US Politics - And Now it Begins

[Sci-2]

15 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Doubt it. As was pointed out to me a couple years ago, President Trump doesn't pay attention to the news sources where he would learn things like this.

In the past I'd agree, I mean so long as boot-lickers like Cruz* came crawling back what they said [in] the past doesn't matter.

But the whole deep-state conspiracy seems to be extending to Loeffer and Kemp [so] I wonder if those 21 names are going to get drawn in despite 16 of them trying to avoid the wrath of Trumpists if not Trump.

*I also wonder if Cruz bowing to Trump after the latter mocked his wife's looks and said his father killed JFK will ever hurt Cruz's career. Maybe when he tries for POTUS?

[A True Kaniggit]

11 minutes ago, Sci-2 said:

*I also wonder if Cruz bowing to Trump after the latter mocked his wife's looks and said his father killed JFK will ever hurt Cruz's career. Maybe when he tries for POTUS?

No. If this was going to happen, it would've been the election after Trump said all those things.

I mean Texas should've been inundated with ads labeled, "Trump for Cruz!" followed by Trump's insults toward Cruz's family, then a recording of Cruz praising Trump, with the ad ending "Cruz doesn't stand up for his family, he won't stand up for Texas".

It didn't happen.

That moment has passed.

[Darzin]

I feel like Romneys name shouldn't be in that list. Since he's pretty clearly expressed his distaste for Trump publicly.

[DMC]

So apparently Gavin Newsom prefers to select California SoS Alex Padilla as Harris' replacement in the Senate, but is being pressured to choose a black woman:

Quote

A crowd of top Democratic donors and former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown are launching an aggressive campaign to argue that another woman of color should fill that seat instead.

Brown, the former longtime speaker of the California Assembly, said he's launching a drive Monday to organize Black churches, pastors, civic leaders, fraternal organizations and prominent members of the Black press statewide to urge Newsom to consider leading Black women for the seat. Among the leading choices, he said, are Reps. Barbara Lee, Karen Bass and Maxine Waters; San Francisco Mayor London Breed; and state Sen. Holly Mitchell.

"There's no way that Gavin Newsom should allow anyone other than a Black woman to fill the seat of Harris, who's only the second Black woman in the history of the U.S. Senate," Brown told POLITICO on Sunday. "There should be no contest."

Brown's campaign comes as some 150 of the state's top female Democratic donors on Monday will publish full-page newspaper ads with an open letter urging Newsom to pick a woman of color, Vox reported Sunday.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

9 hours ago, Week said:

Who might that be though? We brainstorms and came up empty. The GOP is barren and I don't see sufficiently engaged business folks coming in to lead the Right. There's a reason that one of Trump's main backers/allies is the MyPillow guy. They aren't sending their best  

Go read his bio. Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

9 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

You’re a cheap date too?

Psh, the last thing I am is cheap. Not my fault one glass of wine has you flying into a pole.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

12 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Did Romney have a cult like following?

Younare equating “vote for Trump” to “part of the Trump cult”.  Do you think everyone who voted for Trump is a Trumpanista?

[Martell Spy]

Michèle Flournoy is ready for the spotlight
Flournoy is expected to become the first woman secretary of defense. She’s ready.

https://www.vox.com/21573433/michele-flournoy-secretary-of-defense-joe-biden-profile

Quote

 

In addition, her seat on the board of the defense contracting giant Booz Allen Hamilton, combined with her unwillingness to dramatically slash the defense budget, could rankle progressives.

Even so, no one else is seriously under consideration for the top Pentagon post, showing Biden’s clear confidence in her. “This is one of those wonderful moments when a female is the right person for the job,” Sarah Sewall, a longtime friend of Flournoy’s who served with her in the Obama administration, told me. “It’s a remarkable confluence of capability and gender coming together.”

After years serving just outside the spotlight, then, Flournoy is very likely to be front and center soon. “I don’t think she’d have any problem adjusting to that spotlight,” Chuck Hagel, Obama’s defense chief from 2013 to 2015, told me.

Why Biden is likely to pick Michèle Flournoy
When a president chooses a defense secretary, the top two considerations are usually: 1) can this person run the world’s largest organization? and 2) do they mostly agree with me on national security policy?

For Biden, the answer to both those questions when it comes to Flournoy, based on most people I spoke to, is an unequivocal yes.

 

 

[Fez]

Sounds like Pennsylvania will not be certifying its results today. A handful of the counties said they're going to miss the state deadline (which apparently is not uncommon) and also there's yet another lawsuit that may delays Philadelphia county if its not dismissed quickly.

Meanwhile, sounds like no one knows what will happen with Michigan's certification today. It seems like everyone is confident that the state supreme court will order the board to certify if they deadlock; but it would mean yet another delay there as well.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

9 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Michèle Flournoy is ready for the spotlight
Flournoy is expected to become the first woman secretary of defense. She’s ready.

https://www.vox.com/21573433/michele-flournoy-secretary-of-defense-joe-biden-profile

 

Please no. Not Flournoy. They might as well offer that position to Bolton (or any other hawkish Republican), for all the difference it makes.

[SFDanny]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

So apparently Gavin Newsom prefers to select California SoS Alex Padilla as Harris' replacement in the Senate, but is being pressured to choose a black woman:

 

I would love to see Barbara Lee take the seat. She would be the best pick by far, but I have no confidence in Newsom appointing her. Karen Bass would also be a good choice. Southern California pols are shouting for a SoCal pick. Which might give Bass or Waters a chance. Just looking at Newsom's connections to candidates, I'm guessing he will go with either Padilla or Breed.

Surprise me, Gavin!

[Trebla]

Now THIS is funny!

 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Please no. Not Flournoy. They might as well offer that position to Bolton (or any other hawkish Republican), for all the difference it makes.

Flournoy will unquestionably be a return to Obama/Clinton style foreign policy (are are/will be all of Biden's national security picks), but it's hardly fair to equate her with Bolton or neo-cons.  There's a huge ass and important difference that was made pretty damn clear during Dubya's administration.

Mentioned this in the other thread, but my issue with Flournoy at the Pentagon and Blinken at Foggy Bottom is they are way too close to each other having co-founded and run a consulting firm together the last four years.  Ideally you'd want different, even adversarial, perspectives coming from State and Defense so the president is provided with a variety of options.  While I got nothing against either individually, having those two at the two most powerful foreign policy positions encourages groupthink, which has never been a good idea to foster when it comes to matters of war and peace.

[Fez]

14 minutes ago, DMC said:

Flournoy will unquestionably be a return to Obama/Clinton style foreign policy (are are/will be all of Biden's national security picks), but it's hardly fair to equate her with Bolton or neo-cons.  There's a huge ass and important difference that was made pretty damn clear during Dubya's administration.

Mentioned this in the other thread, but my issue with Flournoy at the Pentagon and Blinken at Foggy Bottom is they are way too close to each other having co-founded and run a consulting firm together the last four years.  Ideally you'd want different, even adversarial, perspectives coming from State and Defense so the president is provided with a variety of options.  While I got nothing against either individually, having those two at the two most powerful foreign policy positions encourages groupthink, which has never been a good idea to foster when it comes to matters of war and peace.

OTOH, State has been so shattered and made irrelevant over the past four years that maybe having someone close to Defense (and likely many other Biden picks) is exactly what's needed for rebuilding the agency. If it was constantly getting into fights, I don't think it'd have the capacity to also fix everything that Trump's SoSs have wrecked.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Younare equating “vote for Trump” to “part of the Trump cult”.  Do you think everyone who voted for Trump is a Trumpanista?

No, but a large portion are. A number of people have left the party while his approval  has eclipsed even Reagan’s.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

No, but a large portion are. A number of people have left the party while his approval  has eclipsed even Reagan’s.

Given the support the Democratic party is receiving, pealing away even a few Trump voters will have big impacts.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

OTOH, State has been so shattered and made irrelevant over the past four years that maybe having someone close to Defense (and likely many other Biden picks) is exactly what's needed for rebuilding the agency.

While I think Blinken is best equipped to rebuild the foreign service at State (even more so than Rice, my preferred pick) - and Thomas-Greenfield as UN ambassador is an outstanding pick to revitalize recruitment in that regard as well - I disagree that having a such cozy relationship with the Pentagon is the best way to repair the department.  I guess it's good to avoid protracted turf wars between the two, granted, but that seemed considerably unlikely given Biden's spectrum of candidates among foreign policy positions anyway.

11 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

A number of people have left the party while his approval  has eclipsed even Reagan’s.

It's pretty stupid to compare intraparty approval with Reagan considering polarization was just kicking off and there were tons more crossovers back then, for both approval and disapproval.  Moreover the suggestion his approval among Republicans is somehow record-breaking - as he has claimed - is completely unfounded.  When comparing Dubya to Trump, Dubya easily matches or even outpaces Trump up until Katrina.

[Fez]

In a bit of good news, the extremely slow vote counting going on in New York looks like it's finally wrapping up (at least outside of New York City, which may take until spring; not really joking). And Democrats have apparently gotten a supermajority in the state senate for the first time ever. New York doesn't have any state constitutional requirements requiring supermajorities to raise taxes or such, so it's not the biggest deal. But since Democrats also already have a supermajority in the state assembly, it means the legislature could start overriding Cuomo's vetoes if they choose. So the balance of power in Albany may be changing.

It also remains incredible that Democrats were still in the minority in the state senate (thanks to a series of compromise gerrymander maps dating back to WWII) until 2018. But the dam has finally completely broken in the state. The suburbs and exurbs are too big, and with them swinging the rural parts of upstate just aren't red enough to anchor gerrymandered districts anymore. 

 

[Maithanet]

A couple of things are becoming clear from precinct and county level data:

 - Democrats have a looming problem with Latino voters.  A lot of the "demographic collapse" of the GOP was predicated on the assumption that the trend in 2004-2016 held, where Latino voters grew in numbers and continued vote ~70% for Democrats.  That did not happen in 2020.  We don't have a full picture yet, but it is very obvious that at least Latinos in Florida and South Texas were MUCH more favorable to the GOP than they were in 2016 and 2018.  And they did that in spite of Trump being, ya know, a terrible candidate.  There is definitely reason to think that in the future, Republicans will double these efforts, and with that both Florida and Texas (the 2nd and 3rd largest states) should be safely red. 

 - Republicans have a suburbs problem.  This was true in 2018 and it was even more true in 2020.  Suburbs are the area of America that most population growth is occurring, and even previously conservative suburbs outside Phoenix, Dallas and Atlanta are noticeably moving to the left.  In addition, turnout of suburban voters is often higher than that of either urban or rural areas.  This is particularly true of college educated voters that have been so unhappy with Trump.  IF that is a permanent shift (we'll see), then that could make for a big problem for Republicans in non-presidential years.  The general wisdom has always been that the Republicans do better in low turnout elections, but that may not be right anymore.  At the very least, Trump avoided a blowout this year by turning out a LOT of infrequent voters, and there's no way to know if they're going to be similarly interested in other races.  The GA special will be the first glimpse of answering that. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Lets hope this is true, meaning Trump will be running our of runway soon.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Lets hope this is true, meaning Trump will be running our of runway soon.

That's a good sign.  Sounded like the other Republican was primed to vote against.

4 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

The GA special will be the first glimpse of answering that. 

Indeed.  Having not one but two runoffs is like a special bonus for political junkies usually going through withdrawal right now.