US Politics, November 2019: These people are truly sick.

good morning!!

I’m watching CNN right now and they’re currently posting that there has been a large shift away from Trump among white women without a college degree.

My mom, who is nearing 75, spent most of her adult life (as far as I can tell) registered as an independent who mostly voted Democrat but I'm sure occasionally (or for all I know more frequently) voted Republican. She's in southeastern Pennsylvania, outside Philly, which has been a hotbed of shifting demographics and redrawn districts. Post Trump she said fuck it and not only registered as a democrat for the first time but got more politically involved. And lo and behold, she can't be the only one, since things there, where I grew up, are clearly on the upswing:

Locally, Democrats will hold all five seats on the Delaware County Council, a Republican stronghold since the Civil War, and also assumed a majority on the legislative body in Chester County. https://t.co/b3zwcvv5gt via @phillyinquirer

— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanNYT) November 6, 2019

“That should concern every one of you that has a home a family or a business in Delaware County," (Delaware County GOP chair) McGarrigle said. "Because, you know what? You shouldn’t feel safe anymore.”

Stacy Maillie felt safe voting for Democrats. A nurse and a registered Republican, she voted Democratic after a 12-hour shift in the emergency room.

“I’m not happy with our current state of the Republican Party," Maillie said after voting at Springfield Township High School. "I think it’s too divisive and i think that the Democratic Party is more tolerant and inclusive. I just find that the current Republican Party has become more extreme.”

The flip side:

CNN New Day featured on Wednesday a panel of women identified as Pennsylvania swing voters, moderated by anchor Alisyn Camerota — and two had a jaw-dropping answer when asked what President Donald Trump could do to lose their vote.

The segment had fascinating insights into the minds of voters in a state that is considered critical for whoever will win the 2020 presidential election. But ended on a curious and chilling moment revealing the stunning support for Trump.

The last question in the segment was put to Crystal, who despite being a “swing voter” was the most ardently pro-Trump. Camerota asked “Crystal, is there anything he could do that would make you not vote for him?”

Crystal replied “No.”

Camerota then cited an infamous hypothetical scenario once proposed by Trump during the 2016 election, asking “If he shot someone on 5th avenue, would you vote for him?”

Another (unidentified) panelist interjected: “You’d have to know why he shot him.” Crystal agreed, saying, “Yeah, why did he shoot him?”

This segment not only reveals rampantly chauvinistic support for President Trump, but also a cautionary note to pedestrians on Fifth Avenue upon the president’s next visit to New York City.

(lol "swing voter")

i mean these stories are just updates of ppl with "my country, right or wrong!" bumper stickers, right?

It seems a little more ... pathological. I do want to hear some specific Trump behavior redlines for once, just to get these lunatics on the record.

Behavior redlines = him dying basically.

The GOP would probably say his death was fake news

Taking a step back from KY and looking at all the elections last night, GOP should be most concerned about what happened in local elections in Chester, Delaware and Bucks County, PA last night. That is genuinely alarming if you know the voting history.

— Josh Holmes (@HolmesJosh) November 6, 2019

The redline is probably 'would it be okay for Trump to shoot YOU on 5th Ave.?'

Crystal, who despite being a “swing voter” was the most ardently pro-Trump

There is a long and dismal history of mainstream news outlets credulously interviewing "swing voters" and "undecideds" who turn out to be the chairs of their county Republican party or whatever, so I mean, tell me a little more about "Crystal" before I make too much of this.

A friend of mine won her election to the school board in a county in suburban VA DC area last night. Her opponent, the incumbent, recently "made the case" that both sides of the Holocaust should be taught in schools.

!

Needless to say, a lot of smaller local elections got overlooked against the big ticket races, but the trend of suburbs going blue or bluer seems not to be limited to PA. Heard similar stories about little elections in Minnesota, Iowa ...

There's a very real possibility of Trump getting impeached and losing the popular vote by an even bigger margin next year but still winning the office, which would be ... weird.

xp: I mean, that's not necessarily wrong; there's the side that said "what will make our country great is murdering an ethnicity" and the side that said "murdering an ethnicity is wrong and you must be stopped" and, after the first side was stopped, they looked at the aftermath and said "you know what, you were right; murdering an ethnicity is bad"

I assume that wasn't the opponent's take, though

Yeah, the only legit both sides would "this side was victimized on a historic scale, and the other side was villainous on a historic scale."

was looking at some of the KY gov polls and it turns out...maybe Trump is actually kinda right? Bevin was incredibly unpopular, there were very few polls showing him with any sort of lead at all.

Trump is way, way out in front as most popular republican, that's not controversial

But according to Nate Silver there was really only one poll with a double digit lead for Beshear, and that wasn't from a very good pollster. Bevin really seems like an even worse politician than Trump, but it seems difficult to find evidence that Trump really helped there. Even if he is kinda popular in the state.

xp I think her opponent's case was: we need to teach the Nazi side and the Jewish side, and let the students decide which is better, inside of just saying that Nazis are bad.

my friend got just over 50% of the vote.

The KY argument being made was that if the GOP asshole won, that was good for Trump/bad news for impeachment, so it's disingenuous to say that if the GOP guy loses it *isn't* bad news for Trump, however disliked the GOP guy may have been. Trump exemplifies the "he's an asshole, but he's my asshole" mentality, so if even that wrongheaded approach isn't enough to help a guy he explicitly supported in a race he/they explicitly linked to impeachment/national politics, it's not good news for Trump or the GOP, however well they did elsewhere.

yeah I think at the end of the day the whole "impeachment is actually helping Republicans so Dems should back off" thing seems to be demonstrably not true

ultimately Trump supporters already believe he's the most persecuted president in history, so actually slightly turning the screws on him ain't gonna do much

xp I think her opponent's case was: we need to teach the Nazi side and the Jewish side, and let the students decide which is better, inside of just saying that Nazis are bad.

my friend got just over 50% of the vote.

― L'assie (Euler), Wednesday, November 6, 2019 8:31 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It's just a wonder to realize how many people are working overtime to ensure that Godwin's Law will someday be updated to include Americans as an unambiguously-pejorative point of reference.

There was that one principal recently who was fired for refusing to acknowledge the Holocaust happened because "some parents might not believe that it did"

Needless to say, a lot of smaller local elections got overlooked against the big ticket races, but the trend of suburbs going blue or bluer seems not to be limited to PA. Heard similar stories about little elections in Minnesota, Iowa ...

There was a good NYT feature about this a couple of weeks ago, which says this is definitely a thing but also differentiates between inner-ring and outer-ring suburbs: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/25/us/democrats-republicans-suburbs.html

lol, so literally moving the goalposts out?

out to sea

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2019/11/06/judge-voids-trump-administrations-conscience-rule-letting-health-care-providers-refuse-to-give-care-for-religious-moral-reasons/?arc404=true

good

i'll take this onslaught of good news for the foreseeable future thanks

pessimist in me thinks we're due for more retaliatory prison camps by friday

Trump def probably flailing around for some headline-changing stunt at the moment

I'm sure that as he watches Fox and Friends, they'll reliably feed him his next tangent.

John Roberts and His Furious Five are gonna be workhorses by the time the Trump Years end in 2021 or 2025.

I bet they are so excited about so handling so many cases from an out-of-control executive

not sure if this got mentioned up above but a friend pointed out that Virginia could now ratify the ERA (realizing that some deadline passed but I'm sure something could be done about that).

I bet they are so excited about so handling so many cases from an out-of-control executive

It is completely in line with their historically consistent conservative stances about limiting government power and reserving the rights of states and individuals to... aw fuck it just kidding, it'll be a shitbath

xp and yeah if ERA gets ratified there will be much rejoicing

xp a bit more detail on that from a friend: "Passage in Virginia would be awesome — but alas, would not actually mean formal ratification and adoption. There’s complexities with deadline language in the original measure, and other subtle legalities. But finally having the states needed would definitely help force the question."

Also, a charlottesville friend that was seriously injured during the first night of the white supremacist rally there, his spouse just got elected to cville's city council.

<3 S3na, old family friend

Yeah, the deadline for the ERA was originally set for 1979, and then Congress extended the deadline to 1982. Theoretically, Congress could vote again to extend the deadline, but it's unclear whether the original votes to ratify still count, or whether the amendment would need to be reintroduced.

xpost Yes! (I only really know him but I was at their wedding a long time ago)

First public hearings announced:

House Democrats will begin convening public impeachment hearings next week, they announced on Wednesday, initially calling three marquee witnesses to begin making a case for President Trump’s impeachment in public.

The hearings will kick off on Wednesday, with testimony from William B. Taylor Jr., the top American envoy in Ukraine, and George P. Kent, a top State Department official, said Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. On Friday, Mr. Schiff’s committee will hear from Marie L. Yovanovitch, the former American ambassador to Ukraine, he said.

Also worth reiterating:

The sessions will not look like traditional congressional hearings, where Democratic and Republican lawmakers alternate asking questions in five-minute blocks and witnesses can easily avoid answering unfavorable questions.

The House voted along party lines last week to approve rules for an impeachment process for which there are few precedents. Those rules include allowing the top Democrat and Republican on the committee to designate questioning to trained staff and for each side to have up to 45 minutes at a time.

Witnesses under Republican questioning will spend their 45 minutes rhapsodizing on the pleasures of drinking beer, while being complimented furiously for their service to the nation. After a time, the House member and witness will weep copiously about how this out-of-control process has ruined their previously idyllic family life.

https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/7uSs_uYCp3GEQLYBR.YdEA--~B/Zmk9c3RyaW07aD0zODY7cHlvZmY9MDtxPTgwO3c9NDQwO3NtPTE7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/ap.org/ae37e092512b3edd333393114fe09364

this photo is really begging for some photoshopping

why do we always come here
i guess we'll never know

will the GOP totally fuck up in Alabama yet again? maybe

Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to announce plans to run for his former Senate seat before Friday, multiple sources told The Hill.

A source who is in regular contact with Sessions said Wednesday there is “99 percent certainty he will announce today or tomorrow.”

A separate source familiar with Sessions’s plans told The Hill that the former Alabama senator “will come out forcefully in support of [President] Trump’s agenda while denouncing Democrats’ impeachment efforts. And steps have already begun to hire campaign staff.”

The deadline to file for the Senate race is Friday.

Rick Dearborn, a former top aide to Sessions, declined to comment on whether his former boss would announce a bid in the coming days.

Three other sources familiar with the plans said the announcement would be made Thursday.

Jumping into the Alabama race would put a national focus on Sessions’s rocky relationship with Trump.

Sessions held the Senate seat from 1997 until 2017, when he was tapped to serve as Trump’s first attorney general. But he quickly fell out of favor with the president after recusing himself from oversight of the Russia probe, eventually leaving the administration in November 2018, a day after the midterm elections, at Trump’s request.

Despite his turbulent relationship with Trump, Sessions has remained popular in Alabama, a state Trump won with 62 percent of the vote in 2016.

Sessions would be joining a crowded primary field that includes Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, businessman Stanley Adair, state Rep. Arnold Mooney and Roy Moore, the 2017 GOP nominee who lost to Sen. Doug Jones (D) in the special election to fill Sessions’s former seat.

The primary is slated for March 3.

Some Republicans, including his potential opponents, are not keen on Sessions launching a bid to return to the Senate.

“I think it would be a mistake for him and really bad for the state given the president’s extreme displeasure with him. Alabama is very pro-Trump,” Byrne told The Hill on Tuesday.

Sessions also does not have the blessing of key Republicans. Since kicking the tires on a potential run, Sessions has yet to speak with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) or Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.), the chairman of the Senate GOP campaign arm, according to a Senate Republican operative.

Sessions also has not spoken to Trump or Vice President Pence directly, although the White House has communicated to Sessions's inner circle that they would view his candidacy “extremely unfavorably,” according to the GOP operative.

"hmmm, the pedophile or the traitor... so hard to decide"

GOP in a single tweet

Bevin presser just now. He uses GOP cheating in North Carolina and Russian meddling in 2016 to justify his call for a recount.

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) November 6, 2019