The Fall of Roe v Wade: US Politics, June 2022

they are otherwise democrats and progressive

"Ten degrees to the left of center in good times. Ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally." IIRC

Thanks to the Overton shift since 1966 it's now 2/20 though.

The whole business of Dems supporting far-right candidates...sure hope this doesn't backfire.

fuck, i'm not shocked that it happens, but how widespread is this bullshit this year? it happened in colorado, too:

Colorado’s returns were even more encouraging for the party [GOP]. Businessman Joe O’Dea defeated state Rep. Ron Hanks by nine points in the race to take on Democratic Sen. Michael F. Bennet. Democratic-aligned groups spent big to back Hanks, who they viewed as too extreme for the left-leaning state owing to his attendance at the pro-Trump rally in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021, and his belief in Trump’s election lies. O’Dea, who is pro-choice, decisively carried the Denver metropolitan area, a sign that suburban Republicans and independents want to take a different course from Trump’s.

what a horrible, horrible idea that is. first, 2016, donald trump. our collective amnesia is always surprising in the way that it...wait, what's going on? anyway, secondly, when democratic groups do this, the best case scenario is that their preferred republican fascist wins the primary and hundreds of thousands of people in the state get the thrill of supporting a fascist that is so legit that they won the primary. and spending millions to do that which could have gone to ANYTHING else. or, instead, they can end up spending millions to support the loser, which then boosts the "moderate" republican's standing in that they triumphed over a democrat-aligned cynical campaign bullshit effort, which obviously shows that the democrats don't think their own candidate is good enough to stand on their own

spending a ton of money to fund the craziest opponent is symptomatic of people who spend their ways thinking about how to make money on disasters

spending millions of dollars to elevate the profile of far-right candidates is fucking immoral

Nixon did in 1972 and....it's unbelievable they want to duplicate it.

sorry to flood the zone with washington post content, it's just that it's paywalled and that it's on topic and i just noticed it. here's the editorial board today:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/democrats-stop-funding-right-wing-candidates/

Democracy itself is on the ballot this election year. The country needs a broad coalition to defeat candidates who would help former president Donald Trump, or another politician in his mold, again attempt a coup in 2024. Which is why it is not just shameless, but dangerous, that Democrats have spent tens of millions this year promoting Republican extremists.

By boosting the primary campaigns of right-wing zealots running against more moderate Republicans, Democrats seek to set up favorable races for themselves, against less electable candidates, in the general election. The result is that Democrats have helped Trumpian fanatics move one step closer to offices from which they could directly threaten the nation’s democracy.

Tuesday night brought the latest example. State Sen. Darren Bailey (R) won the Illinois GOP gubernatorial nomination after Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and the Democratic Governors Association spent $30 million to help him. The Trump-endorsed Mr. Bailey made his name by opposing covid-19 public health measures, pushing to evict Chicago from Illinois and favoring the banning of abortion in the state.

Even worse was Democrats’ use of this strategy in key presidential swing state Pennsylvania, where state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), a leading 2020 election denier, last month won the GOP gubernatorial nomination. He spent a mere $370,000 on television ads. His Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, spent more than $840,000 on ads designed to help him win the Republican primary.

The democratic process survived 2020 because enough Republicans in positions of responsibility refused to act on Mr. Trump’s lies. Meanwhile, Mr. Mastriano pushed the notion that Pennsylvania’s legislature could appoint its own slate of Trump electors, even though Joe Biden won the state’s popular vote. Should Mr. Mastriano win the governor’s race, he could spark a constitutional crisis in 2024 by trying to prevent the state from sending to Washington a slate of Democratic electors, against the will of the voters. Even if he loses, he will have a high platform from which to spew his poisonous nonsense.

True, Republican primary voters might embrace extremists, anyway. But while polls show that a majority of Republicans believe that President Biden is illegitimate, voting patterns suggest that allegiance to the “big lie” only gets candidates so far in GOP primaries. Two Georgia Republicans based their campaigns for statewide office on accusations that the incumbents had failed to act on supposed 2020 election fraud. Mr. Trump strongly backed them. They both lost. On Tuesday, Colorado Republican voters rejected election conspiracist Tina Peters, who was running to be the party’s nominee for secretary of state.

Everyone who recognizes that U.S. democracy is in grave danger should do all they can to encourage results such as these — not the opposite. Democrats got what they wished for in 2016, when Mr. Trump captured the GOP presidential nomination. They savored a race against a malign incompetent whom the voters would surely reject. Instead, Mr. Trump won and proceeded to tear the country apart. This year’s midterms will occur in an extremely unfavorable political climate for Democrats; Republicans, even extreme ones, could win all over the map. If Democrats truly believe that Mr. Trump and those who embrace his lies present existential threats to democracy — and there is good reason to — they should join with anyone of any partisan or ideological persuasion to keep them as far as possible from office. Instead, they have enabled the crackpots.

Even worse was Democrats’ use of this strategy in key presidential swing state Pennsylvania, where state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R), a leading 2020 election denier, last month won the GOP gubernatorial nomination. He spent a mere $370,000 on television ads. His Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro, spent more than $840,000 on ads designed to help him win the Republican primary.

i mean? fuck? what the fuck??

this is very "counting on RBG to not die" in terms of strategic soundness

Ugh

Fucking indefensible, this is the kind of shit that makes me wanna never vote again

this is very "counting on RBG to not die" in terms of strategic soundness

yeah it was reported at the time and appalled me then

Her reply to an interviewer back then was along the lines of, "If he couldn't even get Merrick Garland through"--MG having rep of innocuous centrist Repub---how could he replace her with anyone at all similar, but mainly that he wasn't getting anybody past McConnell.

update:

...While officials with the Secret Service as well as close to Trump have not disputed the overall characterization of Hutchinson's testimony, some are rebutting specific claims and descriptions.
Unlike Hutchinson's testimony, the limited denials were not made under oath.

...After the hearing, a Secret Service official familiar with the matter told CNN that Ornato denies telling Hutchinson that the former President grabbed the steering wheel or an agent on his detail.
Ornato is known to have a strong relationship with Trump and his team, having been granted an unusual waiver to suspend his time on the US Secret Service to serve as Trump's deputy White House chief of staff.
Engel had previously testified before the committee and described the interactions with Trump on January 6, including the former President's desire to travel to the Capitol, but Engel was not asked about an altercation or being assaulted, the official said.
he Secret Service, through the Department of Homeland Security Office of Legislative Affairs, notified the committee Tuesday afternoon that it will make the agents involved available to testify under oath, the official said, and that the agents are prepared to say under oath that the incident Hutchinson described did not occur.
The committee did not ask Secret Service witnesses to respond to Hutchinson's testimony prior to Tuesday's hearing, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement Wednesday.

McConnell didn't have the Senate until 2015.

Anyway, she said Obama couldn't get anybody like her through, pretty sure she did. Whether she was full of old person shit or not, that's it.

She may have been right but her mistake was maybe in thinking there wasn't an even worse outcome.

Pretty sure that Harry Reid with 51+1 in 2013-2014 could have gotten someone through who was a carbon copy of Ginsburg.

Until all these off the record people countering her testimony go under oath, fuck 'em.

No reports yet of any disputes of the metal detector thing, or the clavicles, for that matter, or ketchup or "Mike deserves it" or coup plans or evident awareness that a shitstorm was coming on the Hill, and w/o talking to Capitol Police about it, or anything else in there.

Fuck the steering wheel and ketchup sideshow there is so much criminal shit that is getting buried by that trivial nonsense.

ketchup is meaningless, steering wheel is a funny story but if trump is ever going to be charged with a criminal act for sedition, things like grabbing the steering wheel in an attempt to go to a seemingly dangerous situation, where the only thing that possibly makes sense is that he wanted for the rioters to see him and cheer for him, will be important

(i think there is a 0.00000001% chance trump ever goes to jail)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/democrats-stop-funding-right-wing-candidates/

Goddamnit! I keep trying not to fall into utter despair and keep trying to suck it up and resist the temptation to just trash the democrats in the hope of not tamping down any groundswell of energy that might come from all this shit going on, but fuck, they are so fucking stupid and they never learn!

I mean even if these people all lose in the general, the Democrats have just spent a lot of money to further promote and amplify dangerous conspiracy theories and anti-democratc forces

I never wanted Trump to win the R nomination even while I believed he had no chance to win. A) didn't want the possibility but B) didn't want a full year of that toxicity.

Glad to see we think this was a feature, not a bug

from Politico Nightly:

After weeks of publicly calling on former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to cooperate with the investigation, the Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed him this evening for a deposition scheduled for July 6.

During her testimony on Tuesday, White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described an explosive account in which Cipollone warned of legal culpability if Donald Trump followed his supporters on a march to the White House. Hutchinson has also testified to the committee that Cipollone repeatedly expressed legal misgivings about Trump’s efforts to send false presidential electors to Congress and various other aspects of his bid to stay in power on Jan. 6, when Congress met to count electoral votes, write Betsy Woodruff Swan, Nicholas Wu and Kyle Cheney.

More, from ABC:

Cipollone is evaluating the subpoena and his team is involved with the committee on the parameters surrounding an eventual closed-door deposition, sources close to him told ABC News.

There is an expectation that he and the committee will reach an agreement on the terms by the requested deposition date of July 6, though sources emphasize the fluid nature of the talks.

Sources said that among the topics for testimony about which Cipollone and the committee are negotiating: the actions taken by former top Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark to use the powers of the DOJ to attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election; what Cipollone did the day of Jan. 6, 2021, excluding conversations he had directly with former President Trump; interactions he was present for or had with former Trump lawyer John Eastman; and interactions he was present for or had with members of Congress post-2020 election.

The information shared with the committee could be impacted by a number of factors, sources familiar with the deliberations said. That includes whether Trump's presence in any of the past meetings could result in potential claims of executive privilege.

Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin met with committee investigators for an informal interview in April. Cipollone and Philbin engaged on these topics during that previous meeting with committee investigators.

excluding conversations he had directly with former President Trump

re Democrats supporting far right candidates:

Emmanuel Macron is now allying with the far right in France, against the left, having repeatedly used the far right as the threat to make people vote for him.

i saw on twitter that RBG had severe regrets right as she was dying about not retiring at the time, i realize it's gossip and not sourced (can't remember where I saw it either) but it made me feel a little better to entertain the possibility that she realized she had fucked up

this is great

https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/warnock-holds-double-digit-lead-walker-new-poll-finds-rcna35985

still incredibly mad about the Washington Post piece, the sheer unmitigated gall of Democrats begging for donations as soon as Roe was overturned only to use that money to fund fascists who think women who get abortions should be beheaded

I'm donating to abortion funds only. no candidates. they can eat happy meals for 10 months instead of steak tartare, fuck em

still incredibly mad about the Washington Post piece, the sheer unmitigated gall of Democrats begging for donations as soon as Roe was overturned only to use that money to fund fascists who think women who get abortions should be beheaded

― frogbs, Thursday, June 30, 2022 8:21 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I mean saying it again, even if that were an airtight strategy for winning an election, it is insanely dangerous anyway because it's just further amplifying and promoting those ideas. There's not much space between that and just funding nazis.

Biden's finally on board, though apparently doesn't want to try it until after election cos of Manchin/Sinema et all

https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-says-transatlantic-alliance-adapted-131056769.html

(my confidence in this happening is still like 20%, but it was 0% prior so, it's movement I guess)

my confidence is 0% since the inevitable Republican House is not going to pass it

lol goddamn that is some absolute sicko shit. I just…. god damn. boomer centrism going fully accelerationist.

Strange how the AP story has no direct quote of Biden agreeing to scrap filibuster.

What is Biden on board with?

working with Mitch to appoint more conservative judges

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o593zZyfFfc

I’m less able to donate generally than before, but when I do it’s more likely to be directly to causes - hunger, homelessness, women’s productive health, etc.

I am kinda beside myself over how much I naively gave to Dems who turned out to have zero shot in 2020

I got really angry at dems about that too - how much they bulshitted people about candidates who could supposedly beat McConnell or Graham or whoever. It's a grift imo. I sometimes joke now "I'm not giving any more money to political candidates until I'm at the point where I can give enough to get something in return."

still incredibly mad about the Washington Post piece

Same, fuckin same. I suddenly have reached the point where I cannot eat one more ounce of shit from these idiots. It’s disgusting.

I get so many emails from the Democratic Party pleading for cash. So many of them sound absolutely desperate. It's embarrassing, frankly.

Those emails are the fucking worst. There are two basic strains. The first kind looks like internet 1997 and says shit like "HUMILIATING DEFEAT! Nancy Pelosi needs to raise $10 million by tomorrow or Republicans will win!" I find these not only aggravating but intensely demoralizing and they only increase my association of Democrats with losing. The second are the more Obama-style ones that get overly familiar and come from like "Vicky for Senate!" or start "I'm Dave-o's Mom And I Want To Tell You About My Son"

Yes, exactly. Or the ones who say something like "McConnell is FURIOUS!" Referring, not to McConnell actually being furious, but to something he might or should be furious about, e.g., Amy Klobuchar saying on some news show. They all make me want to stop giving money to the party altogether.