US Politics, October 2018: next week will be even longer

and Georgia, of course

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/suppression-critics-charge-georgia-gop-gov-candidate-purging-voters-election-n918761

"conservative" america: "if you can't win, cheat! states' rights! we're a republic not a democracy!!"

Looks like Beto's chances are steadily declining

You could say that about anyone in this country

feel like texas republicans could have at least done the country the favor of primarying out cruz

how is a dude who is so inherently dislikable a career politician?

See: Nixon, Richard Milhouse

First, “inherently dislikable” is often a prerequisite for choosing politics as a career - no normal person ever gets accustomed to spending so much time trying to be liked, or becomes so inured to failing at it, and that’s a big part of the job.

Second, have you ever spent much time in Texas?

teacher who talked about Miller eating glue suspended.

https://www.sfgate.com/news/education/article/Teacher-suspended-after-saying-Trump-aide-ate-13302114.php

i agree w/that, as a teacher you've gotta keep any shit with your students locked down, and it's not exactly a valuable revelation. just more stupid noise that has zero bearing on anything.

kinda can't blame them for suspending her.

xp

See: Nixon, Richard Milhouse

apparently, even ted cruz's kids don't like him, either

TEDD.

Dick got lots of supportive telegrams after the Checkers speech, which if you watch it is the most transparent self-serving bullshit

Nixon stood upon the shoulders of midgets.

Nixon's party supported Nixon. I don't think he was much liked.

Eisenhower detested Nixon, but he put him on the ticket twice. That's politics for you.

It's kind of a nice break to have our president out rallying the hinterlands. It makes him happy as a toddler with his security blanket and the pace at which he ruins things slows down. We can safely ignore much of what comes out of his mouth during the rallies, no matter how inane or reckless, because it isn't being spewed in his official capacity.

Nice illustration of his priorities that while parts of the country he supposedly governs is facing a disaster he's out talking elsewhere, mainly to feed his ego, particularly since he's got a history of giving out about previous incumbents' focus days after similar events.

Will see what the response to Michael is going to be reflected as next month.

& can't wait to find out what next year's going to be like, more of the same.

what did nixon bring to eisenhower's tickets? commie-bashing? california? party machine support? whatever it was, i doubt it was necessary

youth

Kind of wish Beto would genuinely go on the attack. His team is currently just running this plain-spoken ad denouncing the mud-slinging. Meanwhile, Cruz and GOP PACs are going to town on him on TV rn, Cruz backed out of one of the debates, and it's just so easy to get some licks in on ol' Ted. O'Rourke needs to do some nut-kicking.

re: eisenhower/nixon: the 1952 convention fight was really ugly between eisenhower's supporters and those of bob taft, who was sort of the mitch mcconnell of his age. if he was alive and in the senate now we would be devoting a huge percentage of our ire and outrage at his attempts to stall, contain, and roll back the new deal. picking a well-known conservative and commie-purger like nixon was seen as a hedge against paleocon types staying home or voting a third party. (bear in mind that eisenhower had never held office before and was even being courted for the democratic ticket at one point.) nixon was also famously an asshole, and if eisenhower wanted to basically run on being a beloved war hero that every veteran was already going to vote for, he might want someone else on the campaign providing the newspapers with the meaner, more aggressive quotes... your basic "attack dog" type deal.

Beto needs to spend all his money on turnout imo

^^ otm. attack ads would be more emotionally satisfying, but GOTV would be more effective.

everybody knows who he is at this point. If his election is hinging on turning out minority and youth vote, driving people to the polls will be more effective than ads, because those votes pretty much never materialize.

not on their own anyway

Cruz backed out of one of the debates

two now iirc? one to vote on Kavanaugh, one to be a giant crybaby pussy

re: eisenhower/nixon: the 1952 convention fight was really ugly between eisenhower's supporters and those of bob taft, who was sort of the mitch mcconnell of his age. if he was alive and in the senate now we would be devoting a huge percentage of our ire and outrage at his attempts to stall, contain, and roll back the new deal. picking a well-known conservative and commie-purger like nixon was seen as a hedge against paleocon types staying home or voting a third party. (bear in mind that eisenhower had never held office before and was even being courted for the democratic ticket at one point.) nixon was also famously an asshole, and if eisenhower wanted to basically run on being a beloved war hero that every veteran was already going to vote for, he might want someone else on the campaign providing the newspapers with the meaner, more aggressive quotes... your basic "attack dog" type deal.

― |Restore| |Restart| |Quit| (Doctor Casino), F

and the moment Nixon suggested in the Checkers speech that BOTH candidates reveal the source of their finances Ike loathed him. The way Ike dangled power and withdrew it in front of Nixon for the next eight years would be pathetic and awful if Nixon hadn't deserved it.

Many XPs

Well, yeah. That's really how his election should go, by getting enough people out to vote who wouldn't have normally. Part of why Texas has become a GOP stronghold is that the big state offices (the Govs. and Attorney General) are always up during nationwide midterms, and only GOP voters show up.

The problem is that alot of the attack stuff is shading the election against him. Talking points covered in ads and sanctioned/unsanctioned memes by Cruz/PACs are skewing dialogue towards stupid stuff from O'Rourke's past (the DWI and Burglary/Trespassing stuff) and political things of no consequence (a PAC is still running an ad linking O'Rourke as an El Paso councilman to an eminent domain deal that in reality (A) he recused himself from voting on due to his Father-In-Law's involvement in the project, and (B) ended up not happening) without counterpoint illustrations of Cruz's ineffectiveness as senator. Almost every positive thing Cruz is running on (disaster relief a big one) is something someone in his position would have been able to do no matter what party affiliation, and many voters are not getting that.

so what's to be done about these blatant and possibly illegal voter suppression techniques the GOP is flagrantly getting away with right now? do we just point our fingers and say "SEE!! I told you they cheat!!" while letting them steal (yet another) election?

My old org is doing civil disobedience on voter suppression in Florida rn, but the "democracy movement"
more broadly conceived is just way too milquetoast and bought in to decorum as a practice for the likes of Common Cause and others to really throw down on this.

politics died with the storm then?

good mourning!

This thread's dormancy yesterday delighted me.

so what's to be done about these blatant and possibly illegal voter suppression techniques the GOP is flagrantly getting away with right now? do we just point our fingers and say "SEE!! I told you they cheat!!" while letting them steal (yet another) election?

looks like it

Not really. Native Americans are fighting back..

I was hearing that several groups in Georgia were trying to combat what was happening there and saying that Kemp should stand down as Secretary of State. Or at least recuse himself during the election
I can't believe that system he's imposed and already had challenged once, this “exact match” thing whereby apparently the voter has to exactly match what the person who took their details down has entered. So forgetting to use initials one doesn't use frequently means you don't match or not having the correct amount of spaces entered gets the same result. Difficult to see that as legal .
Actually difficult to believe somebody is remotely getting away with trying to run things this way in the present day.

Georgia was also reluctant to get their election devices looked at in the wake of the Russian hacking and wound up wiping the machines used instead of having them inspected. Sounds like it's a deeply embedded problem so hope that there is some way Stacey Abrams can actually get in and reform things.

It's like they've never seen the many cinematic depictions of a bully throwing his weight around until he finally pushes his luck too far.

meanwhile global war enthusiast Bill Kristol finds his inner snark as an #NeverTrumpist

I'm excited too. I've always hoped to be on the cover of a #1 bestseller. https://t.co/GW2G1S68kz

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 14, 2018

Warren Harris or Harris Warren

what did that link to? i blocked twitter on my devices

it's really too bad the saudis own an entire floor in trump tower :(

https://apnews.com/a956d9e593ec44f68e40ae4f2b5d5717?

Stevo, I’m rooting for an all-woman ticket too, but it’s not gonna be Warren

Teachout / Winner: troll the cons right back

think harris and gillibrand will be up there tbh.

Stevo, I’m rooting for an all-woman ticket too, but it’s not gonna be Warren

― El Tomboto, 14. oktober 2018 17:50 (thirteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why not?
(honest question, if it seems snarky :) )

It should be Warren

I think Harris could be potentially better as a candidate against Trump because she carries herself with a rare kind of easy authority. But Warren is the one who gets it when it comes to the problem of money in politics and the overall structural problems that have allowed the GOP to become the monster it now is.

someone I know who workedin Harris' office in SF just went off on a polemic on her complete lack of executive skills...I honestly kind of forgot she was the prosecutor in SF, she wasn't popular at the time (what prosecutors are though?).