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

the resistance lost its leader?

oh noes whatever shall we do without him

WHCA Statement on President’s Remarks in Montana pic.twitter.com/vOwn6riBES

— WHCA (@whca) October 19, 2018

let's see ol Donny Trump wriggle out of this scolding

I confess my first thought at the Knox tweet is that I hope Trump retaliates by barring all mainstream news outlets from the WH with the unintended effect of forcing them to quit playing nice with him.

we should recoil, never shrug

go hire christian yelich to write your statements. what a bunch of pus . . . hovers

this time they’re looking for an excuse to dismiss way to capitalize politically on the live vivisection of a journalist

Houston Chronicle endorses Beto: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/recommendations/article/Senate-Beto-ORourke-Ted-Cruz-2018-endorsement-13320986.php

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dp5CEn0X0AAxrtL.jpg

cruz started 9th grade at 15?

hmm let's see...born Dec. 1970, started 9th grade fall of 1984--at 13. Good journalism there, guys.

He's from Canada, so they thought he was a little slow, eh.

we're phone- banking for Beto on Monday

Miguel is making brisket, feel free to stop by

ask Miguel to leave the shirt at home while cooking the brisket

oh, right, happy Friday:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/us/politics/russia-interference-midterm-elections.html

Xp well it's his house so

We clearly need to start making the 'tsk tsk' finger much more emphatically in Russia's direction. And I don't think it's out of line to suggest that we furrow our brows even more deeply.

If we're lucky maybe we'll get another one of these faces!

https://pbs.twimg.com/tweet_video_thumb/CHKiKaJUgAA1pBH.png

Short-term lease: In interview, Nancy Pelosi says she she's herself as "transitional figure" if Democrats win back House and make her speaker again. “I have things to do. Books to write, places to go...: https://t.co/WjGSfmtYoj

— Mark Z. Barabak (@markzbarabak) October 19, 2018

would kick it with Nancy and a bottle of white wine tbh

Oh man yeah

Pelosi has quietly been grooming potential successors, among them Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, and though she said she would be delighted to hand the speaker’s gavel to another woman — “Oh, yeah!” she exclaimed — she has no plans to try to force a choice.

“Whoever is next is not up to me,” she said. “If I were saying, ‘I want so-and-so to be my successor,’ that’s not right.”

Hadn't occurred to me before but Schiff seems like a not-bad choice. Younger, decent public profile. Dunno how he is at vote-counting, which is what really matters.

Looks a lot like Andy Kaufman .
has seemed pretty good on pretty much every appearance I've seen by him.

the congressional campaigns of Antonio Delgado (NY 19) and Abigail Spanberger (VA 07) have been inspiring I think

way to fuck it up, Bredesen:

Inside the Blackburn surge in Tennessee: Rep. Marsha Blackburn, the GOP Senate candidate in Tennessee, has argued for months that her opponent, former Gov. Phil Bredesen, is a Democrat and would vote that way, something he says his record belies, reports Yahoo News National Correspondent Holly Bailey. And she has sought to tie him to Hillary Clinton and to unpopular party leaders like Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader who helped recruit him for the race.

But the contentious battle over Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court appears to have given her campaign new life. A New York Times/Siena College poll last week had her up 14 points among likely voters, a dramatic shift after spending much of the summer in an average 50-50 tie with Bredesen.

Part of the shift is a turnaround with women. Before the Kavanaugh vote, Bredesen led Blackburn by an average 10 points among likely women voters, but the NYT/Siena poll found the congressman with a 3-point edge — a result still within the survey’s margin of error but a trend that has Bredesen supporters worried. The former governor was attacked by Blackburn for taking weeks to say whether he would support Kavanaugh’s nomination. And when Bredesen ultimately did say he would have voted for Kavanaugh, he appears to have angered some of his own supporters.

I just got a phone call from Russia. They must have forgot to spoof their number.

xo yeah that was unfortunate, seems like a political move. I still hope he wins. I shudder at the thought of Marsha Blackburn being a senator

(xp)

Blackburn’s gonna win, Bredesen just blew any enthusiasm from his base

maybe you're right but in a new vanderbilt poll they are now neck and neck

https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/18/politics/bredesen-blackburn-tennessee-poll-narrow/index.html

Huh wtf

Do pollsters take into account gerrymandering?

gerrymandering wouldn't be an issue for a statewide race like a senate election. but voter suppression definitely would

(but I also wonder how pollsters or a poll aggregation site like 538 would ever take gerrymandering into account)

(sorry in my last post gerrynandering = voter suppression)

Good to know

Well they poll the individual races in gerrymandered districts

but if the issue is voter suppression they have no way of knowing who's actually going to be able to cast a legitimate vote. this seems like an issue in the Georgia governor election right now

voter suppression seems like a bigger issue in statewide races (senate, governor) than in congressional districts, which are gerrymandered to perfection

yeah that was unfortunate, seems like a political move.

Speaking as a TN resident, it was 100 percent a political move, but not an obviously stupid one. Bredesen is in a really tough position. He didn't want to weigh in on Kavanaugh at all, but Blackburn was using it as part of her "He's going to be Chuck Schumer's boy" shtick. He's probably going to lose no matter what, but his only possible way to win is to get moderate Republicans who don't like Blackburn, of whom there are many. It definitely cost him enthusiasm in the base, but the base is mostly going to stick with him for pragmatic reasons, and anyway the base can't get him elected in a state that voted for Trump by a 25-point margin.

^interesting. can't help but still hope he's going to win

so the Saudis did kill Kashoggi

Omg no way

It was self-defense. #standyourground

"killed in fight"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/saudi-claims-that-khashoggi-died-in-a-brawl-draw-immediate-skepticism/2018/10/19/e10d4186-d3ef-11e8-83d6-291fcead2ab1_story.html?utm_term=.8775635b66b1

Embassy brawl. Been there, man.

Tale as old as time.

As if killed in fight somehow justifies chopping him up into pieces and spiriting him out.

insert 'that escalated quickly' meme here.

a fistfight! with a fifteen member Saudi team with a bone saw

It's like what happened w/Eric Trump and those hookers 12 times...