US Politics, May 2023: May 1 never happened

Great news for Florida; I’ll take whatever good news I can get!

Completely unrelated thought but I’ve been thinking about split ticket voting and how voters tend to try to avoid giving all the power to one party. We usually think of it in terms of the Presidency and Congress. But I wonder if this historically conservative Supreme Court (as execrable and horrifying as it is) might give Democrats a slight but longer term advantage in elections when it comes to this tendency. When there is this ever-present feeling of dread and oppression from having a heavily conservative, reactionary and repressive branch of the government, which seemingly answers to no one and can invalidate any precedent and anything put in place by the other branches, maybe there will be a tendency to lean toward voting Democratic in order to help balance the power. Maybe?

The important thing to remember is that SCOTUS as Liberal Protector of Constitutional Rights didn't begin until the Warren Court and not even until the brief period between 1962-1969. Besides glimmers between 1937-1939, the Court has been a business-friendly racist shit show.

OTM, except that you can probably date that period from 1954, when Brown was decided.

Ouch, this pains me a bit:

Then came the most notable part of the conversation: Newell recounted that when the other reporter asked Feinstein how her return to Washington had been received among her Capitol colleagues, she seemed to deny being gone.

"No, I haven’t been gone," she reportedly said, before adding: "You should follow the — I haven’t been gone, I’ve been working."

Newell said Feinstein "turned feisty" when she was asked to clarify whether she meant that she had been working from home. Her office had maintained that she was receiving updates about Senate business while she was recuperating in San Francisco.

“No, I’ve been here. I’ve been voting,” she reportedly said. “Please, you either know or don’t know.”

Is she lying or actually dementia-affected?

It’s dementia

xxp I'm sorry but I don't think there is much good news about Florida.

DeSantis continues his fascist march, signing a bill allowing doctors to refuse treating LGBT patients on 'ethical grounds'!!, banning mask and vaccine mandates, signing another bill to harass Disney about its monorail system, signing a ban on tracking gun purchases in the state, weaponizing the State Department of Education against a 5th grade teacher for showing a Disney movie during a recess period for her students (her name is Jenna Barbee and you should watch her tiktok video in response to it, it is beautiful and very moving), barring the state’s colleges and universities from spending money on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and limiting how race can be discussed, getting his New College henchmen like Chris Rufo to invite Scott-Fucking-Atlas as the graduation speaker, imposing new penalties and restrictions on undocumented immigrants in Florida, defending the NY vigilante, sending troops to the Texas border, and transferring millions from a state campaign fund to a federal super PAC and masking his travel plans in an effort to hide his upcoming presidential campaign expenditures from Florida taxpayers

Sorry for the rant, but this stuff is astonishingly heinous

here is Jenna Barbee's statement

https://www.tiktok.com/@becomingabetterbarbee/video/7232767113914617131

For folks who don't know Jacksonville, the city and county are the same government. Wrong to think this is another "big" Dem city. It has outlying rural areas and a significant number of military retirees. It's a slightly red-leaning bellweather for the state. Why this is a bfd

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) May 17, 2023

Good evening!

Completely agree with you about the cruelty Dan S. Heinous shit indeed, and it is happening in a place where there are loads of good people (including many of my favorite people) trying to intervene on the side of compassion and justice but perniciously getting blocked by bullshit political structures.

There is also a generous dash of absurdity. Monorail? Really? Are we seriously arguing about monorail? Did we learn nothing from the Simpsons?

More bad news for FL dum dum

Stellar night for DeSantis https://t.co/2GR2GD6S4q

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) May 17, 2023

Loathe as I am to predict the future, but I said in November that DeSantis' formidable victory looked like an outlier. I'm sure Florida will still go red in '24 but neither is it as deep red as it looked in 2022.

Lord Alfred, I write to you in the spirit of empathy, from an allegedly purple state where our totally horrid governor might actually have shot himself in the taint by continually reminding people that for him, everything has to be a piece of ongoing culture-war bullshit.

My one fervent hope remains as follows: drumming up paranoia in service of an imagined war on "wokeness" will get stale as normal humans realize that maybe it's okay to just be nice to people

So long as my Muriel spark novels, Campari and gin, and ILX exist I'm immune to despair.

(Hoisting an imaginary Negroni in your general direction)

Possible apostle here, fear my family will object xp

For a non-Floridian, it's almost a relief that DeSantis has tacked so hard reactionary... had he stuck to some kind of benevolent/pragmatic populism, he might be actually have risen up a bit nationwide, but now he's almost a crank Lydon LaRouche character; not sure who his advisors are but they have their heads up their asses

That said, reading over that litany that Dan S. just posted, I feel deep sympathy for all the innocent collateral damage in his mindless 'war on monorails woke'

The important thing to remember is that SCOTUS as Liberal Protector of Constitutional Rights didn't begin until the Warren Court and not even until the brief period between 1962-1969.

Very much so! There’s a great book on this called Cold War Civil Rights that goes into how the Warren Court rulings were deliberately part of the propaganda effort to court favor amongst the rapidly de-colonizing Global South nations.

Here it is: Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy by Mary L. Dudziak

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691152431/cold-war-civil-rights

Progressive angst about the debt talks is growing:

Sen. Warren described herself as “very concerned” about the direction of the talks, including mentions of a long-term cap on spending and additional work requirements.@adamcancryn, @JonLemire and I https://t.co/nRXAw2c0Lv

— Jennifer Haberkorn (@jenhab) May 16, 2023

In 10 years, we'll have welfare recipients forced into the fields as a replacement for migrant workers. I've been expecting that for some time, and I'm sure of that now.

Thanks, kingfish. Looks like the uni library's got it.

More and more it looks like we must thank the Cold War for every intellectual, judicial, and political advancement.

The corrupt former city councilwoman who wants more cops, “constitutional” stop and frisk, and implicitly wants to ruin Philly’s Chinatown by allowing the 76ers to build an enormous stadium in the heart of the city won her primary last night, basically setting the scene for her winning the election because she will be the only Dem running.

Frankly, another disaster for Philadelphia that will be given a soft touch by media here and elsewhere , but I digress.

This is a professional question as much as a personal one: People who live in the Southern US or just read about it, where do you go for progressive perspectives on the South? In terms of news, I mean.

The Chinatown thing is absolutely infuriating tho— the racial politics of it are ugly, with many Black politicians in favor because the stadium will add (low-paying, not full time, seasonal) service jobs, ignoring the fact that they’ll be actively destroying a vibrant neighborhood some suburban motherfuckers can watch a basketball game in a slightly more convenient location. Fuck.

I used to spend so much time in Philly's Chinatown. Many a string of little firecrackers were purchased there, and it was right by the Troc, iirc.

The corrupt former city councilwoman who wants more cops, “constitutional” stop and frisk, and implicitly wants to ruin Philly’s Chinatown by allowing the 76ers to build an enormous stadium in the heart of the city won her primary last night, basically setting the scene for her winning the election because she will be the only Dem running.

She won a huge majority of the black vote.

The racial breakdown in tonight's results is... pretty stark.

Majority-Black (and majority-Latino) precincts pretty united; whiter precincts really splitting their vote. pic.twitter.com/x7IXA0oDdr

— Aseem Shukla (@ashukla89) May 17, 2023

I don’t care whether she won a huge majority of the Black vote, her policies are regressive and won’t keep Black communities safer, and her implicit endorsement of the destruction of another minority community is abhorrent.

Like forgive me for saying that anyone who endorses stop and frisk laws shouldn’t be taken seriously

As with Eric Adams, it's interesting to see how racial politics aren't at all the same as "progressive" politics — something I think people on both the left and right in this country misunderstand a lot.

otm

Strange that you think me pointing that out is an attack on you tabe

But I forgive you

My apologies, Keyes— it’s just the rhetoric around her nomination and presumed mayoral tenure is already really ugly here, with a lot of racialised language being thrown around needlessly.

yeah tipsy otm

yeah, I really didn't know much about her--just that she's not the candidate Bernie and AOC came to Philly to support

That poll of voter breakdown gave me deja vu on how the votes on reforming the Minneapolis Police Dept. went in the aftermath of George Floyd, with much of the anti-"defund the police" energy being laser-focused on majority Black neighborhoods, with Don Samuels serving as the primary messenger of said message

Having worked in a cit govt I can tell you that older (voting) constituencies in majority Black neighborhoods tend to want more cops rather than fewer. You can argue that they shouldn't want that for any number of reasons, but it's still true. Now they are also skeptical of cops in general and will support things like civilian review etc to hold them accountable. But they don't perceive that fewer police will be better for them.

CITY govt that should say.

Oh I know this, it remains disappointing.

Skeptical of cops, but far more fearful of neighbor youths, seems to be the general rule of thumb

As with Eric Adams, it's interesting to see how racial politics aren't at all the same as "progressive" politics — something I think people on both the left and right in this country misunderstand a lot

Likewise, there’s a reason a lot of Dem establishment figures want the first presidential primary to be held in South Carolina, but not, say, Michigan or Illinois.

Yet another 1st Amendment lawsuit in Florida. This is the district where the School Board is basically letting one super right-wing English teacher bombard them with banned book requests and has upheld every one that they have heard so far.

https://pen.org/press-release/pen-america-files-lawsuit-against-florida-school-district-over-unconstitutional-book-bans/

Anyone ever read any books by historian/politics writer Kevin Kruse? any good?

No but I like him on Twitter.

just bought White Flight

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/17/politics/rachael-rollins-doj-report-leak

Rollins, according to the IG report, secretly spoke to reporters about interim Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden – Rollins’ successor from her previous job. At the time, Hayden was campaigning in the Democratic primary to earn the position permanently. Rollins supported Hayden’s opponent in the race, Ricardo Arroyo.

Rollins, during her tenure as the US attorney, “provided information to (The Boston) Globe, before it published three articles … critical of Hayden’s handling of a police misconduct case that began under Rollins’s tenure as DA and the understaffing of a special unit in the Suffolk DA’s office responsible for handling police misconduct cases,” the report says.

In text messages cited in the report, Rollins told a Globe reporter that her office “does not know we have been speaking,” and told the reporter that they could use the information she provided “if you can say sources close to the Rollins Administration.”

The report offers a damning picture of how Rollins handled her appearance at a Democratic fundraiser in July 2022 that featured the first lady. It says Rollins was “driven in a government vehicle by a subordinate employee” of her office to a private home in Andover, Massachusetts, where the event was taking place.

After media reports raised questions about the appearance, Rollins suggested on Twitter that she had “approval” to be there, according to the report, which said she in fact did not receive the necessary approval to attend the event.

“(H)er attendance was contrary to the ethics advice she received before the event that gave permission for Rollins to meet and greet with Dr. Biden separately from the fundraiser but did not include approval from the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) to attend the fundraiser itself,” the report says.

This is just artless and dumb

“I got a trailblazing appointment and all eyes are on me, I’m going to respond by absolutely shitting the bed in the dumbest, most public way possible. #yolo”

xp re Kruse: I read Fault Lines, a political history of the U.S. since Watergate, which he wrote with Julian Zelizer. IIRC, they wrote it in part to be read in a class at Princeton that they taught together. It's very readable and useful as a broad overview, but also kind of textbook-y, as you might expect. Would be interested in checking out some of his more focused work.

This is painful... except for:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another New York progressive, told Bowman: “She ain’t worth it, bro.”

If Twitter isn’t real life then explain this pic.twitter.com/9IoEEsTmfc

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) May 17, 2023