u.s. politics: abortive cure for labor pains

[Jace, Extat]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is that true? I was under the impression that there are still a lot of uncontested districts. And I agree, the DCCC shouldn’t meddle too much unless they think they have a real gem of a candidate who will go a lot further than just being a Congressman or Congresswoman.

There's nothing wrong with having a favorite. What's wrong is tipping the scales against other Democrats. Bernie was NEVER going to win the Dem Primary, but it LOOKED so bad because they were being really fucking despotic about the party nomination. I don't want to hear about Superdelegates (I approve of the concept in theory), I'm talking about the obvious kneecapping of Bernie. Sure, the Bernie Bros were fucking awful (wonder how many were Russians) but DWS was nothing but outright hostile to the very valid questions about her dipshit ideas and actions.

[Sivin]

As an Ice Hurricane hits half the Eastern seaboard is John Bolton the man who will 'save' us?

 

Every time I think it can't get worse. 

[Fragile Bird]

I was just in a bookstore and idly glanced at this week’s New Yorker, and the cover flap listing stories in the issue said something about the NRA’s most powerful spokesperson.

I quickly read the first page, I think I will buy the magazine in a small bookshop, not a megastore, and was just horrified to read about gun laws in Florida. This woman named Marion Hammer, who has been the NRA’s most powerful spokesperson for 40 years, runs gun legislation in Florida. Politicians are completely under her thumb. The story says new legislation has to be run past her for pre-approval, though politicians deny it.

She had a law passed in Florida that says if you discuss making gun laws stricter than Florida law you can lose your job. Florida congressmen are kept in line by the law.

I have to go buy the magazine and have it in front of me.

And I thought that woman who was at CNN’s town hall was horrific.

[Kalbear]

31 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

I'm talking about the obvious kneecapping of Bernie.

Yeah, I want to find out what you think this was.

31 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Sure, the Bernie Bros were fucking awful (wonder how many were Russians) but DWS was nothing but outright hostile to the very valid questions about her dipshit ideas and actions.

DWS was a cancer, and Obama keeping her because it was too much of a PITA to get rid of her is one of his most egregiously bad decisions. 

[Jace, Extat]

1 minute ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, I want to find out what you think this was.

DWS was a cancer, and Obama keeping her because it was too much of a PITA to get rid of her is one of his most egregiously bad decisions. 

There were all kinds of people on the TalkBox taking an axe to the guy. They weren't WRONG, but there were so many legitimate concerns that they were trying to sidestep that the attacks on Sanders' supporters got pretty fresh sometimes.

Again, 2016 was a goddamn nightmare with so many different factors in play that not even Alexander could cut that Gordian Knot. I don't have a problem with going after your opponent in a primary, but even if the (possibly Russian) St. Bernard's 100% deserve to be shat on maybe you don't suggest that they aren't worth being in the party. We aren't talking about the equivalent of the R's fringe. Bernie had a very respectable level of genuine support from people whose biggest faults were being a little too liberal. You don't shut that down, you try to co-opt it. Instead Dems kept chasing those fucking independents for... something?

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

There were all kinds of people on the TalkBox taking an axe to the guy. They weren't WRONG, but there were so many legitimate concerns that they were trying to sidestep that the attacks on Sanders' supporters got pretty fresh sometimes.

Again, 2016 was a goddamn nightmare with so many different factors in play that not even Alexander could cut that Gordian Knot. I don't have a problem with going after your opponent in a primary, but even if the (possibly Russian) St. Bernard's 100% deserve to be shat on maybe you don't suggest that they aren't worth being in the party. We aren't talking about the equivalent of the R's fringe. Bernie had a very respectable level of genuine support from people whose biggest faults were being a little too liberal. You don't shut that down, you try to co-opt it. Instead Dems kept chasing those fucking independents for... something?

Wow, we're getting our relitigating the Democratic primary of 2016 of the month club done early this month!

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is that true? I was under the impression that there are still a lot of uncontested districts. And I agree, the DCCC shouldn’t meddle too much unless they think they have a real gem of a candidate who will go a lot further than just being a Congressman or Congresswoman.

Hm.  Skimming through Wikipedia's list of candidates, then cross-referencing with Ballotpedia, I found six GOP-held seats in which there is still no Democratic candidate:  LA 4th and 5th, NC 3rd, PA 13th (redistricted from the current 9th), Utah 3rd (this was Chaffetz's seat that John Curtis just won in November), and Wyoming's At-Large (Liz Cheney!!!)  So, not quite, but 429 out of 435 ain't bad.  Overall, the party leadership is clearly adopting a more Dean/Emanuel (heh, love putting those two together cuz they'd both HATE it) 50 state strategy.  Actually, if anything's a problem, as I've mentioned before, it's too many candidates in California's jungle primary.

As for the DCCC, I think it should be emphasized that one of their main roles is recruiting candidates, so they're obviously going to have tacit favorites in many primary contests.  However, what they shouldn't be doing is writing memos directing candidates on how to react to shootings, and what they should especially not be doing is releasing attack memos on their own party's candidates like they did to Laura Moser (who, btw, has made a miraculous recovery from being chainsawed in that shipping container).  Even if I agree in principle that Moser is a bad candidate, let her primary opponents beat her on their own merits.

[Jace, Extat]

6 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Hm.  Skimming through Wikipedia's list of candidates, then cross-referencing with Ballotpedia, I found six GOP-held seats in which there is still no Democratic candidate:  LA 4th and 5th, NC 3rd, PA 13th (redistricted from the current 9th), Utah 3rd (this was Chaffetz's seat that John Curtis just won in November), and Wyoming's At-Large (Liz Cheney!!!)  So, not quite, but 429 out of 435 ain't bad.  Overall, the party leadership is clearly adopting a more Dean/Emanuel (heh, love putting those two together cuz they'd both HATE it) 50 state strategy.  Actually, if anything's a problem, as I've mentioned before, it's too many candidates in California's jungle primary.

As for the DCCC, I think it should be emphasized that one of their main roles is recruiting candidates, so they're obviously going to have tacit favorites in many primary contests.  However, what they shouldn't be doing is writing memos directing candidates on how to react to shootings, and what they should especially not be doing is releasing attack memos on their own party's candidates like they did to Laura Moser (who, btw, has made a miraculous recovery from being chainsawed in that shipping container).  Even if I agree in principle that Moser is a bad candidate, let her primary opponents beat her on their own merits.

That's all I'm trying to say, Kal. He's just smarterer

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is that true? I was under the impression that there are still a lot of uncontested districts. And I agree, the DCCC shouldn’t meddle too much unless they think they have a real gem of a candidate who will go a lot further than just being a Congressman or Congresswoman.

Looks like I was off. This was from December 2017 and at that point, only 12 didn't have a challenger.

ETA: didn't see dmc's post. What he said.

[Kalbear]

6 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

That's all I'm trying to say, Kal. He's just smarterer

I think there's a very large difference between an individual congressional race and POTUS; with POTUS, it makes a lot of sense to coordinate messages for a lot of reasons by a centralized party. It doesn't as much with individual races, especially in off-years. 

Mostly, though, Sanders lost the South, shat on the South as not mattering later and kept on going despite having fuckall of a chance while claiming the whole time how rigged the system was. He gorged on caucuses and middled through more democratic primaries. You're right that DWS and the DNC was weighed against him, and that's not good, but the idea that this was such a major job against him is bullshit, was bullshit at the time and continues to be bullshit. Sanders ignored the South.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

The reporting done by Stephanie Ruhle  on Trump’s tariffs is fascinating. Apparently Wilbur Ross, who has not been close with Trump for a while, took advantage of the fact that Trump’s three primary gatekeepers were out of the building. Kelly was not at the WH, Porter had been fired and Hicks had just resigned. Trump was raging about the events of the last few days when Ross planted the idea of rolling out new tariffs. Trump loved it for two reasons, (i) because tariffs were something Trump ran on and (ii) they would dominate the headlines and play well with his base. But what’s really astonishing is there was absolutely no preparations for them. It seems like only a couple new Trump was going to propose them. The State Department in particular had no idea and therefore were unable to notify our allies beforehand that Trump was about to massively screw them over.

That’s how governments done, baby!

[Ormond]

4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It seems like only a couple new Trump was going to propose them. 

 

It took me a while to figure this sentence out -- I kept wondering if it was a sentence about it only being a couple of new tariffs. But now I think you meant only a couple of people knew about it.

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It seems like only a couple new Trump was going to propose them. The State Department in particular had no idea and therefore were unable to notify our allies beforehand that Trump was about to massively screw them over.

That’s how governments done, baby!

If you wanted to announce tariffs, you could hardly do a more half-assed job of packaging it than Trump yesterday.  It definitely contributed to the universally negative coverage of it - nobody had been lined up to defend the WH position. 

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, Ormond said:

It took me a while to figure this sentence out -- I kept wondering if it was a sentence about it only being a couple of new tariffs. But now I think you meant only a couple of people knew about it.

I thought it meant for Trump's fourth marriage he was gonna get his polygamy on.  Maybe to shore up his numbers in Utah.

[DMC]

28 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

That's all I'm trying to say, Kal. He's just smarterer

Not smarterer, just a less busy mind.

[Jace, Extat]

26 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I think there's a very large difference between an individual congressional race and POTUS; with POTUS, it makes a lot of sense to coordinate messages for a lot of reasons by a centralized party. It doesn't as much with individual races, especially in off-years. 

Mostly, though, Sanders lost the South, shat on the South as not mattering later and kept on going despite having fuckall of a chance while claiming the whole time how rigged the system was. He gorged on caucuses and middled through more democratic primaries. You're right that DWS and the DNC was weighed against him, and that's not good, but the idea that this was such a major job against him is bullshit, was bullshit at the time and continues to be bullshit. Sanders ignored the South.

Sure, I'm kinda focusing on the talking heads though. Because those people are very relevant to the party and they were pretty hostile.

That being said, I agree 100% with you, but I am acknowledging that just because Sanders was a TERRIBLE candidate and unrealistic to a fault as well as being unacceptably passive about minority rights does not mean his supporters weren't worth bringing back into the fold even if some of them were utterly toxic.

7 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Not smarterer, just a less busy mind.

And how will your arguments hold up against Dogs?

[Zorral]

With his great big beautiful so easily won war with tariffs the orange soda jerk is gonna be certain he's earned his great big beautiful military parade in his honor as a great big beautiful winner winner winner.

[Slick Mongoose]

A predictable response from the EU, it's 2002 all over again:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/mar/02/china-expresses-grave-concerns-us-steel-tariff-plans

Quote

 

“If the Americans impose tariffs on steel and aluminium, then we must treat American products the same way,” Juncker told German television stations.

“We must show that we can also take measures. This cannot be a unilateral transatlantic action by the Americans,” he said. “I’m not saying we have to shoot back, but we must take action.

“We will put tariffs on Harley-Davidson, on bourbon and on blue jeans – Levi’s,” he added.

 

Harley and Bourbon tariffs are aimed directly at Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, i'm guessing.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

Hm.  Skimming through Wikipedia's list of candidates, then cross-referencing with Ballotpedia, I found six GOP-held seats in which there is still no Democratic candidate:  LA 4th and 5th, NC 3rd, PA 13th (redistricted from the current 9th), Utah 3rd (this was Chaffetz's seat that John Curtis just won in November), and Wyoming's At-Large (Liz Cheney!!!)  So, not quite, but 429 out of 435 ain't bad.  Overall, the party leadership is clearly adopting a more Dean/Emanuel (heh, love putting those two together cuz they'd both HATE it) 50 state strategy.  Actually, if anything's a problem, as I've mentioned before, it's too many candidates in California's jungle primary.

Yeah that's actually a lot better than I thought it would be. I figure the number would have been closer to 20 or more, given the stories I've read in the past. Have you ever seen any studies that track the number of unopposed races? It would be interesting to know the average number and see if there are any unusual swings. 

1 hour ago, Mexal said:

Looks like I was off. This was from December 2017 and at that point, only 12 didn't have a challenger.

ETA: didn't see dmc's post. What he said.

Is it fair to surmise that the other six are held by Democrats? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

It took me a while to figure this sentence out -- I kept wondering if it was a sentence about it only being a couple of new tariffs. But now I think you meant only a couple of people knew about it.

My proof reading skills have not been on display over the last 24 hours. But yes, I meant only a few people new about the proposed tariffs before Trump announced them.

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

If you wanted to announce tariffs, you could hardly do a more half-assed job of packaging it than Trump yesterday.  It definitely contributed to the universally negative coverage of it - nobody had been lined up to defend the WH position. 

I agree that was a terrible role out, but haven't a few Congressmen came out in defense of it? 

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

I thought it meant for Trump's fourth marriage he was gonna get his polygamy on.  Maybe to shore up his numbers in Utah.

Well Ivanka has been called his WH wife, so it looks like he's already checked those boxes.

Also, it's a sneaky play for the South too!