"Will you shut up, man?" US Politics October 2020

sorry, my bad, Scottish refs threw me off, I stand corrected

"OK but people voted in their father."

3 million less than voted for an awful Dem candidate. Cult of Trump is loud and he did squeak out a victory in one election so I think we all overestimate his following.

yeah, i hear that alba! honestly, i almost added a very similar "but who the fuck knows these days" kind of disclaimer, but at this point i think that same disclaimer applies to just about everything and is almost implied

part of me wonders if this election could go badly enough for the GOP to force it into a kind of debaathification, but i just don't know how they pull that off. at least 50% of e.g. the GOP senate seems genuinely in he tank for trumpism, and they're going to need that half to have any influence. they've pushed themselves so far to the right politically and their primaries (i.e. the next 5-10 years of candidates) are being won by truly insane people, etc. i guess the one chance they have is that people have incredibly short memories.

but no, i don't see any trump family member having any national success (or the patience for state/local politics).

i.e. i don't think a powerful cynic like mitch mcconnell could stop this being true, even if he wanted to https://newrepublic.com/article/158977/madison-cawthorn-future-republican-party.

with don jr, though - seriously does that guy have anything he can say he's done? i recognize that all of trump's supposed "accomplishments" were almost entirely fabricated or based on falsehoods - from having Art of the Deal ghostwritten to tax shenanigans - but still, he had a record to point to when he ran for president, even if that was mostly just having a hit tv show that someone else ran for a few years. what is don jr's thing? pretending to run the golf courses for 4 years?

oh, thanks everyone

I guess his Secret Service car ride and the video of him removing his mask yesterday despite clearly being next to other people really scared me. obviously we know he's a monster already and that his administration straight up decided not to act on Covid because it supposedly affected blue states more but at least there was a (severely dumb) political reason there. his recent actions are like - just stunning in their disregard for human life, specifically the people **whose job it is to protect him**. if you see that and still vote for the man, you are a monster almost as much as he is!! How can anyone possibly defend his pandemic response when there's video of him endangering others for NO FUCKING REASON at all !? like, yeah, GWB obviously was willing to kill on a grand scale to achieve his goals, but at least there you could argue he was trying to protect Americans, or at least that was his rationale at some point, with Trump it's like...he won't act because he quite literally does not care if you live or die. it's unspeakably evil. I know Halloween isn't for another few weeks but I'm spooked right now!

they've pushed themselves so far to the right politically and their primaries (i.e. the next 5-10 years of candidates) are being won by truly insane people, etc.

i think this is the thing - there doesn't seem to be ANY momentum toward the center-right, let alone whatever the "center" is. is there any momentum for reasonable people in the party? maybe i'm just being targeted with stories about the GOP Q candidates, because my psychometrics indicate that i click on more stories about dumb Q candidates than i do about smart reasonable GOP candidates. but...i don't think so? they all seem fucking dumb to me, for real. it does not look good.

KM - I think on some level this is what all the hate for AOC is about? she's young, smart, good with social media, and exceptionally popular, she is everything the GOP needs in their next generation of candidates, but instead literally everyone branded as "the Republican AOC" is a fucking lunatic who is destined to lose by 30+ points. I know the GOP finds ways to bounce back but I legitimately don't know where they go from here

No, Josh, Franken should've been forced out. He did worse than sexting a consenting adult, c'mon.

I can't believe this has come up again.

xp frogbs, i think that makes sense. imagine asking "where is our AOC??", and the answer you get back is "Turning Point USA"

sure, they love to see a new generation of cleancut pricks, but on some level they have to realize they're rooting for the dorks

I mean, there's a world in which someone like Charlie Baker can come forward and say "nominate me and I'll win 400 electoral votes" and he's probably right! But the party is probably too far gone for somebody like him to make it through a primary. Also, it's not at all clear he wants that, and honestly why would he?

Charlie Baker is never leaving MA

what is don jr's thing? pretending to run the golf courses for 4 years?

Why are you even asking this? His thing is "owning the libs" which millions of people think he does every day with resounding success and that is what they are looking for in an elected official.

literally everyone branded as "the Republican AOC" is a fucking lunatic who is destined to lose by 30+ points.

well, some of these people are running in de facto one party congressional districts and are coming to DC in january!

the problem for the GOP is their primary-voting base is making them run these candidates everywhere now.

their corner of social media + the primary system (which is an insane way of doing things btw and as much to blame for the structural problems in the US as the two party system) creates a positive feedback driving them more and more right.

i might be being naive/an accelerationist but i don't agree with pelosi that this is a shame at all. we don't need a republican party to govern. the state of california has problems but it's better run than the US.

Why are you even asking this? His thing is "owning the libs" which millions of people think he does every day with resounding success and that is what they are looking for in an elected official.

It may turn out to be the case that that only gets you over the finish line if you're running against Hillary Clinton.

alfred otm

as for the next generation of "reasonable" GOP politicians: look for a lot of wealthy-ass, grown-up-lookin' Romney types to drip out of the interstices of corporate america promising to "run government like a business.". never gets old!

Aw, what a shame.

NEW: Stephen Miller has tested positive for COVID, per senior administration official. Adds Miller has been working remotely for last 5 days, testing negative every day through yesterday, and is in quarantine after a positive test today.

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) October 6, 2020

yeah, i take your point eephus, it's just that he's not particularly good at it and he hasn't once demonstrated anything other than that he's a foil for whatever nonsense his dad says

FUCK YEAH, EAT IT MILLER!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmFqTAWDbYA

there it is.

the october surprise we'd all been waiting for.

as for the next generation of "reasonable" GOP politicians: look for a lot of wealthy-ass, grown-up-lookin' Romney types to drip out of the interstices of corporate america promising to "run government like a business.". never gets old!

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, October 6, 2020 6:51 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how are these people going to win primaries?!?!

Ha ha Stephen Miller, just when I thought all the best ones had gone.

xp to caek: they aren't

not unless they run as Democrats

Even Stephen Miller's wife can't stand to be around him long enough to infect him.

ha, right. xp

Georgia, Virginia, Arizona come to mind as Dem-trending states where the remaining GOP electorate has turned far-right. https://t.co/AaiZaIun03

— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) October 5, 2020

don't get too excited folks, there may be no difference between Miller's RNA and the Rona

imho the Romnoids could do just fine in suburbs that are tilting back to Biden just because Trump has proven slightly too uncouth and unreliable. like depending on the gerrymander, those areas may or may not include enough batshit Q-zones to put the trump devotees over in primaries.

post-2012 - the Republicans are so doomed nationally they have their internal consultants tell them to move to the center and stop being racist
during the 2016 election you have Republican operatives complaining that Trump is going to lose like Goldwater 1964

Projecting the future in the face of climate disaster and continuing immiseration seems pointless.

Strange bedfellows indeed...

Goldman Sachs: A Democratic sweep would mean faster economic recovery
Just hours after Trump's all-caps Monday morning tweet predicting economic disaster, Goldman economists pointed out that polls "suggest a 'blue wave' in which Democrats gain unified control of Washington is becoming more likely" -- and they're not suggesting investors dump stocks.
In fact, "all else equal, such a blue wave would likely prompt us to upgrade our forecasts," Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote in a Monday report...

really not that strange

The least strange thing of October 2020

How is Rudy doing? Dead yet?

Just smells like he is

And how about Pence? How has he escaped covid's wrath (besides prayer)?

Chris Christie is still in the hospital.

https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/10/ex-nj-gov-chris-christie-remains-hospitalized-for-covid-19.html

funny that you ask, pence has been cleared for tomorrow's debate by both his own doctor and CDC, which should be humiliated

Vice President Pence was cleared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to participate in the debate Wednesday night against Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.).

CDC Director Robert Redfield wrote in a memo that he consulted with Pence’s physician and concluded that Pence wasn’t in close contact to anyone contagious. Pence was at the Rose Garden ceremony for Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. At least seven people who had been at that event have tested positive for the coronavirus.

“Based on the descriptions of the movements of the Vice President ... the Vice President is not a close contact of any known person with covid-19, including the president,” Redfield wrote.

Since Friday, when Trump’s diagnosis was disclosed, Pence’s coronavirus tests have all come back negative. Redfield cites the negative tests and the physician’s conclusions to determine “from a public health standpoint, it is safe for the Vice President to participate in the upcoming Vice-Presidential debate.”

https://i.imgur.com/q2COIAU.jpg

forgot to add the covidbeams from the bottom (where trump was) and to the far right (where still-hospitalized chris christie was)

Christie only went into the hospital to chill out and hide from the press, though, "still" doesn't mean anything.

is that Ben Sasse with his mask on below his nose?

masks are incredibly complicated and hard

Pence’s head about to explode in that photo!!

Miller is the sweetest one yet

(aside from the obvious)

this is honestly even sweeter to me