress.
Like Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, and Ella Fitzgerald, I prefer to accentuate the positive:
Anyone with a lick of sense knew how difficult the Senate would be since 2/3 of the seats up were held by Democrats. It was worse than expected since three of the No on Kavanaugh red state senators Donnelly, Heitkamp, and McCaskill were defeated. Montana Senator John Tester’s race was just called in his favor, which means that Washington will be spared another real estate developer in office.
I think Democratic expectations were too high last night. It’s going to take more than one election to turn things around. The GOP’s post-2006 comeback took five election cycles. The House fell first for the GOP in 2010 because it’s more democratic. The Senate was never intended to be a democratic institution. Its members were elected by state leges until 100 years ago, after all.
I’m going to use the ultra-punditty “takeaway” format for the rest of the post. It’s otherwise known in these parts as Odds & Sods or First Draft Potpourri. I’ve been stirring the potpourri here for nine years, so why stop now?
Shooting Stars: The three most exciting candidates of the cycle were Beto O’Rourke, Andrew Gillum, and Stacey Abrams. They all got the fuzzy end of the electoral lollipop. Ms. Abrams, quite rightly, has refused to concede.
Since I was skeptical of Betomania, I’m more impressed by the results than the idolators. It has been 28 years since a Democratic candidate received 48% of the vote in a statewide race in ruby red Texas. That candidate was, of course, Ann Richards and if there’s an afterlife I know she’s “so fucking proud” of Beto. Democrats made advances in the state lege, knocked off two House GOP committee chairman, and now believe they can win statewide. I think every race should be run the way Beto ran his: with courage, inspiration, and passion.
We re-learned two important lessons last night with Andrew Gillum’s narrow defeat:
Florida is still where political hearts go to be broken.
The Bradley effect is still in effect.
The Bradley in question is former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley. He appeared to have a substantial lead over of GOPer George Deukmejian in the 1982 race to succeed Jerry Brown as California Governor. Bradley lost. The Bradley effect was born. To be fair, Bradley was more of a black Bill Nelson but, as Bob Marley would surely say at this point, who the cap fit, let them wear it.
I don’t think we’ve heard the last of Beto O’Rourke or Andrew Gillum. As to the other shooting star, Stacey Abrams has, quite rightly, refused to concede to Thievin’ Brian Kemp for reasons we’ll go into in our next segment.
The Power Of Red State Election Fuckery: Brian Kemp was up to his old vote suppression tricks on election day in Georgia. There were missing power cords, power outages, and other mishaps yesterday. They all seemed to occur in heavily Democratic areas. Incompetence or election fuckery? I think it was both.
Stacey Abrams refuses to concede until all the votes are counted in the hopes of winning enough to force a run-off. She has good reason to keep at it: there are 400K disputed votes.
We all seem to have underestimated the staying power of voter fuckery. Barack Obama and Eric Holder are right on this issue. Their effort to dial back voter suppression is not mere wonkery but crucial to the future of our democracy. The good news is that Dems flipped some state leges and won a raft of Governorships. That will help kickstart the repair work. It’s time to unfuck the electoral system.
Good News: Some really odious people were defeated yesterday. This calls for bullet points, not bullets, since we’re non-violent gun grabber types around here:
Dana Rohrabacher got a Harley Rouda awakening.
Dave Brat is still the worst.
Kris Kobach
Dean Heller
Corey Stewart
Bruce Rauner
Claudia Tenney
Scott Walker
I saved the best for last. My friend and colleague Scout Prime posted a tweet thread about the defeat of the man Doc calls Governor Deadeyes:
THREAD
What's happened to Scott Walker is an epic example of Poetic Justice…delayed but now served.
Upon taking office, Walker quickly moved against collective bargaining rights of public sector unions, specifically to take down the political power of the teacher's union…
Click on the date at the bottom of the tweet image to read the whole thread. Well done, amiga.
While we’re posting tweets, here are the publisher lady’s thoughts on the killjoys who want to spoil our festive mood:
I'm already seeing "don't celebrate, things still suck" takes and no. Everybody who fought for today gets today. Of course things still suck. Twas ever thus. But we get today.
People seem to underestimate the magnitude of flipping the House. There are some aggressive incoming chairs with itchy subpoena fingers: Jerry Nadler, Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, and Elijah Cummings to name a few. In between bragging about his “victory,” the Insult Comedian understands the threat, which led him to issue one of his own:
If the Democrats think they are going to waste Taxpayer Money investigating us at the House level, then we will likewise be forced to consider investigating them for all of the leaks of Classified Information, and much else, at the Senate level. Two can play that game!
A split decision is much better than losing everything. Two years are an eternity in politics. Team Mueller has been in time-out for the last month. I expect them to make some noise in the near future that will harsh the Insult Comedian’s buzz.
One more thing. The funniest result yesterday was out of Nevada: Dennis Hof won a state assembly seat. It’s noteworthy because of his occupation and another salient fact. Here’s my headline:
DEAD PIMP WINS
How can I possibly top that?
The last word goes to Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton:
The reason I’ve always been optimistic about the midterms is that Americans like divided government. I prefer Democratic control of all the political branches but most Americans like checks and balances, especially with an unbalanced president*. The electorate appears poised to flip the House and I still think the Senate is in play. I’m confident of the former but tentative about the latter, which is strictly based on my gut instincts and what Poppy Bush called “The Big Mo,” which seems to be hanging out with Democrats right now.
I put absolutely no stock in generic Congressional polls. Reliance upon them strikes me as a fool’s game given the past decade of frenetic gerrymandering and red state voter fuckery. I remain a devotee of Tip O’Neill’s adage “all politics is local” as well as that of the late Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders owner Al Davis “just win baby.” I know Al has been dead for 9 years but my love-hate relationship with the old villain has ripened into affectionate remembrance.
I am also skeptical about reliance on early vote totals. I remain uncertain as to what impact they have on election day turnout. I prefer voting on election day: the same poll workers have staffed my polling place since at least 2008. Many of them are neighbors with whom I’ve had front porch/stoop conversations.
The early vote obsession is the contemporary equivalent of exit poll mania. I remember 2004 when the exit polls leaked and I thought John Kerry had won. It was much worse when we found out that he’d lost. The only good thing about that result is that we were spared having John Edwards as Veep. I am still convinced that Kerry’s own first choice, Dick Gephardt, might have made the difference in Midwestern swing states but that’s 14-year-old graveyard whistling.
Graveyard Whistling is the name of the most recent Old 97’s album. They’re originally from Dallas, Texas, which provides an awkward transition into a final look at Betomania.
I remain a Beto skeptic. I think he’s an excellent candidate who has run a good race but the idolatry on the part of some people is OTT. I’ve been a good boy and haven’t yelled at anyone who mentions Beto yard signs as proof that he’s going to win. Repeat after me: YARD SIGNS DON’T VOTE. That bit of virtual yelling felt good.
A side benefit of Betomania is that Texas Dems have a chance to flip some House seats including that of 11-term incumbent Pete Sessions in the Mixmaster metro area. That’s suburban Dallas to the uninitiated. Suburbia is fertile soil for Democrats in this cycle. Trump’s manners or lack thereof *do* matter to educated suburban voters, especially women. The gender gap will be something to behold tomorrow.
Until proven otherwise, Texas remains a white whale for Democrats. My skepticism is rooted in Team Beto’s reliance on young voters and Hispanic voters; groups that do not usually turn out in great numbers. Additionally, Hispanic voters are more conservative than many Democrats think they are. A substantial percentage of Hispanic men are inclined to raise the drawbridge to future immigrants. Sad but true.
I hope to be proven wrong about Texas. I think that it will eventually become a purple state and this election cycle has helped that along. Other than the 1964 LBJ landslide, my native California went Republican in every presidential election between 1952 and 1988. Now it’s a socialist hellhole according to Fox News. I wonder if the Foxers have ever called Jerry Brown a Blue Meanie?
I’ve also been avidly following the race in the Virginia 7th. It pits the aptly named teabagger Dave Brat against former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger. Dr. A and I have family and friends in that district and they’re hoping to have a Democratic Congresscritter.
Retired Republican Senator John Warner thinks Spanberger’s the best and Brat’s the wurst. In addition to endorsing other Democrats, including the man who should be Veep, Tim Kaine, the former Armed Services committee chair and Navy Secretary has also denounced the Insult Comedian:
“It’s a very serious time for the country. I did not support Trump,” he said, and “I’m deeply troubled by the central issues. So much of my life has been devoted to the intelligence work and national security — and I’m just not comfortable with the way he’s handling these national security issues,” said Warner.
“He has no inner compass at all,” Warner said of Trump. “He’s put a tremendous divide in this country.”
I understand from a friend who used to work for Warner that he swears like a Marine when he discusses Trumpy behind closed doors.
John Warner is a patriot who believes in putting country before party. Unfortunately, there are few conservatives like him nowadays. Let’s hope that those who are vote Democratic to put a brake on an out of control president*.
I am excited about election day but will be glad when it’s over. I think the Democrats will gain anywhere from 25 to 50 seats in the House. The upside involves the hope that most of the close races will go our way. It’s what tends to happen when Big Mo has your back.
As to the Senate, I think we’ll do better than expected but fall short of a majority unless we run the table on the close races. John Ralston has convinced me that Dean Heller is going down in Nevada. Absent the return of the Bradley effect in Florida, I think Andrew Gillum will pull Senator Bill Nelson to victory. Btw, I think Gillum had the quote of the cycle, “I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist. I’m simply saying that the racists believe he’s a racist. ” Yeah you right, Mister Mayor.
I am also cautiously optimistic about Joe Donnelly in Hoosierland and Claire McCaskill in the Show Me State. I may be one of the few pundits who thinks Heidi Heitkamp could pull off another upset as she did in 2012:
The crazy Peach State Governor’s race seems headed to a run-off thereby keeping Georgia on my mind. Democrats are clearly gaining statehouses this cycle. I know Athenae will be pleased not to have Bruce Rauner to kick around anymore. Let’s all hope that First Draft alums Scout, Jude, and Doc will have a new Governor. It’s time to watch Scotty lose.
I understand why rank and file Democrats are nervous about tomorrow’s election. They’re still traumatized by 2016. Here’s the deal: I’m old enough to have lived through the White House wilderness years when we lost 5 of 6 presidential elections. It gave me thick political skin and a suspicion of political idolatry. I fell hard as a 14-year-old for George McGovern. That did not turn out well. The country preferred Nixon until it didn’t. A reminder from John Dean that the Kaiser of Chaos is worse than Tricky Dick:
Trump’s is making the long nightmare of Nixon’s Watergate seem like a brief idyllic daydream. History will treat Nixon’s moral failures as relatively less troubling than Trump’s sustained and growing decadence, deviousness and self-delusive behavior. Nixon=corrupt; Trump=evil.
While I’ve liked many candidates since 1972, I don’t fall in love with them. I prefer to keep a wary distance. I do, however, love my country, which is why I hope for a big turnout tomorrow and in all future elections.
It’s a cliché at this point, but this *is* the most important midterm election of our lifetime. Its chance to vote for hope, not fear; the future, not the past; diversity, not bigotry. It’s time to give Fortunate Son Donald Trump and his enablers their comeuppance. Repeat after me: To Hell With The Trump Base.
Let’s end this omnibus homestretch post on an inspirational note with a Bruce Springsteen song that a certain valiant losing candidate used as his theme song in 2004.
The last word is a quote from one of my favorite movies:
Harry Truman has long been the patron saint of underdogs. As you can see, Senator Heidi Heitkamp had a Trumaneque election night moment in 2012. The North Dakota GOP has been working overtime to prevent another Heitkamp upset with an effort to suppress the Native American vote. The Senator is still fighting the good fight as the title of a profile of her by Irin Carmon illustrates: Heidi Heitkamp Doesn’t Care That You Think She’s Going To Lose. Here’s hoping that political lightning strikes again.
The tragic events of the last week have stalled GOP momentum in the campaign. Even the ordinarily obtuse and insensitive president* has noticed. Of course, he’s been whining about it instead of placing it in proper perspective and accepting his share of the blame because of his abhorrent behavior. The Insult Comedian is not big on perspective or accepting responsibility. He thinks the world revolves around him, not the sun. Believing your own rhetoric is hazardous to your political health, especially when it’s a tissue of lies.
As to the post title, Democrats are running scared and Republicans are running scary. Trump is incapable of running a positive campaign and not talking about himself. He is also scared to death that Team Mueller will come after him after election day. Count on it, asshole.
I remain optimistic about our chances in the House. The Senate map remains tough but if enough suburban voters are repelled by Trump’s hateful and hate-filled rhetoric there could be a surprise. The GOP deserves a comeuppance for foisting this third-rate strong man on us. Let’s hope they get what Bush called “a thumping” in 2006 and Obama called “a shellacking” in 2010.
Restating his vow to deploy thousands more troops to the southwest border, Trump fumed over border-crossers and said he had instructed U.S. military personnel to “consider it a rifle” if incoming migrants hurl stones at them: “Anybody throwing stones, rocks … we will consider that a firearm because there’s not much difference when you get hit in the face with a rock.”
I have a lot of respect for our armed forces. I’ve never met a single officer who would order their soldiers to fire on unarmed civilians for throwing rocks. It’s time for a musical antidote to the bigoted GOP campaign:
Trump knows nothing about the military. Not only did he not serve, NO MEMBER of the Trump family has ever worn a uniform; not even in World War II. Fred Trump was too busy screwing the poor to take up arms in defense of our country. All the military age men in my immigrant family served in World War II and my Uncle Bill was killed in action in Italy. I take this personally.
…but congressional Republicans battling for political survival in swing districts with large clusters of college-educated voters and women have grown increasingly worried that such groups are having trouble stomaching what Trump is dishing up.
“The kind of voters Trump is talking to right now, there aren’t enough of them in these areas to get us over the finish line,” said one GOP campaign official.
“We understand this is an issue that motivates his base, but the economic issues are what we really need to win these swing voters because they are who’s going to decide who controls the House,” the official told POLITICO, adding that Trump “is solidifying swing voters who were already leaning Democratic and are now definitely going vote for Democratic candidates.”
Make it so, voters. Make it so. The last word goes to the late, great Roy Orbison.
Oops, I forgot something:
4 DAYS UNTIL THE MIDTERMS. TICK TOCK, MOTHERFUCKERS.
The mind reels over how much has been going on in the news. Election run-ups are usually action packed but 2018 has been frenetic.
The word of the day is nativism. I know, that’s always the word of the day at the Trump White House, but they’ve gotten loud even for them. They’re not only letting their xenophobic freak flag fly, they’re waving it wildly.
I had Johnny Clegg’s song Cruel Crazy Beautiful World in my head all day yesterday. It lends itself to the rush of events:
You have to wash with the crocodile in the river
You have to swim with the sharks in the sea
You have to live with the crooked politician
Clegg came to worldwide attention as a political/cultural dissident in apartheid era South Africa. His crime was to be a white man who made music with black musicians. It was a Cruel Crazy Beautiful World then and it still is. If anything, the Current Occupant has made it crueller and crazier. The beauty is supplied by the resistance.
We begin with the Cruel. Trump famously floated the notion of banning birthright citizenship by executive order in an interview with Axios, which is best described as Politico Lite. That was not shocking, what was shocking was the gullible response by many people: they bought it and freaked out. I assumed it was clear to most people that this was Trump throwing shit against the wall to see what would stick. He’s been trying to change the subject to Trumper friendly ground ever since the MAGA Bomber story broke.
While there are apparently a handful of wingnut lawyers who believe that birthright citizenship can be abolished by executive order, they’re full of shit. The right is enshrined in the 14th amendment and was affirmed by the Supreme Court in the Wong Kim Ark case. It’s a 120 year old precedent that the current Court is unlikely to overrule but that’s what must be done, either in court or via the amendment process. Even the conservative Weekly Standard agrees.
One more thing. Trump claimed that the US is the only country with birthright citizenship. Wrong again, you lying asshole. There are at least 30; many of which are in Latin America. Beware of the brown peril: they’re rushing our borders as I write this. #sarcasm
Trump may think he’s a dictator but he’s not one as long as there’s a free press and an independent judiciary. The phantom executive order is a moral abomination. It’s also unclear if this intervention is helpful in electoral terms. Many of the toss-up House seats are in suburban districts where voters find this sort of nativist raw meat politicking indigestible. One Pennsylvania GOPer even called it “political malpractice.”
There are signs that the ties that bind establishment Republicans to Trumpberius are beginning to fray. The administration was unable to find any congressional leaders to go to Pittsburgh with him. I think they were afraid that he’d go into Insult Comedian mode and get all squirrely on Squirrel Hill.
Let’s move on to the Crazy. For days there were twitter rumors that some anti-Mueller shit was going to hit the fan and splatter all over the Special Counsel. The ringleaders were a right-wing lobbyist/conspiracy theorist and a pipsqueak twitter personality/blogger named Jacob Wohl. They figured they’d capitalize on the #MeToo moment and claim that the straight-laced Bobby Three Sticks was a rapey motherfucker. Everyone would believe their story, right? Wrong again, you lying assholes. Team Mueller has referred this matter to the FBI for investigation. The wingnuts are crawfishing like, well, Crazy. Natasha Bertrand broke the story, so get thee to the Atlantic.com.
White Nationalist Congressman Steve King has always been cruel and crazy. Who among us will ever forget the “calves like cantaloupes” remark? Yesterday, there was some Beautiful news involving the Hawkeye Horror: he’s in political trouble.
House GOP campaign honcho Steve Stivers denounced the King of Bigots:
Congressman Steve King’s recent comments, actions, and retweets are completely inappropriate. We must stand up against white supremacy and hate in all forms, and I strongly condemn this behavior.
One final Beautiful note. King is in a statistical tie with his Democratic challenger JD Sholten. He won re-election by 23% in the Trumptastic year of 2016. Even if he prevails, the mere fact that he’s in trouble indicates that the House GOP majority is in deep shit and sinking fast.
The last word goes to Johnny Clegg with a double dose of Cruel Crazy Beautiful World:
It’s a cruel crazy beautiful world
Every time you wake up I hope it’s under a blue sky
It’s a cruel crazy beautiful world
One day when you wake up I will have to say goodbye
Goodbye — it’s your world so live in it!
6 days until the midterms. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
As of this writing, here’s who the MAGA Bomber is telling to pipe down by mailing them a pipe bomb:
George Soros
The Clintons
The Obamas
Eric Holder
John Brennan
Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Maxine Waters
Joe Biden
Robert DeNiro
Robert Fucking DeNiro? It’s a good thing that he’s not in his prime or he just might go Raging Bull or even Taxi Driver on someone’s ass. I guess that makes him the Paul Newman of this dangerously crazy incident: the salad dressing mogul was on Nixon’s enemies list. Bobby D is in good company.
Trump made a statement yesterday at the White House. Here’s how some wise ass described it on the tweeter tube:
Trump’s speech about the bombs looked like a hostage video only without the beheading finale.
He was back in full tilt Insult Comedian mode at a rally in Wisconsin last night and tweeted this out this morning:
A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News. It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!
He seems to think his tiny hands are clean. They are not. I know incitement speech when I hear it. The MAGA Bomber has been paying attention to Trump’s stump rantings: the members of the enemies list have all been attacked by the president*. In a word, disgusting.
The pipe bomb discovered Wednesday and addressed to former CIA director John Brennan via CNN features a parody of the ISIS flag with the words “get ‘er done,” a common right-wing meme, according to a Wednesday NBC report.
On the fake flag, the Arabic words are replaced by suggestive female silhouettes. The meme reportedly originated on a far-right parody site called World News Bureau.
So much for false flaggery. Pipe bomb trutherism is a pipe dream but Rush Limbaugh is still pushing it as were these MAGA Maggots yesterday in Florida:
We’ve had periods of political violence before in our history but the incitement never came from the White House. That’s what makes this moment in time so fraught with peril. Here’s how Charlie Pierce put it yesterday:
In the 1970s, there were no national politicians encouraging the Weathermen to involve themselves in the political process. Bernadine Dohrn didn’t get to visit the White House. Of course, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there were southern state politicians a’plenty who knew the people who were setting off the bombs, but the national government was pretty much on the other side; even though it was often dilatory in that regard, it got there eventually. (In 2002 and 2003, the last two culprits in the Birmingham church bombing were finally convicted by Doug Jones, now a senator from Alabama.)
The current president* of the United States trafficks in imaginary threats and encourages, by word and deed, feelings of dread and isolation and deep, familiar paranoia, the entire Hofstadter buffet. And there is an entire media infrastructure dedicated to reinforcing those feelings, 24-7, on all platforms of the modern communications industry. The Weathermen didn’t have their own TV network.
There’s only one palliative for the pernicious and mendacious fearmongering by the Party of Trump; VOTE on November 6th, and in every election thereafter. Democratic control of at least one House of Congress means oversight and investigations. A Republican victory means an emboldened president*, a cowed Congress, an expanded enemies list, and more right-wing domestic terrorism.
It’s getting ugly out there. We already knew that the only way the Insult Comedian knows how to run for office is by scaring his supporters shitless. We’re used to the GOP running a disgusting base election: they’ve been doing it since at least 1988, but it’s reached new heights (depths?) 30 years later.
Donald Trump is a real estate developer. The phrase “soft sell” is not in his limited lexicon. Watching him on the stump is like lumping together the worst used car salescreeps you’ve ever dealt with and multiplying it by a factor of 10.
The Insult Comedian goes past the hard sell to the racist sell. He’s finally come out of the closet of horrors as a an unabashed nationalist. That’s white nationalist to people like us, even though the salesman has the orange glow of the tanning bed or spray tan.
We’re hearing a lot about the “illegal immigrant” caravan; the timing of which is suspicious to me but unlike the president* and his ilk, I prefer not to level unsubstantiated charges. On second thought, if the caravan is being financed by an American fat cat, it’s more likely to be a Robert Mercer-type than a George Soros-type even if the latter is so omnipotent that some fucker tried to bomb his house.
Whipping up anti-Hispanic xenophobia is not enough, now they’re claiming that there are “unknown Middle Easterners” marching north. Another day, another lie.
But Mr. Trump’s dystopian imagery has clearly left an impression with some. Carol Shields, 75, a Republican in northern Minnesota, said she was afraid that migrant gangs could take over people’s summer lake homes in the state.
“What’s to stop them?” said Ms. Shields, a retired accountant. “We have a lot of people who live on lakes in the summer and winter someplace else. When they come back in the spring, their house would be occupied.”
I guess the Latins will become squatters at some lake houses and the “unknown Middle Easterners” will bomb the rest. They’re clearly taking a bead on Minnesota: they’re into middleness, will their next stop after the Midwest be Middle Earth? The “unknown Middle Easterners” may even be armed with bone saws for all we know.
Nobody should be surprised that Donald Trump’s midterm strategy involves throwing lies against the wall and seeing how many stick. It reminds me of the spaghetti scene in The Odd Couple:
“Now it’s garbage” aptly describes Donald Trump’s entire political career and this campaign in particular. The next president is going to have a helluva mess to clean up. I’m sure Felix will be glad to help.
There’s a whiff of panic in the air among Democrats. That’s what the MSM and the GOP expect from us. It’s time for everyone to redouble their efforts to retake the House and defend vulnerable Democratic Senate seats in Florida, Indiana, Montana, and Missouri. We’re going to need fighters like Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester next year whether we’re in the majority or not.
I remain convinced that the key issues in 2018 are health care and the need to reign in a rogue regime. The Republicans are whipping their shrinking base into a frenzy. Let them do the panicking for a change. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: To Hell With The Trump Base.
In 13 days we will learn how many bigoted assholes there are in the country. Here’s hoping that enough voters will ignore the fear mongering of 45 and heed the words of the 32nd president and founder of the modern Democratic party, Franklin Delano Roosevelt:
Buzz words are nothing new in American politics. They’re as old as the Republic itself. The Jeffersonians called John Adams a royalist tool of the English crown.The Federalists, in turn, called Jefferson a Jacobin tool of the French revolutionary rabble. And on and on and on.
The malevolent spirit of the Insult Comedian looms large over the 2018 campaign. Until recently, GOPers claimed that they’d run a campaign on taxes and the economy, which is straight out of the Reaganite playbook. That barely made a dent in the wall of noise and scandal surrounding the leader of their party. Even the author of the House tax cut, Pete Roskam, who is in a tough race, isn’t talking about it. Why? The majority of the country knows it benefits the 1% and nobody else. Besides, the Obama recovery seems poised to become the Trump recession. Trade wars are not easy to win.
When you’re losing, what do you do? Smear your opponents and resort to scare tactics no matter how preposterous. The Insult Comedian has laid the groundwork for the dumber elements of the Republican base to believe almost anything. That’s where buzz words come in handy. Besides, it’s 2 weeks until Halloween. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
Arizona Republican Martha McSally accused her Democratic opponent Kyrsten Sinema of once advocating for “treason” on Monday, calling out her rival’s old comments during the pair’s sole debate to fill the state’s open Senate seat.
“You said it was okay for Americans to join the Taliban to fight against us,” McSally said, raising her voice and pointing emphatically at Sinema, who stood about 10 feet away, as the debate neared its conclusion, referencing a 2003 radio interview. “I will ask right now whether you’re going to apologize to the veterans and me for saying it is okay — it is treason!”
Is it 2002 again? It sure sounds like it to me. A reminder that there’s a dark side to the current warm and cuddly image being painted (pun intended, it always is) of George W. Bush. His favorite buzz words were “treason” and “soft on terror.” He learned scare tactics at his father’s knee during the 1988 mudbath. It’s not just Trump, y’all. It’s not just Trump.
McSally has resorted to scare tactics because she’s trailing in the polls. In Texas, Ted Cruz has been pulling ahead of Beto O’Rourke but buzz words are his thing. The two candidates debated last night and the non-asshole from El Paso barely got a word in edgewise as Slate’s Jim Newell pointed out this morning:
But I shouldn’t mock: Cruz is leading O’Rourke consistently by five to ten points in the many, many Texas polls that have come out in recent weeks, indicating that his strategy of casting O’Rourke as a far-left extremist in a center-right state is working. He stuck to it on Tuesday night, suffocating O’Rourke with so many allegations to respond to that he barely had the oxygen to tear Cruz apart.
By his closing statement, Cruz had successfully drawn his lines. If O’Rourke had his way, you wouldn’t be able to open your eyes in Texas without seeing an illegal immigrant having a partial-birth abortion. The economy would be in ruins as Democrats, led by Chairman O’Rourke, seized control to turn the nation into a bankrupt welfare factory—for illegal immigrants. Judges, with alarming word-per-minute speeds, would be typing radical left-wing regulations to ration health care and obliterate business. Border walls would come down, allowing the forces of Juarez to conquer El Paso and march to the east. Police? Forget about ’em. Banned.
“Do we choose fear,” Cruz concluded, “or do we choose hope?”
“I believe in hope.”
Tailgunner Ted’s rhetoric is smarmy, cynical, and self-contradictory. BUT he’s an effective debater and Texans have been programmed to believe this nonsense from birth. If he were so inclined, Beto could cite liberal Texans such as Sam Rayburn and Lyndon Johnson but his campaign seems focused on proving that Beto is cool. Look: he skateboards, was in a rock band, and quotes the Clash. Kewl. I don’t think Hispanic voters give a rat’s ass about how cool Beto is, which is why he’s underperforming in that vital demographic.
Here’s the deal: I like Beto. I think he’s an excellent campaigner but his team has focused on bragging about fundraising, yard signs, crowd sizes, and how cool he is. Repeat after me: yard signs don’t vote.
I think Texas will continue to be a Democratic white whale. I hope I’m wrong, but the election seems to be slipping away from Team Beto. The upcoming Trump-Cruz rally may prove to be the last nail in Beto’s very cool coffin. Texas seems poised to choose the Tailgunner over the Skateboarder.
It’s time for national Democrats to focus on other races including that of the uncool but competent Florida Senator Bill Nelson who is fighting off a challenge from Governor Rat Boy. The good news is that Andrew Gillum’s bid to succeed Scott is generating buzz and he and Nelson should be able to help one another. Synergy is what a corporate puke would call the combination of the moderate white guy and the progressive black guy. I call it political magic.
I remain cautiously optimistic about the House. I think that Republican voter fuckery and a decade of egregious Gerrymandering will keep our gains to between 25 and 45 seats. But righteous indignation among women voters and the many gifted Democratic women running for office could change that. But voters will have to wade through a muck of Republican lies and buzz words. Let’s hope thebuzz words don’t sting too badly.
Pritzker seems an unlikely champion of working people. He is a venture capitalist himself, born to enormous wealth. His billions of dollars almost make Rauner, despite his half-dozen-plus homes, look middle class.
I hear a lot of ragging about this all the time: Oh, it’s just two billionaires fighting. Battle of the rich guys! It makes me insane every time because what a lazyass way to look at this.
J.B. Pritzker and Bruce Rauner are not equally terrible because they both have money. Bruce Rauner is not terrible because he’s a billionaire. He is terrible because he’s a Trump-humping jackwagon who, like many Republicans, ran on an anti-government platform and had no interest in governing. He spent two years getting chewed up by the state legislature, which anyone with a half a brain could have told him was going to happen if he tried to institute budget cuts on the backs of teachers and union members because Illinois saw what happened in Wisconsin and wasn’t gonna have any of it.
Pritzker wants to raise his own taxes and he’d rather my kid not die in a school shooting and he doesn’t seem terribly interested in obliterating higher education or women’s health care. These differences MATTER. Where candidates stand on policy MATTERS. We keep reducing politics to what you get on your cheesesteak and where you grocery-shop and that is stupid. Two people can have a similar amount of money, and thus a similar experience of how they move through the world, but that doesn’t mean they have a similar intent for the job of governing and that intent is what’s important.
The experience they both have of being rich is context for their on-the-job behavior, not a qualifier OR disqualifier. Not every rich person wants to use his wealth in ways that are unproductive or immoral. Not every poor person is some kind of noble savage.
I would like for us to have a governor who knew what it was like to be broke, or scared, but more than that I would like a governor who is going to help people who are broke or scared regardless of whether he’s been those things himself. When you’re in a position of authority you have power over all kinds of people you’re nothing like, and you’re supposed to be able to work with them regardless of whether you’ve been them or not.
You should be able to understand the importance of, say, public transportation not because you use it but because you can look at a report that shows how many people use it and why and what for, and glean from that the idea that it is something you should pay attention to. You should be able to contextualize things you don’t personally experience, as an adult, and have an understanding of what you can do to improve others’ lives.
That’s the job. Of being a person in the world, sure, but also of being a leader. You can’t possibly have personal knowledge or experience of every situation, but you can have policy positions for things you care about and those things can be helping people who are nothing like you.
It’s not as easy as just sitting back and saying, “Meh, two billionaires” but let’s put our backs into this, the world is literally on fire.
While I’m avidly following the 2018 campaign, as a voter I’m on the sidelines because I have a Democratic Congressman, the Gret Stet statewide election is next year, and Double Bill Cassidy is not up until 2020. There *is* an important ballot initiative that will abolish non-unanimous jury verdicts but otherwise I’m mostly punditing in 2018.
I used a picture of the Selma Voting Rights Mural as a reminder of how precious the right to vote is. Voting rights were among the most important accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement. People have died for the right to vote. It’s why everyone should vote in every election: never forget the 2000 Florida recount that gave us the Bush-Cheney regime and the Iraq War. The world would be a different place if Al Gore had prevailed. Anyone who says Democrats don’t get mad and hold grudges has never spoken to me.
Minority voting rights remain under attack in red state America. Gerrymandering has had a deleterious impact on representative government. That’s why flipping state houses and leges is just as important as retaking Congress with a census coming up in 2020.
There are two egregious examples of red state election fuckery in 2018. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brian Kemp is the GOP nominee for Governor. He has refused to recuse himself from active involvement in managing the voters rolls and the election process. Some 53K voters have been purged from the polls: almost all of them African-Americans. If this is a coincidence, I’m a Republican.
Kemp’s Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, is trying to be the first African-American woman Governor in American history. She’s slightly behind in the public polls but has a good chance to win, especially if ant-voter purge litigation succeeds. Abrams’ race has been overshadowed fund-raising wise by Betomania. If you’re looking to donate to a candidate with a chance to win, please consider helping Ms. Abrams. A black woman governing Georgia would send a powerful message to the world. It’s time to put the new back in New South.
Waller County, Texas sits between Houston and Austin. It is notorious for voter purges and has been since the local machine was run by Democrats, not Republicans. Waller County officials have been trying to prevent students at Prairie View A&M from voting since 1972. The reason is obvious: PVAMU is a historically black college.
Things have gotten out of control as an aide to Democratic Congressional candidate, Mike Siegel, was arrested after delivering a letter to Waller County authorities about the latest round of election fuckery. It appears that he was arrested for the crime of being a Democrat.
Last night, Rachel Maddow had a great segment on Waller County election fuckery:
If that doesn’t make you want to throw the Republican rascals out, I don’t know what will.
This is why the Supreme Court erred in gutting the Voting Rights Act. Fuck you, John Roberts.
Repeat after me: there are 25 days until the midterms. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
I thought I’d meme a picture of the happiest Democrat of all for this feature. Besides, as a history buff, the 1948 campaign is among the most interesting ever. It featured something we’re unlikely to see again in our lifetime: a good choice. The Republican ticket of Tom Dewey and Earl Warren were stronger on Civil Rights than Truman-Barkley who weren’t half bad on that issue either thanks to Hubert Humphrey. As I said, it was a good choice.
The only truly good choice in my voting lifetime was 1976: Jimmy Carter and Jerry Ford were both good men as well as genuine moderates. Ford was too conservative for my taste but it’s been forgotten that Carter was the most conservative Democratic nominee since Grover Cleveland. At least he didn’t have Cleveland’s giant walrus mustache:
A side note; I was already a young Beatles fan when I first saw a picture of President Cleveland. I had perhaps my first earworm: I Am The Walrus. When encountering Grover’s glowering visage, I remain guilty of saying “Goo goo g’joob” instead of “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House ha, ha, ha,”
That was a manic digression even by my standards but after several weeks of focusing on the Kavanaugh Mess, I need some comic relief. I suspect you do too.
Republicans have spent the last few days exchanging high-fives and spiking the ball over what they’re calling the Brett bounce. I expressed skepticism about this on Monday and a CNN poll conducted during Peak Kav showed Democratic gains in the generic ballot as well as a staggering 30% advantage among women voters. The gender gap has been a reality for years but has exploded in 2018. I cannot imagine why. That was, of course, a lie: it’s because of the man I call the Insult Comedian, Trumpberius, and the Kaiser of Chaos. I felt like flexing my nickname muscles, what can I tell ya?
The Republican House majority continues to show signs of collapsing, with Democrats steadily gaining ground toward erasing the 23-seat margin and ending eight years of GOP control.
A total of 68 seats currently held by Republicans are firmly in play — rated as “Lean Republican” or worse for the GOP — presenting a stark contrast to the Democratic side, where only a half-dozen Democratic seats are in similar jeopardy.
<SNIP>
With a month to go until Election Day, there are now 209 seats either firmly or leaning in the Democratic column — only nine shy of the 218 the party needs to wrest away control of the chamber — according to the latest update of POLITICO’s race ratings.
I hope the Gret Stet MSM will stop writing pieces about how good it would be for Lousiana if Metry’s Steve Scalise became Speaker. All he’s going to be is a contestant for Minority Leader.
Admittedly, things aren’t as hunky dory in the Senate where there seems to be a slight shift towards the GOP recently. The Senate was *always* going to be difficult to flip but, as the cliche goes, 27 days is a lifetime in politics. Tick tock, motherfuckers.
In the most entertaining Senate race of the season, Beto O’Rourke is drawing massive crowds, which has convinced some observers that he’s going to win. Crowds, fundraising, and yard signs are great but I’d feel better if Beto ever led in a public poll. Thus far, Cruz has maintained a steady lead. He *is* running scared: Tailgunner Ted pulled out of a joint appearance on CNN. Repeat after me: Ted Cruz is a pussy. He should grab himself.
Texas remains the Democrats’ white whale as far as I’m concerned. I really hope I’m wrong about this but I’m reluctant to be like Captain Ahab:
The Insult Comedian has been out on the hustings whipping his crowds into a frenzy and telling frenetic lies. He’s decided that his pet Justice* was the victim of a hoax perpetrated by the evil Democrats and our puppet master, George Soros who is the star of the 21st Century’s version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Trump is preternaturally fond of urging his crowds to chant “lock her up.” It seems to be reserved for uppity women who have crossed him: Hillary Clinton, Christine Blasey Ford, and the latest, Dianne Feinstein.
Donald Trump’s Iowa crowd chants “lock her up!” at his mention of Senator Dianne Feinstein.
In the current GOP take on the Kavanaugh Mess, Senator Feinstein is the scheming, lying harpy whose evil machinations nearly sank their saintly Supreme Court nominee. This is, of course, ludicrous to those of us who’ve followed Feinstein since her days in San Francisco politics. She’s a straight arrow who has often gotten into trouble for being too blunt. If Dianne Feinstein is a trickster, I’m a Kim-n-Kanye idolator.
The most important thing I can say today is GET OUT AND VOTE and get your mom-n-them to the polls as well. It’s time to bring some oversight back to Washington. I’m certain that Elijah Cummings, Jerry Nadler, and Adam Schiff have itchy subpoena fingers.
Repeat after me: there are 27 days until the midterms, Tick tock, motherfuckers.
In between obsessing about Rod Rosenstein’s unfiring and the Kavanaugh mess, I’ve continued to monitor the fight for the House of Representatives.
I love campaign ads; at least the first time I see them. The ad of the year ran in Arizona. It features the siblings of wingnut dentist/Congresscritter Paul Gosar. They are NOT supporting their brother’s re-election bid:
Ouch. Dr/Congressman/MAGA Maggot Gosar was not amused.
My siblings who chose to film ads against me are all liberal Democrats who hate President Trump. These disgruntled Hillary suppporters are related by blood to me but like leftists everywhere, they put political ideology before family. Stalin would be proud. #Az04#MAGA2018
I’m not sure what’s Stalinist about affordable health care for rural Arizonans. At least Gosar didn’t call for his siblings to be liquidated. Now that would be Stalinist.
The fact that Gosar is a dentist tickles my fancy. That’s why Steve Martin gets the last word:
Republicans are panicking as internal polls show Don Blankenship, a coal baron who spent time in jail for a mining disaster that killed 29 workers, surging into the lead in the West Virginia Senate GOP primary over Attorney General Patrick Morrissey and Congressman Evan Jenkins.
The results of an internal campaign poll conducted for one rival Senate campaign on Saturday and Sunday were: Blankenship 31 percent, Jenkins 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent.
The results of another internal poll conducted Friday and Saturday were: Blankenship 28 percent, Morrissey 27 percent, Jenkins 14 percent. Two weeks earlier, the same rival campaign found Blankenship at 14 percent, Morrissey at 29 percent, and Jenkins at 26 percent.
Politico reported Saturday night that internal polling showed Blankenship surging, but the specific numbers are being reported for the first time by THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
President Donald Trump, who overwhelmingly carried the state in 2016, weighed in on Twitter Monday morning: “To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State…No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey!”
“If it’s truly a two-point race, that Trump tweet is going to make a difference,” one West Virginia Senate campaign official tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD. What explains the Blankenship surge? “The debate [Monday on Fox News] helped him because Morrissey and Jenkins did what’s kind of playing out on TV–they’re slicing each other up,” says the campaign official. “Don got to be a one-liner folksy guy.” Second, Blankenship has taken up all the news coverage in the race by labeling Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as “cocaine Mitch” and launching racist attacks against McConnell for creating jobs for “China people.”
Of course, we all know how the primary turned out, but let’s not let that get in the way of a little retroactive “Be careful what you wish for” action, shall we?
To: GIdget2004
If Blankenship wins the primary, u can write WV off as a GOP gain.
2 posted on 5/7/2018, 10:06:25 AM by tennmountainman (“Prophet Mountainman” Predicter Of All Things RINO…for a small fee.)
But – he’s Trumpier than Trump!
To: tennmountainman
And how frustrating would that be. West Virginia has been becoming increasingly Republican in recent years. Hate to see Manchin get re-elected by default, because of a flawed GOP candidate.
WE can get snakebit so to speak, can’t we?
Well, when you do political snake-handling, you’re gonna get bit. Just sayin’…
Alabama is a strong Republican state too, yet Democrat Doug Jones won the special election there.Blog Posts
That’s right, readers. The BASE of the GOP has suddenly gotten all antsy about realizing that they’ve stuck the electric prod of hate into the ground, and more crazy worms than they were prepared to handle have squirmed up out of the ooze.
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That’s right. These scum-sucking pigs are suddenly nervous about their candidates abandoning their dog-whistles for foghorns.
To: GIdget2004
This says it all from the article:
“If Blankenship manages to win despite Trump’s opposition, it will be a strong data point for Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie’s theory that many Republican primary voters are simply “voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race.”
carry WV by something like 70-25? If so he should be getting behind someone who can actually win in November…and do it loudly.If we can’t win WV we’re in deep poop.
8 posted on 5/7/2018, 10:13:00 AM by Gay State Conservative (You Say “White Privilege”…I Say “Protestant Work Ethic”)
If Blankenship wins the WV GOP primary, WV will be a “sinking ship” for the Republicans. Are West Virginians that stupid? Oh, wait a minute … Wasn’t this the home of KKK Grand Klegal, Senator Robert Byrd?
9 posted on 5/7/2018, 10:13:11 AM by JME_FAN (uired to)
DEAD ROBERT BYRD’S FAULT!!!
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And, speaking of the KKK….
To: GIdget2004
I support Blankenship. Like Senator-in-Exile Roy Moore, he is a GODLY man who has been unfairly persecuted by the DEEP STATE and the ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISTS. He is a blood and soil white warrior for the TRUMP
Is he, now?
and speaks in the tribal REALTALK. I deem any disapproval coming from THE TRUMP – all by “unnamed sources”, y’know – to be the FAKE NEWS.
25 posted on 5/7/2018, 10:32:30 AM by Max Tactical (MAGA Style!)
Wait for it…
To: Max Tactical
I deem any disapproval coming from THE TRUMP – all by “unnamed sources”, y’know – to be the FAKE NEWS.
So a tweet posted publicly by President Trump himself is an “unnamed source” for the quote in your book?
Hi, people – I got permission to do my post quite a few days early – I’ll take off next Monday as penance.
Let’s drop in on last night’s Freeperville live election thread, shall we?
Vanity – Turnout, Turnout, Turnout….vote for Judge, Roy Moore. [LIVE THREAD]
Posted on 12/12/2017, 4:00:51 AM by JLAGRAYFOX
It’s really quite simple…..An American citizen, woman or man, is innocent until proven guilty by a judge, jury of their peers and a solid conviction of said accused crime.
Allegations & Accusations carry no meaning whatsoever, until they are duly proven to be true & factual in a recognized court of law.
Alabama, voters, cast your votes today for Judge, Roy Moore, a good, honorable, religious man, an American patriot, who loves his country and all the people in it. This, my friends is a “Critical Path Election”!!!
You, your family, your loved ones, your great state of Alabama, your country, the USA, POTUS, Donald J. Trump and your “Future” rests in the hands of your vote today!!! Go, Judge, Roy Moore, Go, POTUS, Donald J. Trump, Go, Steve Bannon…on to victory over those politicians, Democrat, “Doug Jones”, etc., whose policies would hurt & destroy this great American Republic!!
Let’s hope. We need a win. We have been losing seats right and left since the election. Many in Oklahoma and other red areas. That needs to stop and hopefully today will be the win we need to stop the bleeding.
32 posted on 12/12/2017, 7:59:30 AM by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
“Suffer the little (female) children to come unto me”?
To: JLAGRAYFOX
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!
That’s easy for you to say…
This election has me more on edge than I was in November. Lots of sleepless nights and higher Blood pressure.
Good thing they can’t deny you insurance now for your pre-existing conditions, huh?
Unfortunately if Moore loses there will be a push to moderate and abandon the MAGA agenda even more, especially with Amnesty. So this really could be another make or break election for the country.
109 posted on 12/12/2017, 4:05:29 PM by qam1 (There’s been a huge party. All plates and the bottles are empty, all that’s left is the bill to pay)
MBA, Deacon in his Methodist church, Korean-English translator for dispute resolution, the FBI, and Homeland Security. One of the mainstays behind development of the incredibly successful “H Mart” here in Carrollton (our fair city) Tx.
Endorsed by the Carrollton Fire Fighters Association, the Carrollton Police Officers Association, Ron Branson (former Mayor of Carrollton), Becky Miller (former Mayor of Carrollton), and many others, he ran for a seat on the Carrollton City Council last May.
Guess what happened?
He surged in early voting, and the Tea Party incumbent Anthony Wilder’s re-election was in danger.
Then, this was mailed out to Carrollton voters.
.
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So – gay Korean mosques and temples for everyone!
Woo Hoo!
It gets better, though – please click on the “continue reading” to continue reading.
I started following the Israeli newspaper Haaretz’s Twitter feed during their last general election. As you may recall, the polls were wrong about that one too. An interesting link popped up on their feed:
I posted the tweet because Haaretz recently went behind a paywall with no free stories and Chrome’s incognito feature did not work. Oy, just oy.
I’m an agnostic who was raised Greek-Orthodox but most of my mother’s bridge playing and real estate cronies were Jewish, so I learned about sitting shiva as a child. I remember going with her to Mrs. Rosenberg’s house when her husband died. Mrs. Rosenberg was the Holocaust survivor I’ve written about before. I didn’t even complain about going because Mrs. R and I had a mutual admiration society. She remains one of my heroes. She was also as funny as hell. I’m convinced that I learned the essence of black comedy from her. It’s the Shoah survivor’s ethos: nothing will ever be as bad as what they went through, in her case at Treblinka.
Shiva is the week long period of mourning following a loved one’s death. During this time, family members traditionally gather in one home to receive visitors. The word “shiva” means seven, signifying the seven day mourning period in which mourners are supposed to sit low to the ground.
When I saw the headline, I realized that I had metaphorically sat shiva all day Wednesday. For many of us, Hillary Clinton’s loss felt like a death in the family. If it doesn’t to you, please have some respect for those of us who are mourning. We’re sitting political shiva.
I spent the day trading messages with friends on social media and via text. One close friend works at an oil company and had to deal with triumphant Trumpers. He described the people of color at his firm as looking like they expected deportation or worse at any moment. I cannot blame them. Some of Dr. A’s med students came to her in tears yesterday. That gives me hope for the future of the medical profession.
I checked in with two dear friends in the afternoon. One of whom’s four-year old daughter was upset because the mean man beat the nice lady. It’s a pity that so many so-called grown ups couldn’t see what a child can and elected a goniff. That’s Yiddish for a thief, dishonest person, or scoundrel. That fits the Insult Comedian to a T.
After undergoing First Draft therapy by writing The Fearful Countryand sitting virtual political shiva, Dr. A and I attended a Krewe meeting. Most of my Krewe mates looked as if they had slept precious little. I certainly did. Some of us had planned to suggest alternative election related themes but the Krewe wanted to develop a previously discussed theme. And that’s okay. The desire to move on from a trauma is understandable. The non-Krewe business conversation was about the election and how upset everyone was. The d word came up in the conversation: Devastated. The evening was a combination of sitting shiva and an Irish wake.
I sat next to my Spank protege who prefers to call me her Spank daddy. She converted to Judaism when she married. We talked about our mutual horror at how many forms of bigotry had been normalized by the Insult Comedian and his deplorable followers. The previously unspoken has been spoken. Loudly. Anti-Semitism has never left us but it’s back in its most virulent form since the 1940’s. An example of that is this:
The 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Nazi-Related Trump Graffiti Found in South Philly. Philadelphia Magazine https://t.co/1Nzxwb4XFj
That’s right, Kristallnacht took place on November 9-10 in 1938. America just elected a candidate who ran an anti-Semitic campaign. David Duke is celebrating with an exuberant, Heil, Trump. Yet another reason we’re sitting political shiva.
The mood on social media yesterday ranged from solemn to vengeful. The Trumpers were attacking perfect strangers for their supposed imperfections. One friend received hate messages from people who objected to a white chick being married to a black guy. This was deeply upsetting to me as they’re one of the sweetest couples I know. We’re also sitting shiva for the death of civility.
I had to deal with some vestigial Dudebros who wanted to say I told you so. I invited them to a “block party” but have no idea why they decided to crawl out of the woodwork. Actually, I do: everything has been normalized by the electoral college victory of the Insult Comedian. Btw, he’s attacked the electoral college in the past, now he loves it. Typical.
I think that the time for what ifs is down the road. I am skeptical that Sanders would have done better but I’m not certain about that. I do know that the stench of anti-Semitism was all over this election and a septuagenarian Jewish socialist would have felt it as well as incessant red baiting. Shorter Adrastos, I don’t know for sure and neither does anybody else. I am, however, not attacking individuals I disagree with on the internet. It’s called keyboard courage. Instead, I’m sitting political shiva.
My theory of what happened is a simple one. After a bruising primary campaign, Hillary Clinton had a great convention, won the debates, took a solid, steady lead and then came the first Comey letter. It depressed Democratic turnout and she lost the electoral vote but won the popular vote. The election was decided by James Comey, Rudy Giuliani, and the MSM’s sporadic attention to Trump’s scandals with an assist from Wikileaks, Russian intelligence, and the alt-right. Trump’s electoral vote victory has mainstreamed the latter. That’s another reason we’re sitting political shiva.
The Trumpers are already acting vengeful towards their enemies. The cartoon villain’s cartoon lackey, Omarosa, is openly discussing an enemies list. That’s right, a person who’s best known as a hiss-provoking reality show villain will have influence in the next administration. I wonder who will be Propaganda Minister: Bannon or Conway?
The awfulness of this election will endure for the next four years. Tolerance, mutual respect, and common decency were dealt a terrible, but not fatal, blow in 2016. Many of us are still reeling and that’s why we’re sitting political shiva. We need to grieve before we can move on.
The aftermath of this horrendous year and dreadful election result reminds me of what some New Orleanians did on Inauguration Day in 2005. We held a Jazz Funeral for Democracy to mourn Bush’s second term complete with brass bands and a horse-drawn bier. We did not know that disaster would come our way in a mere seven months. Here are two of Dr. A’s pictures of that march through downtown New Orleans:
I hadn’t seen that Flickr photo albumfor years. The second picture made me smile. The gent in the top hat and tails is-not Fred Astaire-my old friend Bob Smith. He’s more likely to be seen in a kilt now but I know he’s grieving over what happened this week. We all mourn the passing of someone/something special in our own way: from jazz funerals to demonstrations to wakes to sitting shiva. Me, I’m sitting political shiva this week.
Back to the Jazz Funeral for Democracy. 2016 is one of the worst years in our nation’s history but so was 2005. Remember, we elected Barack Obama four years after Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry. We as a people should not have to go through this but we do. And that is why this gentile is sitting political shiva.
The polls were wrong and so was I. I don’t regret urging people not to freak out, that’s no way to live. I regret not seeing the oncoming freight train of fear and hate for what it was: an unstoppable backlash to all the changes our society has undergone. In spite of that, Hillary Clinton will win the popular vote. Unfortunately, that’s not how we elect our Presidents. This is the second time in five elections that the winner was also a loser and the loser a winner. There’s only a shot glass of consolation in that thought, and it’s still too bitter to swallow.
I was bumped out of the Crack Van last night and decided not to re-enter. The level of tension was high and nobody was interested in my reassurances that we would win Virginia. I was right about that BUT everyone else was right about the big picture. I remained cautiously optimistic until Russ Feingold’s defeat in Wisconsin was called. I knew that there couldn’t be enough ticket splitters for HRC to carry that state and things spun out of control at that point.
It’s hard to process the fact that a cartoon villain who ran a sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic campaign was able to win 276 and counting electoral votes. It’s as if the Gret Stet of Louisiana had elected David Duke as Governor in 1991 instead of rejecting him. Well, at least David Duke, Julian Assange, and Vladimir Putin are happy. Fuck them. And while we’re at it, fuck Jill Stein, Gary Johnson, and James Comey, especially Comey. Above all else fuck the majority of white people who delivered us into the tiny hands of the Insult Comedian.
Does anyone but the con man’s marks buy his “conciliatory” speech earlier this morning? He lied incessantly and exuberantly for the last 15 months, why should that be any different? There’s going to be hell to pay when he, inevitably, betrays his supporters.
Trump is a classic New Yorker: he thinks the rest of the country is full of rubes, yokels, and peckerwoods ripe for the plucking. He was right. It is genuinely surreal that a fake billionaire incited a popular uprising in what New Yorkers often call “the flyover.” Time for a relevant musical respite:
We live in a Breitbart-Bannon-Bossie Man country for now. Stephen Bannon’s dark vision of the Trump campaign won the election. The only question is how much revenge against their enemies B3 and Trump will seek. Vengeance is part of Trump’s world view, which one of many reasons his electoral college victory is so fucking scary. The backlash has only begun.
Above all else, this national tragedy was driven by fear and hatred of women. It was bad enough to these people that we had an African-American President. The mob of angry white male voters could not stand the notion of a female President. Even worse was how many white women agreed with them. That’s the worst part of the backlash of 2016, how many women voted for a man who thinks they exist only to serve him.
American history is full of examples of voters selecting a President who is nothing like their predecessor. This time we’ve gone too far in replacing the elegant, intelligent, articulate and big hearted Barack Obama with the self-absorbed, bigoted, and stupid Donald Trump.
Despite my love of snark, I am usually a “the glass is half-full” kind of guy. It’s hard to see things that way at after seeing how much vast swaths of the country hate women, blacks, gays, Muslims, Latinos, and on and on and on.
Ironies abound in the wake of this national disaster. Republican sabotage of government has been so successful, that they will control both the executive and legislative branches. Additionally, voters have elected a candidate who ran an anti-Semitic campaign whereas the Senate will have it’s first Jewish leader, Chuck Schumer. Minority leader, alas. The genial Senator Schumer will have to become obstructionist in the chief and use the filibuster as an offensive weapon. The GOPers will whine like stuck pigs but fuck them. We’re about to learn just how strong our institutions really are.
I guess I’ll write a post-mortem eventually, but this is still too raw and painful. The finger of blame is already being pointed but even the GOP’s internal models got this wrong. Here’s what I said when the ugly reality sunk in the wee small hours of the morning:
There's no rational explanation for what happened tonight. Fear and hatred are fundamentally irrational.
As a British politics buff, I poo-pooed the Brexit analogy. I was wrong about that as well. America *is* eating a bowl of stupid for Brexit right now. Skip the arsenic, pass the sugar.
Let’s all try not to go into a Tailspin:
I’d like to conclude on a relatively upbeat note. Thanks to our loyal readers and my wonderful colleagues Michael F, Tommy T, Doc, and especially our truly fearless leader Athenae. She’s the reason that we Won’t Back Down:
I live in what would be considered a rural area, even if you don’t consider the kinds of people who consider everything that’s not in L.A., D.C., New York, Atlanta and Chicago to be rural. We have 3,300 souls in this city and the biggest issue on the ballot here was whether we should be forced to vote in “districts” for city council or if we should be voting as a city.
I’m pretty sure my alderperson is my friend’s cousin.
And he’s related to half the town, so that’s a pretty safe bet.
My state is going the way of Trump, even as CNN keeps doing the “too close to call” thing at 12:30 a.m. The sad part is I know so many of these people who decided to vote that way.
They check out my groceries. They sell me my gas. They deliver my mail and pick up my garbage. They have kids who play with my kid. They wave to me as I work on my truck and I do the same to them as they mow their lawns.
I, like A, won’t apologize for my vote. I wasn’t excited to vote for Hillary, as I was with Obama or Ross Perot (my first presidential vote). I wasn’t ambivalent either, as I was for Clinton in 1996. I was fucking petrified like I was in 2004 when I cast a vote for John Kerry and spent half the goddamned day and night checking my computer and nearby TV terminals for updates as I flew to Tennessee for a media convention. Maybe even more so this time because while stupid scares me, arrogant ignorance sends my heart into arrhythmic palpitations.
This was an election of anger.
This was an election of hatred.
This was an election of difference: Us vs. Them.
Donald Trump knew something a lot of we “smart people” didn’t: Hate and Anger is so much easier to mobilize than anything else we have inside us. The longer this circus went on, the more we kept thinking, “Sure, these assholes will turn out in force to watch him scream about making this country great again, but when it comes down to it, they’ll either figure out he’s a con man or they’ll be too busy watching a ‘Duck Dynasty’ marathon to show up and vote.”
Of all the people who didn’t see this coming, one did: Bill Maher.
Like him or hate him, Maher basically knew this country backwards and forwards when it came to the little enclaves of Americana that tend to host comedians. He knew that people were pissed and were ready to kick someone, anyone in the balls over their perceived sense of what was wrong with this country. He kept telling us, “Look, you are the dumbshits who kept saying, ‘He won’t run’ and then he did. ‘He won’t win a primary’ and then he did. ‘He won’t get the nomination’ and then he did. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FUCKING WAKE UP?”
I woke up today.
I looked at the people in my polling place. Old people in flag sweaters. Fat guys with “With us or against us” T-shirts. Farmers with “Make America Great Again” hats. Women who love making jam and talked about the wonderful way things “used to be.”
It was like the back end of every one of these Sorkin Scenes:
I feel right now like I felt in 2004: A heap of useless, exhausted beyond belief, stunned by the stupidity of my fellow citizens as I try to talk with a mouth full of ashes.
A is right. We have to get up again. The question I have is, “Who is standing next to us when we do?”
When you don’t see this coming or you can’t see this within the people you think you know, the ability to rise again becomes more difficult. The ability to think, “Maybe things will be better after some time passes,” crumbles away. The sense that, “All we have to do is let people see that we’re all in this together,” dissipates in your hands as you realize hope is an illusion.
And yet it is one we must cling to. Even as reality proved to us this very night that faith, hope and trust are no longer common traits we share with those around us.
“There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, in part because they’re so decentralized and the numbers of votes involved,” Obama said.
“There’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that there are instances in which that will happen this time,” he continued. “And so, I ‘d advise Mr. Trump to stop whining and go try to make his case to get votes.”
I am so old I remember when Democrats who talked about who owned companies that made voting machines were so widely mocked and derided that they never talked about it again, and that was in the election right after that “hanging chad” one. INTERNET GRANDMA.
Angelo Drossos, who owned the San Antonio Spurs during their ABA days, was a hard-charging Greek businessman who was known to have an incredibly bluntness about him, especially when he knew he was right.
The most famous story about him, retold in his own words in Terry Pluto’s classic book “Loose Balls,” involves his purchase of future-Hall-of-Fame shooter George “Ice” Gervin. Drossos had purchased Gervin from the failing Virginia Squires, only to have the team’s owner (Earl Foreman) come down with a case of seller’s remorse. The league president, Mike Storen, sided with Foreman and demanded Gervin be returned to Virginia. He threatened Drossos with a number of unsavory penalties in a series of telegrams and letters.
Drossos responded in a telegram only he could have written:
Trump is no stranger to the legal system, nor is he unwilling to sue at the drop of a hat. My favorite Trump suit is the one he filed against comedian Bill Maher, who accused him of being fathered by an orangutan. It wasn’t a libel suit, however, as Trump was actually suing for a breach of contract. Maher had jokingly noted that he’d give $5 million to the Hair Club for Men in Trump’s name if he could produce a birth certificate that proved Trump’s mom wasn’t fucking a simian in the zoo.
However, the concept of libel is one that scares even the best journalists. Nobody wants to be sued in general, but libel suits are often dicey because you often have legal interpretation meeting issues of “polite society.” Judges can often be offended by content and thus take it out on the messengers.
When I teach libel to my reporting kids, I often point out that truth is the ultimate defense against libel. Sure, if you report that the governor stole money from the state to buy Corvettes for underage prostitutes the guy is going to look bad and want to sue you. However, if you can prove this is all true, you should be OK in court.
Most people use the “truth shield” as the safest venue for fighting a suit like this.
David McCraw decided to go at this a different way, which is why he is now my new personal legal man-crush.
McCraw instead doubles down on the idea of libel in his letter, pointing out that “the essence of a libel claim, of course, is the protection of one’s reputation.” He then goes on to point out how there is virtually no way to ruin Trump’s reputation, because he’s such a vile, stupid, sexually fucked up nut wad. He lists a series of items that demonstrate Trump’s own statements basically paint him as exactly the kind of guy who is likely to grope women, and thus the article is essentially par for the course.
As one of my good friends pointed out, it’s not every day that a lawyer gets to write the phrases “libel per se” and “piece of ass” in the same letter.
The letter then takes on a more conventional approach, in which McCraw notes that the paper did what the law allows by publishing “newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern.” He also states that if Trump doesn’t like it and thinks he can use the law to crush his critics, “we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.”
In other words: Fuck you.
And in deference to the late Angelo Drossos, I don’t think even HE could write a stronger letter that could follow this.
