We. Would. CRY.: US Politics, July 2022

https://www.theroot.com/house-democrats-introduce-term-limits-bill-for-supreme-1849336866

idk if this is likely to go anywhere but Christ is it bleak

TERRIFYING: The text of @RepCuellar's bill the Workplace Flexibility & Choice Act is available.

It would carve workers out of min wage & OT protections -- not just app-deployed workers -- ANY WORKER whose employer...1/https://t.co/NF2jfcDVWd

— Veena Dubal (@veenadubal) July 27, 2022

Thank god Pelosi et al. went to the mats to help beat back Jessica Cisneros.

Heightening tensions with China is so fucking stupid.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, July 26, 2022 7:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I mean, so is the Chinese state's imperial bloodthirst, but

Meanwhile here's a Texas mom outraged that her 9th-grader is learning about Banksy in art class. (Bonus, it's because Banksy is "anti-free-market" lol)

Here is one of the Texas moms who traveled to Austin yesterday for a state legislative hearing focused on parents’ rights in education.

She’s angry because her son learned about Banksy in a high school art class. pic.twitter.com/FKpqfbh1Up

— Mike Hixenbaugh (@Mike_Hixenbaugh) July 27, 2022

it's funny how conservatives have become the most rabid regulators in the country. they used to say they believed in liberty, that the government should let people live. now they want to use government - state government, school boards, the US supreme court, you name it - to regulate the holy fuck out of everyone. regulating people's bodies. regulating what they're allowed to read in school. regulating who can marry who. regulating who can compete in athletic events. how about the step they fuck off for a minute and let people live their lives

Lmao tipsy mothra! Really hope that gets back to Banksy and he runs with it.

I mean, so is the Chinese state's imperial bloodthirst, but

The Table nails it. The CCP is all that the GOP wishes they could be politically (except fiscally a little too concerned with the needs of the hoi polloi, and of course a dire lack of Christian nationalism in their overbearing moralism).

I'm not even sure what 'conservative' means anymore, in today's climate; the right wing has become much more radical, seeking broad sweeping changes rather than cautious incrementalism

Maybe Mitt Romney is still a country club conservative, but he knows his days are numbered

I've been watching The Janes (HBO doc about an underground abortion network in Chicago in 1968-72) this week and idk it seems like everything I thought I knew about the political climate in American history has been off (see also finally reading Before the Storm last summer). Not that I was unaware abortion was illegal, mind you, but I think the only reason the right seems more radical right now is they're successfully clawing back a lot of the power they only gradually lost in the first place. Their core tenets have been authoritarian for a long time, and their purported libertarianism has always been a sham / purely situational for the benefit of capital / barely disguised racism

The CCP is all that the GOP wishes they could be politically

This is fantastically stupid but not quite as stupid as saber rattling with our third largest trade partner and largest source of imported goods because we're mad that they threaten our global empire.

yeah rob that sounds right to me

And not to downplay how scary the resurgent right is right now—it is absolutely terrifying, plus all the guns. I've just been working on letting go of my own delusions about what the right "actually" believes in—I've known better for decades, but those narratives were really drilled into me as a kid, the unlearning is constant.

China is bad, but why does Pelosi need to go to Taiwan anyway? Seems pointlessly provocative to me, as much as Taiwan getting to determine their own fate would obvs be desirable

20 GOP-led states are suing the USDA over a rule from the agency that prohibits discrimination against LGBTQ students in free school lunch programs. The AGs argue schools have the right to deny queer and trans kids lunch money. https://t.co/xM3IGonUIB

— Gillian Branstetter (@GBBranstetter) July 27, 2022

that tweet isn’t right afaict. the AGs are arguing they can discriminate against gay and trans kids in other ways and still get the federal funds for lunch money.

the Democrats funding trump candidates thing keeps happening, and is now being defended as a strategy by the DCCC. fucking crazy. what a horrible, horrible idea. in this case, they're funding the Republican primary opponent of Rep. Peter Meijer, who was one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump. Meijer's being primaried by a Trump idiot, John Gibbs. what's crazy is that the DCCC spent $435,000 in support of Gibbs, which is more than the Gibbs campaign spent on themselves! the DCCC, alone, more than doubled his entire campaign's spending! thanks a fucking lot, Democrats??

The DCCC’s investment in Michigan’s 3rd District — which was redrawn in the decennial redistricting process to become more Democratic — marks the first time the House Democratic campaign arm put money behind an ad interfering in a GOP primary. The investment is more than the $334,000 that Gibbs has spent on his own campaign.

“Obviously, our focus is on winning 218 seats, and each race will require a slightly different strategy,” DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) told NBC News. “We think this makes sense in this case.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/27/meijer-trump-impeachment-democrats/

"Democracy is under attack*!"

*by the candidates we fund

good thing the economy looks absolutely rock solid as the Dems burn money popularizing fascists, can't see this backfiring at all

That Michigan thing is among the dumbest ideas imaginable.

as the Dems burn money

i was just thinking about how it was sad that the Democrats could literally take the money that is donated to them and just burn it, and it would be a better use of it than what they're actually using it for

yeah I'm glad this is out there cuz now I can point directly to the reason why I don't donate to these guys anymore

pic.twitter.com/R3rJ95oEkT

— Blake Mitchell® (@Blake_Mitchell) July 26, 2022

NJ's own @StevieVanZandt 🎸 has a VERY special message for Dr. Oz!!

So Dr. Oz just fuhgeddaboudit! pic.twitter.com/awlAeVcUeg

— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) July 27, 2022

This is wearing a little thin but still pretty funny

actually on the lunch money thing actually the tweet probably IS right in that states might conceivably forgo the lunch money just because they’ve been forbidden to make life miserable for LGBTQ+ kids, like what happened with medicare expansion and obamacare.

The CCP is all that the GOP wishes they could be politically

This is fantastically stupid but not quite as stupid as saber rattling with our third largest trade partner and largest source of imported goods because we're mad that they threaten our global empire.

Milo Z is neoliberal now? Not sure if “fantastically stupid” was aimed at me or the GOP but my argument in short is that both parties are authoritarian, imperialistic, ethnic nationalistic, oppressively moralistic, and oligarchic.

The ad itself is also this weird reverse-psychology thing where it pretends to be an attack ad framing Gibbs as "too conservative." Maybe so that the Dems can still officially say that they didn't explicitly support him.

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/26/peter-meijer-michigan-democrats-trump

Anti-imperialism is when you threaten war on the side of the world on behalf of your client state.

Oh no he’s still just a tankie haha silly me.

You’re going to get one of these words right one day.

xps and following jmm's post here,

Democrats funding trump candidates

Karl, have you actually watched any of these ads? That's not what's happening. The ads criticize the candidates, say they are wrong for their district/state, too conservative, criticize them on their stances on issues, and cast their connections to Trump in a negative light. Yes, they are playing a double game and thinking this will both hurt the candidates with most voters while boosting them with the whacko base.

Whether it is wise strategy is open to question, but it is not "funding trump candidates" in any sense.

here's one of the ads:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5XVRDC50Do

Bulb, that is a ridiculous take

Thanks.

okay yeah that ad isn't exactly promoting the guy

I think it’s doing exactly that. The two concepts pushed are “too conservative” and “connected to Trump.”

The content is nearly irrelevant imo. That they're spending significant sums ($44m according to Reuters, though I think $35m of that is just from Pritzker) trying to psych out/promote right-wing fascists is *immoral* while also being risky and foolish.

Think about it this way, if the GOP tried the same tactic would you be like "oh no the wily Rs are going to con us into having lefty candidates" or would you be like "fuck yeah morons"

And maybe that first response is the "correct" one but jesus at some playing politics like a german board game is just repellent

It's somewhat reminiscent of Florida Republicans putting up dummy Dem candidates to draw votes away from the actual Dem candidates.

I'm leaving open the tiny sliver of possibility that in November we'll all be amazed the Dems held onto the House by one seat because several too-far-right GOP candidates who had various kinds of Dem primary support lost in close districts. Tiny sliver. I think it's more likely some of those candidates will be part of the new GOP majority and this will be seen as an unbelievably dumb and wasteful strategy. But I'm willing to be proven wrong.

various kinds of Dem primary support

I'm disinclined to see ads that say, effectively, "Holy shit! Look at this fucking asshole! He's fucking crazy, and probably a criminal!" as support, unless you're the kind of person who thinks "there's no such thing as bad publicity" is a thing (it's not), or thinks it's better to stay entirely silent about what your opponents are doing, and just wait for a candidate to be chosen, whereupon you engage with them in a good faith debate about the issues on an even playing field, as God and C-SPAN intended. Both viewpoints are wrong.

Saying "Oh no! If you do [thing X], the Republicans will do something crazy and evil! We better not!" is idiotic, because the Republicans are crazy and evil. They are going to do crazy, evil shit no matter what. It's who they are, it's what they do. So yes, you should draw attention to it, and condemn it, with the intention of waking up sane, not-evil people.

The strongest selling point for a Republican primary candidate is “libs hate him” followed by “Trump loves him.” Libs running ads about how they hate the candidate and how Trump loves the candidate is absolutely support.

Fortunately, the ads aren't being shown exclusively to the Republican base.

The Republican base are, however, the only people who'll be voting while the ad is running.

Come on, it's not some kind of 12-D chess that they're planning on voters remembering this ad in November - they're pumping up fascists. It's win-win - either the fascist is an easier candidate to beat in November OR they get to fundraise even more when the fascist wins. MAGA has been nothing but a boon to Democratic consultants.

am i missing something or having a stroke? how is that ad in support of Gibbs?

Meijer is a chump who wasn't going to win anyway

The point of the ad is to signal to the far-right GOP base that Gibbs is super conservative and endorsed by Trump. This thread of the conversation is weird as to my knowledge there is zero ambiguity about what the Dems are doing, their own party members are calling them out for it.

Trump has 80+% approval ratings with the people who are going to the polls in the MI GOP primary.

Democrats are running ads about how much the guy with 80%+ approval loves the openly fascist candidate.

Like Reuters doesn't even consider presenting another take on this here: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/risky-midterm-strategy-democrats-boost-far-right-candidate-michigan-race-2022-07-26/

Trump has 80+% approval ratings with the people who are going to the polls in the MI GOP primary.

See heres the thing tho. He's going to win anyway.

it's not some kind of 12-D chess that they're planning on voters remembering this ad in November

You really think everyone but you is a fucking moron, don't you?

I guess on the list of things I'm supposed to worry about that the Democrats are doing well this is way way down the list

'Democrats aren't running ads promoting a fascist because Democrats wouldn't do that - it's totally normally to run ads in the other party's primary for a candidate you're sure is going to lose anyway.'

C'mon Jack.