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

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?).

INteresting, I wound up watching a frontline episode from 2004 earlier this week on the history of the credit card in the U.S. that had Warren turn up in her days asa law professor. I don't know enough about her to know if she had considered running for public office by that point. But interesting to see her and think this is a person cropping up on a show that hasn't got the recognition she would get later. & yeah would be interesting to see her as President after taht.
Particularly to rub it into people who've been trying to rub it into her over the last couple of years.

It’s hard to have a “good” record as a prosecutor when our criminal justice system is what it is. But apparently there were a few high profile white collar cases related to the 2008 collapse that she declined to pursue.

Xp

xpost...what are a complete lack of executive skills? She didn't have an admin connect calls for her?

what are a complete lack of executive skills?

A large part of executive skills would be picking the right people for the positions who report to you, then managing your communication with them so you understand what is happening in their area, what their deliverables are and what problems they are having in delivering them, including a way to find out what problems they are not reporting to you. If you can't do those things well, you lack executive skills.

Except for the first, FDR lacked every one of those qualities!

that's ok, the bar will be low

Sometimes the first quality can render the others mostly moot

xp If a president can pick the right people for the cabinet, and those people have good executive skills, then the prez is more or less home free, because managing the departments of the executive branch is not really the job description for a president. It's more important that good information flows up to you, so you can make good decisions for others to carry out.

Still think Obama’s main problem was a gross overconfidence in his ability to pick people.

Trying to have it both ways -- staying above the scrim of politics while making himself the essential man -- frustrated the hell out of me in 2010 and 2011.

I dreamed I was posting ITT last night but I was Speaker of the House and seeking advice from Soto

"Make a list."

One of the Teddy Roosevelts worked at my firm. He definitely lacked executive skills.

I am still crinkling my brow about someone bitching that Harris lacks executive skills.

I mean, the person who said that worked for her.

i mean i think we can all agree this is going to be one of the defining issues of the 2020 primaries, as much as it defines the state of u.s. politics in october 2018

xpost yeah, it's still really weird. I mean I guess if I had a boss from years ago that I kind of hated (I have several) and they were likely to be a candidate for higher office, I am sure I would talk about their lack of excel skills.

"Charismatic, innovative, but struggles with creating swim lanes in Visio"

his specific complaint about her was that she had shiny object syndrome where she would divert attention to other high profile things and not follow up on the day to day.

wow a boss that didn’t focus on the day to day

ok, he sounds like every other basic bitch that thinks their boss is doing a bad job.

ha, xpost!

executive skills would be picking the right people for the positions who report to you, then managing your communication with them so you understand what is happening in their area, what their deliverables are and what problems they are having in delivering them, including a way to find out what problems they are not reporting to you. If you can't do those things well, you lack executive skills

Um okay but. Aren't we speaking, at this time, about choosing an opponent for one Donald J. Trump, late of the state of New York?

Like, that list doesn't apply to Jim in the slightest so I don't know why we would apply it to his putative successor.

Jim = Jim, gah

HIM

Donald Trump would never be able to get his project management certification.

Aren't we speaking, at this time, about choosing an opponent for one Donald J. Trump

To the best of my knowledge, every other person in the world would fully qualify as not being Donald J. Trump, so we may feel free to narrow that broad field according to whatever principles we wish to apply.

i think once people see Donald Trump is unqualified they'll never vote for him

If the main qualifications are cutting taxes and inspiring lib tears, he's qualified.

I got this report thrown at me by Google...

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/2018-elections/2018/10/14/defiant-ted-cruz-beto-orourkes-hometown-elpaso-tells-democrats-come-take

...and it kind of illustrates my issues with Beto's campaign. Cruz is parroting all these Trump talking points (tax cuts, skyrocketing employment etc.) that can easily be knocked down, holes punched into, set on fire...and O'Rourke isn't doing that. A high road is fine, but it needs to be said--early and often--That Cruz is a fraud and doesn't have the state's best interests at heart. I know a handful of Republicans who've flipped after discovering for themselves the same about Trump, and the road to victory is only possible by changing the discussion to that instead of the shit Cruz and his PACs are dictating.

beto's lack of counterpunch is why he will lose this race. that and a massive preexisting partisan deficit in texas. but he did a great job of selling himself.

let's save the postmortems for after the vote, for fuck's sake

yes I still want hope

I thought O'Rourke was great in the debate

fucking dumbass tea-leaf-reading of broken polling models with obsolete narratives driven by the mindsets of journalists who've never met a Democrat they couldn't paint as a lost cause in the great self-punching Sisyphean struggle that is caring about anything that matters